Bible Commentaries

David Anointed

1 Samuel 16:12

SAMUEL, the venerable and almost outworn prophet, would have made a mistake upon this occasion. When he looked upon Eliab, he said, "Surely the Lord's anointed is before him." It is clear, therefore, that even inspired and honoured prophets were not, in themselves, infallible. It would further appear that their inspiration was occasionally suspended. Now and again natural judgment interposed its opinion. Now and again the natural sense spoke first, without allowing the spiritual sense to lead the way. So when Samuel saw Eliab, he was struck by the natural nobleness and majesty of the young man's appearance, and said, "Surely this is the king of the Lord's choice." This notion of Samuel's is most instructive. He saw the king in Eliab's form, and he inferred that the kingliness of his stature came from the kingliness of his soul. It ought to be, surely, that outward greatness should be the expression of inward greatness; otherwise how horrible a contradiction man may become! Evidently so. A man towering in stature, yet pining away in soul! A fine, noble, manly bearing, inspired, if inspired at all, by a spirit which has cut itself off from the divine and eternal! The man thus becomes a Jiving lie. He becomes, too, the occasion of many mistakes on the part of others. Young men, fascinated by his outward appearance, infer that it must be safe to follow the lead of such a noble. Unsuspecting men, looking upon his openness and candour of countenance, may say, "Surely this man was made to be trusted;" others may be caught by the same reasoning, and so a man of certain form and aspect may be unconsciously misleading and seriously injuring his fellows.

Appearances ought to mean something. If a man has a noble physical appearance, that appearance ought to carry with it some moral significance. If it does not, the man himself should retire into his own heart, and ask himself a plain question or two. Did God fashion palaces for dwarfs? The man should inquire whether God intended that his outward nobleness of form and aspect should be inconsistent with his inner and better life? Ought not the natural to be the expression of the spiritual? Ought a man to have a noble head, and nothing in it—great physical power, and no power of soul—an open, beautiful countenance, yet the heart of a hypocrite or the soul of a villain? As with personal appearance, so with social appearance. Our outward figure in society ought to mean something good; something according to the measure of its greatness, and the intensity of its splendour. Shall a man live in a great house, and be surrounded by all the signs of luxury and advanced civilisation, and yet that appearance fail to denote that the inhabitant of that house and the owner of that property is a man of the noblest charity, and that what is round about him is but a poor figure and dim emblem of the reality of his spirit, and the inexhaustibleness of his love? A man ought not to feel himself at liberty to be inconsistent, to exhibit a daily discrepancy between his appearance and his reality, whether it be his personal appearance or his social appearance. If he has been gifted, either in one Way or another, with great and notable outward blessings, those gifts ought to lead him to the consideration of questions of intellectual and moral culture; so that the outward, however great and impressive, may be but a feeble indication of inward wealth, the richness of his knowledge, the depth and truth, the purity and gentleness, of his soul!

On the other hand, there is a higher law. There is a law which takes us clear out of the realm of appearances. All men have not Eliab's kingliness of image, and majesty of bearing. There are dwarfs, cripples, deformed men, men whose figure is against them, whose outward appearance may lead people to form the most erroneous conclusions regarding the quality and temper of their souls. So we come for our relief and teaching to this higher law which says, "Look not on his appearance. The Lord seeth not as man seeth; man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7.

Men are always doing this: hence they become the victims of appearances.—A man has only to be good-looking in order to win the confidence of many people; they think that so fair an exterior must represent an interior worthy of itself.—In the estimation of God height is nothing, formal beauty is nothing; the man is within and not without, and not until his spiritual qualities have been tested, can it be known what the man really is.—"The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."—Here is an irony which ought to be intolerable to us, namely, that there should be an infinite discrepancy between the outward appearance and the heart: one would suppose that what a man was in his heart he would be also in his countenance. The poet has told us of a villain with a smiling cheek, "a goodly apple rotten at the core."—When the work of Christ is done in the soul, the result will report itself in the face and manner and voice, in every uplifting of the hand, and in every expression of the eye.—There may not indeed be formal beauty, but there will be an expression which testifies as to the indwelling and the inworking of God.—Many men hold their places in society today, simply because they are of fair countenance or of lofty stature.—Time is against all such men; events are never finally in their favour; there comes a period when merely formal beauty is dismantled, and moral ghastliness is revealed in all its reality and sadness; there comes also a time when the despised and rejected, men without form and comeliness, show that they have beauty of heart, dignity of mind, and that they belong to the very aristocracy of heaven.