"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul."
— Psalm 23
David, son of Jesse, is the archetype of the royal bard — the figure in whom sovereignty and sacred song are united in a single person. He is the shepherd boy who slew a giant, the warrior who conquered a kingdom, the king who danced before the Ark of the Covenant, the psalmist whose songs have been sung for three thousand years, and the ancestor from whose line the Messiah was prophesied to come.
David is not merely a king who also wrote poetry. David is a king because he sang — because the spirit of God (ruach) that descended upon him when Samuel anointed him was the same spirit that flowed through his harp when he played before the tormented Saul.
The Psalms
The 150 Psalms attributed to David (whether authored by him in whole or in part) constitute the most complete devotional songbook in the history of the world. They have been chanted in the Temple of Solomon, sung in synagogues, prayed in monasteries, and recited by the dying for three millennia. No other body of sacred poetry has been so continuously and universally used.
The Psalms contain everything:
- Praise — the ecstatic celebration of the Creator and the created world (Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God")
- Lament — the cry of the soul in anguish, abandoned, persecuted, in the valley of the shadow (Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?")
- Penitence — the confession of sin and the plea for mercy (Psalm 51: "Create in me a clean heart, O God")
- Trust — the quiet confidence of the soul resting in God's care (Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd")
- Royal enthronement — the coronation hymns of the King, the Lord's anointed (Psalm 2: "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee")
- Prophecy — the messianic visions that the early Christians read as foretelling the Passion and Resurrection of Christ (Psalm 22 again, and Psalm 110: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand")
The Psalms are the complete emotional and spiritual vocabulary of the human soul in its relationship with God. There is no state of the interior life — no joy, no grief, no terror, no exaltation, no dark night — that does not find its voice somewhere in the Psalter.
The Shepherd, the King, the Ancestor of Christ
- The shepherd boy — the youngest son, overlooked, tending sheep in the fields. The Hidden Prince.
- The anointing — Samuel pours the oil, and the Spirit descends. The Call.
- The giant-slayer — the young warrior who defeats Goliath with a sling and a stone. The first Trial.
- The exile — Saul's jealousy drives David into the wilderness, where he lives as a fugitive, hiding in caves, gathering a band of outcasts. The Exile.
- The king — David ascends the throne of Israel, conquers Jerusalem, and brings the Ark of the Covenant to the holy city. The Coronation.
- The sin — David's adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. The Fall within the reign — the proof that even the anointed king is not beyond the reach of the shadow.
- The repentance — Psalm 51. The broken heart that God does not despise. The king who can bow lower than any subject.
- The ancestor — from David's line comes Solomon, the Temple, the wisdom tradition, and — according to the Gospels — Yeshua himself. The promise of the Kingdom that will have no end.