🎙 David's Hidden Tale: A Shocking Tale of the Shepherd King

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Welcome to our ancient future story, navigating Scripture through the Eyes of Family, where I share with you biblical stories like a family member would share a story around a dinner table. As children of God, we are a part of God's family and His family story has a lot of history. Each week we will take one story and talk about it the cultural, historical, geographical and sociological impacts. We will be looking at these stories from the perspective of our ancestors, through the lens of ancient times, in hopes of learning more about our family. This is our ancient future story. Welcome back to our ancient future story. I'm Vic and I am so excited to tell you a new story today. As we begin our new series on Psalms 23, I thought it was important for us to first talk about David and learn. So what if that David was a shepherd? I don't know about you, but after studying Boaz and Ruth this intently, it occurred to me that David came from a really wealthy family. Boaz owned so much land and had successful harvest year after year. So how did David become a shepherd the lowest social status in ancient Israel society? It seems like elite, because traditionally shepherding was passed down through generations. So let's find out together how David became a shepherd. Grab a cup of coffee or something to drink and let's dive into so what? Shepherding was a skill that was learned as a child. So boys and girls would start young and take the flock of sheep out to find food and water. It would be up to the child or preteen to protect their flock from wild animals. These young shepherds were called under-shepherds and they worked for the master shepherd, likely their father, who owned the entire flock. Though this is traditionally how the career of shepherding is passed down, it was not the case with David. According to the midrash, that ancient Jewish commentary, and other rabbi teachings, david was hated growing up because it was believed that his mother, nitzvot, had an affair. However, what really happened? Nitzvot had tricked Jesse into sleeping with her, but because of this assumption that David's mom had been unfaithful, david was outcasted from his own family. They made him a shepherd in hopes that he would be killed by wild animals. Okay, pause, this is news to me. David, the king David, was forced into shepherding out of spite. I can honestly say no one has taught me that side of David's story in Sunday school before, but it does make sense, right? Their family didn't drop that far in the social status Just David. Now, david could have been bitter about this, but in all his writings we only see how much he loved his sheep. David learned skills like using a slingshot, fighting off wild animals, protecting sheep, finding lost sheep etc. And all these skills served him well, especially on the battlefield bringing food for his brothers, facing his cousin Goliath and starting his journey to become king. So why do we care that David was a shepherd? The career of shepherding is not glamorous. It's dusty and dirty and no respecting person wants to do it. But David took pride in being a shepherd and all the skills he learned during these days served him as king. But, as we will see in our Psalm 23 series, david understood shepherding so intimately that he was able to see Yahweh as his shepherd. I hope this helps illuminate the childhood of David a bit for you. Hold this backstory in your mind as we enter in our next series on Psalm 23 and see how David used shepherding to express God's love for us. See you then. Thank you for listening to today's episode of our Ancient Future Story. I hope that you really enjoyed it. This episode was written and produced by Vic Harmon. Music is embarking on an adventure by Evan MacDonald. Please support the show by subscribing and rating us, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook at our Ancient Future Story. See you next time. Bye.