A King Like the Nations

Read it: 1 Samuel 8; 1 Samuel 16–17

Judges ended with a question: “In those days there was no king in Israel” (Judges 21:25). Would a king fix things? First Samuel answers: yes and no.

“Give us a king”

Samuel was the last of the judges and a prophet who had listened to God since he was a boy. But he grew old, and his sons were crooked. So the elders came to him: “Look,” they said, “you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint a king to judge us like all the other nations” (1 Samuel 8:5).

Having a king wasn’t wrong in itself. Moses had said Israel might one day have one, as long as it was “the king whom the LORD your God shall choose” (Deuteronomy 17:15). The problem was the reason. They wanted to be “like all the other nations”. God had made them different on purpose, a people who belonged to Him, and they wanted to fit in. Samuel was hurt, but God told him, “it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king” (1 Samuel 8:7).

Samuel warned them what a king would cost: their sons for his army, their daughters for his palace, a tenth of their harvests and flocks. They didn’t care. “We must have a king over us,” they said. “Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to judge us, to go out before us, and to fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:19–20). Keep that last phrase in mind.

God gave them what they asked for: Saul, tall, handsome and from a good family. He looked exactly like a king. He started well, but he kept doing things his own way. He offered a sacrifice he had no right to offer because he grew tired of waiting for Samuel, and later he kept the best of the spoil God had told him to destroy, then tried to call it worship. Samuel’s verdict was blunt: “obedience is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). God would find “a man after His own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) instead.

The youngest son

God sent Samuel to Bethlehem, Ruth’s town, to the house of Jesse, Ruth’s grandson. One of Jesse’s sons would be the next king. The eldest, Eliab, walked in, and Samuel thought, this must be him. God said no: “Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him; the LORD does not see as man does. For man sees the outward appearance, but the LORD sees the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Seven sons passed by. None of them. “Are these all the sons you have?” Samuel asked. “There is still the youngest,” Jesse replied, “but he is tending the sheep” (1 Samuel 16:11). Nobody had even thought to call David in from the fields. But he was God’s choice. Samuel poured oil on his head, an old sign of being set apart by God, “and the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Samuel 16:13). At the same time, the Spirit of the LORD left Saul. For years, though, Saul stayed on the throne, and David, already anointed, served him and waited.

The giant

Then came the Philistines, a powerful people on the coast to the west, with their champion Goliath of Gath. He was a giant of a man in bronze armour, and for forty days he walked out between the armies and challenged Israel to send someone to fight him, one on one, winner takes all. “Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and greatly afraid” (1 Samuel 17:11).

Remember why Israel had wanted a king: “to go out before us, and to fight our battles”. Here was the battle, and Saul, head and shoulders taller than anyone, stayed in his tent.

David arrived with bread and cheese for his older brothers, heard Goliath’s taunts and was outraged, not mainly at the danger but at the insult to God: “Just who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (1 Samuel 17:26). Saul told him, “You cannot go out against this Philistine to fight him. You are just a boy” (1 Samuel 17:33). David answered from experience. As a shepherd he had fought off lions and bears: “The LORD, who delivered me from the claws of the lion and the bear, will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:37).

Saul tried his own armour on David, but it didn’t fit. So David went out with his staff, his sling and five smooth stones from the stream. Goliath sneered. David’s reply is the heart of the chapter: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD of Hosts” (1 Samuel 17:45). And he said why the fight mattered: “Then the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Samuel 17:46). One stone, and the giant fell. “Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone” (1 Samuel 17:50).

It’s tempting to make this story mainly about you: you be brave like David, and you’ll defeat your giants. There is courage to learn here, but notice what the story itself stresses. Israel had no one who could win. One chosen, anointed person went out alone, won the battle on behalf of everyone else, and the whole army shared his victory. As David put it, “the battle is the LORD’s” (1 Samuel 17:47).

Where Jesus is in this

“Messiah” (Hebrew) and “Christ” (Greek) both mean “anointed one”. David was the anointed king from Bethlehem who was overlooked by everyone except God. Centuries later, Jesus was born in Bethlehem too, and the New Testament calls Him again and again the Son of David. Peter described how “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38), just as the Spirit came on David at his anointing.

The New Testament never treats Goliath as a hidden code, but the shape of the story fits what it says Jesus did. Like David, Jesus went out alone against the enemy no one else could defeat, and His people share His victory. He came “so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14–15). We are not David in this story. We’re the frightened army, rescued by a champion.

Think about it: “Man sees the outward appearance, but the LORD sees the heart.” What would change in how you see yourself, and others, if you really believed that?

Go deeper: The God of All Comfort by Hannah Whitall Smith — Smith retells David going out to Goliath, refusing Saul’s armour and declaring God’s victory before a stone had left his sling, and shows that faith means trusting God’s word before you can see the result. Start with chapter 14, “The Shout of Faith”.