DAVID (111, Chron. ; Sept. Accula ; New Test. Aagi5, Acit,615. The word is connected with 1'11, a friend, a lover, and means either one who loves, or one who is beloved. The latter is the meaning commonly preferred ; comp. AL The life of David naturally divides itself into four portions :—I. His early life. II. His life while a servant of Saul. III. His reign over Judah in Hebron. IV. His reign over all Israel.
I. David's early life.—The family of which David was a child, descended from Ruth, the Moabitess, to the record of whose history one of the books of the Canon is devoted. His father Jesse, who was the grandson of Boaz and Ruth, seems to have been a small proprietor in the neigh bourhood of Bethlehem, where David was born. IIis mother's name has not been preserved, and all we know of her character is derived from two brief allusions to her in the poetry of her son, from which we may gather that she was a godly woman, whose devotion to God's service her son com memorates as at once a token of God's favour to himself and a stimulus to him to consecrate himself to God's service (Ps. lnxxvi. r6 ; cxvi. 16). David was the youngest of seven sons, the others being Eliab, Abinadab, Shammah, Nethaneel, Raddai, and Ozem. The Syr. and Arab. versions give another between Ozem and David, whom they name Elihu ; and in i Chron. xxvii. 18, mention is made of Elihu of the brethren of David.' If this be not another reading for Eliab, out of which the Syr. and Arab. translators devised another mem ber of the family of Jesse, we must increase the number of David's brothers to seven, and suppose the name of Elihu omitted in 1 Chron. ii. 15 by accident. Mention is made also of two sisters, Zeruiah the mother of Abishai, Joab, and Asahel, and Abigail the wife of Jether. If these were daughters of Jesse they must have been among the elder members of his family, for their sons were about the same age as David ; but as Abigail the younger is called the daughter of Nahash (2 Sam. xvii. 25), it has been supposed that they were David's sisters only by the mother's side. Who this Nahash was is uncertain. Some suppose him to have been the husband of David's mother before her union with Jesse ; others suggest that he is the King of the Ammonites mentioned ch. x. 2, and xvii. 27, whose concubine David's mother may have been before her marriage with Jesse, which would tend to account for the friendly relations subsisting between David and that prince, though the enemy of Saul and Israel (lace. citt. I Sam. xi. 1, ff.) ; whilst others suppose that Nahash is the name of a female who was probably the second wife of Jesse. This last, though adopted by Movers and Thenius, seems the least probable of all. The second hypothesis derives an air of plausibility from the circumstance mentioned ; but it seems utterly improbable that a woman, who had been the concubine of a heathen prince of the hated and proscribed race of Ammon, should ever become the wife of a respectable Israelite like Jesse. The first, though purely conjectural, seems
the only hypothesis left to us ; unless we adopt the dubious suggestion of Le Clerc that Nahash is another name of Jesse.
The youngest child is usually either the favour ite or the drudge of the family ; David seems to have been both. His name, signifying beloved, at least indicates the feeling with which his parents regarded him ; nor can we doubt that the ruddy, bright-eyed, golden-haired boy, small of form, but agile and vigorous, of loving and genial tempera ment, and with the hues of genius shedding their fitful lustre over his soul, was the darling of his mother. By his elder brothers, however, he seems to have been held in small esteem ; and to him was allotted the humble, almost menial, office of tend ing the flocks in the fields. In those green pas tures,' however, to which he led his flocks, and amid the solitude to which his occupation often consigned him, and the dangers to which it often exposed him, he was doubtless receiving a training which fitted him for the high position he was destined to occupy both as the king and as the sweet singer' of Israel. Exposure to the open air and the exer tion he required to put forth, knitted his joints •and invigorated his muscles ; his encounters with the lion and the bear which came prowling around his folds, taught him caution, promptitude, and courage ; and not less did the solitariness of his posi tion induce him to reflective meditation, while the influences of nature by night and by day came con stantly down upon him, at once soothing and quick. ening, elevating and purifying his spirit. Whether at this early period he had given any evidence of his poetic gifts, as he had given evidence of his strength, agility, and courage (i Sam. xvii. 34-36 ; comp. Ps. xviii. 33, 34), is uncertain. Those of his psalms which have the best claim to be considered as be longing to the early part of his life, are the 1st, the 8th, the 19th, the 23d, and the 139th ; in all of Which the strain and tenor of thought, and the character of the allusions, are such as might natu rally come from the mind of a youth constituted and circumstanced as David was. There can be no doubt, however, that at this period he cultivated music, and became a proficient, ' cunning in play ing,' especially on the harp (r Sam. xvi. 18-23). Whether there be any truth in the tradition em bodied in the psalm added by the LXX. to the Psalter, that his `hands made an organ' (8pyeses, which word corresponds both to the 11= and the MV of the Hebrews), and his `fingers fitted a psaltery,' cannot be determined.