1 Samuel 16:1

CONTENTS

This chapter is the first in the history of David. And as this man forms so distinguishing a character in the word of God, in every point of view, as a patriarch, prophet, writer, warrior, king, and above all, as a type of the Lord Jesus, everything respecting him becomes interesting and important. The history doth not open with the birth of David, but takes up the relation with his anointing by Samuel, as king of Israel, and the successor to Saul. Here is related in this chapter, the Lord's sending Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint one of the sons of Jesse. All the sons of Jesse are made to pass before Samuel. David is chosen. Samuel pours the horn of oil upon him: Samuel returns to Ramah. An evil spirit from the Lord troubles Saul. David is sent for, as one that played well upon an instrument, to divert him.

1 Samuel 16:1

(1) В¶ And the LORD said unto 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 will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.

If we compare what was said of Samuel in the close of the foregoing chapter, with what is said of Samuel (in 1 Samuel 19:20) presiding over the younger prophets, it should seem that the man of God had retired from court, and all public services, excepting the sanctuary, to attend to the instruction of the college. But the Lord now calls him to another commission, and this seems to have been the last, and which was to go in quest of Saul's successor among the sons of Jesse. I detain the Reader to mark in this verse, the expression fill thine horn with oil: and then beg him to remember the opening of the hymn of Zecharias, in allusion to the Lord Jesus when under the teaching of the Holy Ghost, he declared that glorious event of the coming Saviour, to be, that he had raised up an horn of salvation for his people in the house of his servant David. See Luke 1:67.