LOOK NOT ON HIS COUNTENANCE, OR ON THE HEIGHT OF HIS STATURE

Samuel had his own criteria for selecting a new king; namely, (i) the age and (ii) the size of the candidate. (i) As first-born, Eliab was destined to receive a double portion of his father’s goods and it was to him that the headship of the family would pass when the father died. And to Samuel the first-born was the first choice! (ii) The mention of the height of Eliab’s stature is no doubt a reference back to the earlier description given of Saul, ‘there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people’, 9. 2. Saul’s arresting ‘stature’ had clearly impressed Samuel: ‘Samuel said to all the people, See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people?’, 10. 24. In physical terms Saul matched perfectly the kind of king the people had demanded - one just like the kings of the nations around. Eliab was created in Saul’s image, after his likeness! Surely, Samuel therefore reasoned, here was a man worthy to succeed the towering son of Kish.

‘But the Lord said … Look not on … the height of his stature’, v. 7. God was no more impressed by the stature of Eliab that He had been with the stature of Saul! For the Lord evaluates people, not on the basis of their appearance, but on the basis of their inward worth. And none of Jesse’s seven sons then present had the kind of ‘heart’ which He required. It was the young keeper of the sheep who the Lord pointed out as the ‘man after his own heart’, 13. 14. It was not that David had a sinless heart, as later events sadly and convincingly proved, but that he had a submissive heart - in marked contrast to the heart of Saul. Note Paul’s expanded description, ‘I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil (literally, ‘do’) all my will’, Acts 13. 22. This was some­thing which Saul had singularly failed to do! Unlike Saul, unlike Eliab, and unlike David’s other brothers, David had a heart which beat in rhythm with the heart of God. The whole tenor and direction of David’s life was to seek and to do God’s will. Is mine?