1 Samuel — Chapter 16

The Lord said to Samuel: How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill thine horn with oil, and go... I have provided me a king among his sons. Lapide: God does not name David immediately — lest the same happen to him as to Joseph, whose brothers, when they knew he would be king, laid snares for him (Chrysostom, Theodoretus).

The elders of Bethlehem were terrified at Samuel's coming — fearing he was fleeing from Saul's wrath and would draw Saul's anger upon them, or foreboding some disaster. Gregory: \"Elect teachers ought to appear rarely in public, be frequent in retirement, free from civil affairs, full of spiritual ones.\"

The Lord said to Samuel: Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the things that men see are not the things that God seeth; for man seeth those things that appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart. God is the Cardiognostes — the inspector and lord of hearts. Lapide: eyes and countenance often lie; the heart — the mind and will — cannot feign to be other than it is. Chaldaean: \"before the Lord are manifest the thoughts of the heart.\" Hence the principle of divine election: not physical stature or nobility but interior virtue.

Jesse had eight sons (David being the eighth, the youngest): Lapide refutes those who cite 1 Par. 2, where only seven are numbered, explaining one is omitted for a reason unknown to us — perhaps born of a secondary wife.

The youngest yet remains, and he keepeth the sheep. Jesse thought David too young and hence unworthy of Samuel's attention and did not present him. Lapide: Ambrose: \"He was exiled to the base service of tending his father's sheep, not presented to the priest as worthy to be anointed unto the kingdom.\" Divine election precisely inverts human expectations.

David was \"ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance.\" Lapide on \"rufus\" (ruddy): type of Christ — Gregory: \"He was ruddy because wounded by the lance; ruddy because crimson with the Passion. Wherefore through the prophet it is said to him: Why is thy garment red? Ruddy he was, who coloured the whiteness of so great innocence with the redness of his precious blood. Fair of face he was, because, rising again, he put on the beauty of immortality, and with great charity he looked upon us mortals.\" Three-fold beauty: ruddy in the world, fair in paradise, of beautiful countenance in eternal heaven.

Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brethren; and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. David's anointing as type of Christ's anointing (Christus = Anointed). Samuel anointed David openly before all his brothers so that they would esteem him the more and envy him the less (Josephus, Theodoretus). David was anointed not to reign immediately but as a pledge of future kingdom — as the faithful are anointed in Baptism and Confirmation as pledges of heaven.

But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. Lapide: the evil spirit was permitted by God as punishment for Saul's sins; its infliction is \"from the Lord\" by permission, not by cause. As Augustine: God is not the author of evil, but he permits it for just reasons.

And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was better, and the evil spirit departed from him. Lapide: David's music as spiritual remedy for diabolic vexation — a figure of how sacred music soothes the soul and drives away evil. Allegorically: David/Christ by the music of his Gospel and sacraments expelled the devil from souls.