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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 282. The Shepherd-Minstrel
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It is very rarely that a nation has associated all her attributes with the life of a single man. But in the Hebrews we find a people, through long centuries of its history and through devious changes of its fortune, consistently and persistently agreeing to heap upon a single individual the aggregate glories of every profession in life. Israel has fixed her affections upon an ideal whose very name expresses the object uniting all desires-David, the beloved. To claim one man as the object of all national desires is a claim not easily sustained. It can be supported only on the supposition that this one man has passed through every national experience, has filled every sphere, has partaken of every circumstance. Accordingly, the David of Israel is not simply the greatest of her kings; he is the man great in everything. He monopolizes all her institutions. He is her shepherd boy-the representative of her toiling classes. He is her musician-the successor of Jubal and Miriam and Deborah. He is her soldier-the conqueror of all the Goliaths that would steal her peace. He is her king-numbering her armies and regulating her polity. He is her priest-substituting a broken and contrite spirit for the blood of bulls and rams. He is her prophet-presaging with his latest breath the everlastingness of his kingdom. He is her poet-all her psalms are called by his name. The truth is, in the estimation of Israel this man is a personification of the nation itself-the embodiment of her qualities, the incarnation of her spirit, the type of her destiny.
Brave and chivalrous, energetic and prudent, a judge of men, a true lover of his country, just and wisely impartial in his administration, David combined all the high qualities of a king who has made his way to the throne by real merit, and held it successfully to the last. He had also the personal qualities that endear a king to his subjects and a man to his fellows: considerate humanity, loyalty in friendship, strong family feeling, the genial gift of music and song. The stains upon his character-his deceitfulness, his severity in war, his sensual indulgence-may be partly excused by the general customs of the time; and where he fell below the common standards of morality, he righted himself again by a genuine contrition and repentance. Add to this an upright and earnest piety, faith in God and humble submission to His will: qualities that found expression in rude, even superstitious ways typical of the age, but forming evidently the bedrock of his character. Whether we consider David's personal qualities, or his great achievements for a nation whose best traits he represented, we cannot wonder that the later generations of Israel exalted him above all his successors, and formed after his image their ideal king of the future Messianic times.1 [Note: J. D. Fleming, Israel's Golden Age, 112.]