Who was David?
When they lived Around the tenth century BC, at the beginning of the Israelite monarchy
In short
David was the second king of Israel, around the tenth century BC. The books of Samuel present him as the youngest son of Jesse, a shepherd from Bethlehem, anointed by Samuel before he had won anything, a fugitive from Saul, king first at Hebron and then in Jerusalem, and the man responsible for Uriah’s death.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 10 min read
No figure in the Bible gets more space than David. Sixty-odd chapters across 1 and 2 Samuel, a parallel account in Chronicles, and a collection of prayers that carries his name. The portrait that emerges is not the Sunday-school hero: it is a man who does admirable things and indefensible things, often in the same chapter.
What follows is the story the two books of Samuel tell, in the order they tell it. It has three clear movements — the rise, the reign and the collapse inside his own household — and the text softens none of them.
The youngest in the house
David enters the narrative by elimination. The prophet Samuel is sent to Bethlehem to anoint one of Jesse’s sons, and he works through them one by one, oldest to youngest, until it turns out that someone is missing: the last boy is out in the field with the flock. That is the one.
The scene is built around a contrast the text states outright: human judgement goes by what is visible, and this choice does not. Worth noticing that the narrator still describes the young man as good-looking — the passage does not despise appearance, it only denies that appearance decides.
After the anointing, David goes back to the sheep. He does not become king there; he becomes a court musician, summoned to play when Saul was tormented. That is the door he comes through — the service entrance, not the palace gate.
6And when they had entered, he saw Eliab, and he said, “Could he be the Christ in the sight of the Lord?”
7And the Lord said to Samuel: “You should not look with favor on his face, nor on the height of his stature. For I have rejected him. Neither do I judge by the appearance of a man. For man sees those things that are apparent, but the Lord beholds the heart.”
The line that organises the whole chapter. The detail easily missed is that it is said about Eliab, the tall and impressive eldest brother — the text rejects precisely the candidate any reader would have picked.
18And one of the servants, responding, said: “Behold, I have seen the son of Jesse of Bethlehem, a skillful player, and very strong and robust, a man fit for war, and prudent in words, a handsome man. And the Lord is with him.”
How one of Saul’s servants describes David before any battle: someone who plays well, is strong, knows war and speaks sensibly. Keep this verse in mind — on its own it dismantles the frail-boy image that people bring to the next chapter.
The giant, and what the text actually says about him
The Goliath episode is the best-known scene in the Bible, and also the one where people read the most that is not there. Chapter 17 describes the Philistine with the precision of an inventory: his height, the weight of his breastplate, the brass on his legs, the shaft of his spear compared to a weaver’s beam. It is a description of equipment, not of a monster.
On David’s side, the text is careful to record the refusal of the armour. Saul dresses him in his own gear, and David takes it all off, because he was not used to it and could not move. He goes out with his staff, five stones from the streambed and a sling. The choice is not naive: it is the choice of a man who prefers the weapon he can actually handle.
And there is a detail that almost never survives the retelling. Near the end of 2 Samuel, a list of battles credits the killing of Goliath the Gittite to a different man from Bethlehem. The parallel list in 1 Chronicles resolves the tension by saying that this man struck Goliath’s brother. Both readings exist: whoever reads the books as independent records sees a place where the tradition preserved two versions, and whoever reads the whole as a single coherent account takes the Chronicles solution. This page does not decide for you, but you deserve to know the question is there.
38And Saul clothed David with his garments. And he placed a helmet of brass upon his head, and he clothed him with a breastplate.
39Then David, having girded his sword over his armor, began to see if he could walk in the armor. But he was not accustomed to it. And David said to Saul: “I cannot move about in this way. For I am not used to it.” And he put them aside.
40And he took up his staff, which he held always in his hands. And he chose for himself five very smooth stones from the torrent. And he put them into the shepherd’s bag that he had with him. And he took up a sling in his hand. And he went out against the Philistine.
The refusal of the armour, told with a care that summaries lose: David puts it on, tries to walk, gives up. The stated reason is not courage or faith, it is unfamiliarity.
19Then there was a third war in Gob against the Philistines, in which Adeodatus, a son of the forest, a weaver from Bethlehem, struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like the beam used by a cloth maker.
In a list of wars against the Philistines, the killing of Goliath the Gittite is credited to another Bethlehemite. This edition follows the Latin tradition and renders his Hebrew name as Adeodatus; the spear shaft is described with the same weaver’s-beam comparison used in chapter 17.
5Also, another war was undertaken against the Philistines, in which Adeodatus, a son of the forest, a Bethlehemite, struck the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the wood of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.
