It seems that there is a big bit of humility in the reading this week on the part of culture, of prophecy and on behalf of the reader too.
Firstly it would be a bit of a shocker to turn this story into a straight forward puppet show for children: a theological counting game about selection. Rather the story is a huge leveler for everyone and not just a new way to select your monarch or Member of Parliament. Samuel doesn't want to go as he still has favoured leanings towards Saul his first king, a culture that normally selects the oldest son as the inheritor discovered it is the 8th oldest that succeeds and the story tells a world that usually selects the beautiful people for fame and fortune to hold back that idea and not go by face value (if ever there was a truth...) because God goes instead for the heart (and then immediately affirms the choice by commenting on David's good looks!).
Perhaps this story, floated before all the real business of succession takes place later in the epic of David is really a prophetic story. Perhaps it sees what is ideal before the snash and politiking and humanness of the characters begin to mess things up. If it was as easy as all this then God would have an easy job but the deeper lesson is that even as things don't turn out because the characteristics of real people get in the way, (Samuel scared for is life, people taken in by beauty rather than truth, and David entering his Bathsheba moment) God's grace and vision still works through it all. It's a lot more complicated and vulnerable yet the prophecy of God: the ideas of God's dream, that is the best of love and grace, work their way through all the twists and turns.
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