Samuel is still grieving when the chapter opens, mourning a king he anointed with hope, rejected for good reason and rejected all the same. God's question is not unkind, and it is firm: 1"How long will you grieve over Saul?" Grief has its place. It does not get to stop the story. 1"Fill your horn with oil, and go." The horn that anointed a king who failed is about to anoint one whose line will outlast every failure.
Samuel's fear is reasonable. Anointing a new king while the old one sits on the throne is treason. 2"If Saul hears it, he will kill me." God does not rebuke the fear or promise immunity from it. He gives a way through: take a heifer, say truthfully that you have come to sacrifice, and let the anointing happen quietly inside that legitimate cover. Every word Samuel speaks in Bethlehem is true. It is not the whole truth, which was never Samuel's to give away before God's timing.
When Jesse's sons come before him, Samuel does what anyone would. Eliab walks in, and his height and bearing convince Samuel instantly: 6"Surely the LORD's anointed is before him." Decades earlier Samuel had watched Israel's first king stand a head taller than everyone and declared that there was none like him. He should know better by now, and he does not. God corrects him at once: 7"Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him." The word used of Saul's rejection now falls on Eliab before he has done anything, a warning that outward impressiveness was never the criterion, however often it looks like one.
Then comes the sentence that reframes everything: 7"The LORD sees not as man sees." This is a claim about what kind of God he is, whose evaluation flows from his own purpose and not from anything visible on the surface. Jesse parades seven sons, and each is passed over with the same flat verdict: 8"Neither has the LORD chosen this one." Seven times. Whatever natural qualifications each carried, none of it mattered to the one criterion in play.
Then the question that exposes the family's assumptions: 11"Are all your sons here?" Jesse's answer is an afterthought. 11"There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep." He was not worth calling in for the ceremony, as far as his father was concerned. The son nobody thought to bring is sent for only because Samuel insists. David arrives, likely smelling of the pasture, and the text notes he was 12"ruddy" with beautiful eyes and a handsome face. God's choice reaches past that appearance without rejecting it, and it was never the reason. 12"Arise, anoint him, for this is he." Among seven older brothers rejected one by one, the shepherd boy is anointed, and 13"the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward."
God's story has run this way before: Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph out of a well and a prison. He has a habit of overlooking the candidates human eyes settle on first. Centuries later Isaiah describes another anointed one in similar terms: "he had no form or majesty that we should look at him" (Isaiah 53:2). Israel wanted a king who looked like a king. God gave them David, and finally Christ, a King whose glory could never be measured by what met the eye.
Ask where you have judged by height, in someone else or in yourself.
Prayer
Father, you see what we cannot, even in ourselves. Forgive us for judging by height and stature and whatever impresses us on the surface, the things you told us not to trust. Thank you that you did not overlook the shepherd boy in the field, and that you have never overlooked us, however hidden we feel. Search our hearts as only you can, and make them worth finding. In Jesus' name, amen.