The parallel passage in Chronicles says the man struck Goliath’s brother rather than Goliath. It is the oldest harmonisation of the problem, and it sits inside the Bible itself — which says something about how long the difficulty has been noticed.
The fugitive years
Between the victory over the Philistine and the coronation lies the part of the story that retellings skip, and it is the longest of the three. Saul turns on him. David runs, becomes captain of a band of men in debt and in distress, sleeps in caves, negotiates with priests, and eventually takes refuge among the Philistines themselves, serving the king of Gath.
This stretch holds the strangest scenes in the whole portrait: twice he has Saul within reach and does not kill him; once he feigns madness to escape; another time he raids while posing as the ally of an enemy of Israel. The text reports all of it without comment, which is typical of Hebrew narrative and frustrating for anyone who wants a moral at the end of the paragraph.
1And David said in his heart: “At some time, I will one day fall into the hands of Saul. Is it not better if I flee, and be saved in the land of the Philistines, so that Saul may despair and cease to seek me in all the parts of Israel? Therefore, I will flee away from his hands.”
2And David rose up and went away, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Achish, the son of Maoch, the king of Gath.
3And David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men: each man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam, the Jezreelite, and Abigail, the wife of Nabal of Carmel.
David decides to cross the border and live under the protection of a Philistine king, with six hundred men and his two wives. The decision is presented as a survival calculation, and the narrator neither approves nor condemns it.
King at Hebron, then in Jerusalem
When Saul dies, David is anointed king — but only over Judah, with Hebron as his seat. The north stays with a son of Saul, and there are years of civil war before the elders of Israel come looking for him. Only then does he rule the whole.
Choosing Jerusalem as the capital is a precise political move: the city belonged to none of the tribes, which made it neutral ground between north and south. He brings the ark there, and wants to build a temple in it — a project the text defers to his son.
Bathsheba and Uriah
Chapter 11 of 2 Samuel opens by noting the season when kings went out to war, and that David stayed home. What follows is told in short, almost administrative sentences: he sees, he asks who she is, he sends, he sleeps with her. The woman is identified twice by her ties — daughter of one man, wife of another.
When the pregnancy is announced, David tries to cover it. He calls Uriah back from the front so that he will sleep at home and the child will look like his; Uriah refuses to take any comfort while the army is camped in the open. With that manoeuvre failed, the king sends a letter to his commander — carried by Uriah himself — containing the order that would kill him.
The text softens nothing. When the prophet Nathan arrives, he does not come to argue theology: he tells a story about a rich man who takes a poor man’s only lamb, lets David condemn the character, and then turns the verdict on him. And the list of what God had already given David, recited there, makes the crime worse rather than smaller.
2While these things were taking place, David happened to arise from his bed after midday, and he walked upon the terrace of the king’s house. And he saw, across from his terrace, a woman washing herself. And the woman was very beautiful.
3Therefore, the king sent and inquired who the woman might be. And it was reported to him that she was Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite.
4And so, David sent messengers, and he took her. And when she had entered to him, he slept with her. And presently, she was purified from her uncleanness.
Four verbs and no justification. Notice who has a voice in the scene: David sees, asks, sends and takes; Bathsheba does not say a single word in the entire chapter. That silence belongs to the text, not to our reading of it.
The divided house
The second half of 2 Samuel is the domestic consequence. One of David’s sons rapes his own half-sister; another son, Absalom, kills the first and flees; years later that same Absalom mounts a coup, and the king has to leave Jerusalem on foot, barefoot and weeping.
The coup ends with Absalom dead against his father’s explicit order. David’s reaction is one of the hardest scenes in the Bible: a victorious king climbing to the room above the gate and repeating his son’s name until the army commander orders him to stop, because the troops were coming back ashamed of a victory.
David dies old, in the palace, with the succession being settled by backroom manoeuvring while he is still breathing. It is not a glorious ending, and the text does not try to make it one.
13Then a messenger went to David, saying, “With their whole heart, all of Israel is following Absalom.”
14And David said to his servants, who were with him in Jerusalem: “Rise up, let us flee! For otherwise there will be no escape for us from the face of Absalom. Hurry to depart, lest perhaps, upon arriving, he may seize us, and force ruin upon us, and strike the city with the edge of the sword.”
The warning arrives and the decision is immediate: run. Read the whole chapter afterwards — the departure from Jerusalem is narrated almost in slow motion, person by person, who stays and who goes.
33And so the king, being greatly saddened, ascended to the upper room of the gate, and he wept. And as he went, he was speaking in this manner: “My son Absalom! Absalom my son! Who can grant to me that I may die on your behalf? Absalom, my son! My son, Absalom!”
David grieving for a son who had just tried to take his throne and his life. The repetition of the name is what carries the scene in any translation — and it is why this verse has been read at funerals for centuries.
What the text does not say
Biblical figures gather layers of tradition that Scripture does not support. Telling the two apart does not diminish the story — it gives back what is actually written.
What is commonly said
David was a slight little boy when he faced Goliath, and the scene is a child against a giant.
What Scripture says
The previous chapter already presents him as strong, experienced in war and articulate. Standing before Saul, he says he had fought off a lion and a bear defending the flock — adult shepherd’s work, not a child’s. The text calls him the youngest of Jesse’s sons and never gives his age. The contrast the narrative builds is one of equipment, not of size: heavy armour against a sling.
What is commonly said
David wrote the Psalms.
What Scripture says
The Psalter is a collection assembled over centuries. The headings printed above the psalms, in editions that carry them, link some to David and name other authors — Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses — and a large number of psalms carry no name at all. Calling the collection "the psalms of David" describes its central figure, not the authorship of each piece.
What is commonly said
The sling was a shepherd boy’s toy, and using it was an act of brave naivety.
What Scripture says
The sling was infantry weaponry in the ancient Near East. The book of Judges describes seven hundred Benjaminites able to hit a target the width of a hair with one, and treats this as elite military specialisation. David refuses Saul’s armour saying he could not move in it — that is, he swaps the weapon he cannot use for the one he can.
What is commonly said
After killing Goliath, David became king.
What Scripture says
In between lie years of pursuit, exile and civil war. Once anointed, he rules only Judah, from Hebron, for seven and a half years, and only then do the elders of Israel come looking for him. The reign over the whole, with Jerusalem as capital, lasts another thirty-three.
Where this person appears
11And Samuel said to Jesse, “Could the sons now be completed?” But he responded, “There still remains a little one, and he pastures the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse: “Send and bring him. For we shall not recline to eat, until he arrives here.”
12Therefore, he sent and brought him. Now he was ruddy, and beautiful to behold, and with a stately face. And the Lord said, “Rise up, anoint him! For it is he.”
13Therefore, Samuel took the horn of oil, and he anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord was guiding David from that day and thereafter. And Samuel rose up, and he went away to Ramah.
The anointing, with the detail that usually escapes: David is anointed in front of his brothers and then goes back to work. Nothing changes immediately, and the rest of the book unfolds in that gap between the promise and its arrival.
45But David said to the Philistine: “You approach me with sword, and spear, and shield. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, which you have reproached.
46Today, the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down. And I will take your head from you. And today, I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air, and to the beasts of the earth, so that all the earth may know that God is with Israel.
47And this entire assembly will know that the Lord does not save by sword, nor by spear. For this is his war, and he will deliver you into our hands.”
David’s answer to the Philistine, and the argument is about weaponry: he sets sword, spear and shield against something else. It is the axis of the whole chapter, and the reason the refusal of the armour a few verses earlier is not decorative.
3Also, the elders of Israel went to the king at Hebron, and king David struck a pact with them at Hebron in the sight of the Lord. And they anointed David as king over Israel.
4David was a son of thirty years, when he had begun to reign, and he reigned for forty years.
5In Hebron, he reigned over Judah for seven years and six months. Then in Jerusalem, he reigned for thirty-three years over all of Israel and Judah.
The chronological summary of the reign, useful for placing everything else: forty years in total, seven and a half of them over Judah alone, from Hebron. This is the verse that refutes the idea of an immediate coronation.
7But Nathan said to David: “You are that man. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘I anointed you as king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul.
8And I gave the house of your lord to you, and the wives of your lord into your bosom. And I gave the house of Israel and of Judah to you. And as if these things were small, I shall add much greater things to you.
9Therefore, why have you despised the word of the Lord, so that you did evil in my sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword. And you have taken his wife as a wife for yourself. And you have put him to death with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
Nathan’s accusation, after the parable. Notice that the rebuke comes in two parts: first the list of what was given, then the question of why it was not enough — the classic structure of a charge of ingratitude.
3Be merciful to me, O God, according to your great mercy. And, according to the plentitude of your compassion, wipe out my iniquity.
4Wash me once again from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
5For I know my iniquity, and my sin is ever before me.
The psalm tradition ties to this episode, read for centuries as a prayer of repentance. Note the numbering: this is Psalm 51 in Hebrew reckoning, and this edition follows the Latin count, where the heading occupies the opening verses.