Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 16:18

"Then answered one of the young men, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, that is skilful in playing, and a mighty man of valor, and a man of war, and prudent in speech, and a comely person; and Jehovah is with him." — 1 Samuel 16:18 (ASV)

Then answered one of the servants. —The Dean of Canterbury calls attention to the fact that the word in the original here rendered “servants” is not the same as was translated as “servants” in 1 Samuel 16:15–17. In each of these passages the Hebrew word rendered “servant” no doubt signifies officers connected with the royal court. Here the different word hann’-ârim emphasizes that the royal attendant in question was a young man. Probably, the one spoken of here was a contemporary of David, very likely a youth trained with David in Samuel’s prophetic school at Naioth in Ramah, and consequently able to speak so in detail about the young shepherd pupil of the great seer.

Cunning in playing. —As a boy, it is certain that David possessed rare gifts of poetry and, no doubt, of music. It is probable that some of his early Psalms were originally composed while watching his father’s sheep among those hills and valleys around the village of Bethlehem, where “in later centuries shepherds were still watching over their flocks by night, when the angel host appeared to them to tell them of the birth of a child in Bethlehem.”

These gifts of poetry and music were further cultivated and developed in the prophets’ school of Samuel. There, the young pupil of the seer no doubt quickly acquired among his companions the reputation and skill that induced the “young man” of Saul’s court to tell his afflicted master about the shepherd son of Jesse, famous for his “cunning in playing.”

And a mighty valiant man, and a man of war. —The description of David the Bethlehemite as a mighty valiant man can be well explained by what is related in 1 Samuel 17:34–35 about the young shepherd’s prowess in the conflicts with the lions and the bears. A question has, however, been raised regarding the expression “a man of war,” as it would seem from the narrative of 1 Samuel 17 that the combat with the giant Philistine was David’s first great military exploit.

It has, however, been suggested that, in addition to the combat with those wild beasts—which, as we know, frequented the thickets of the Jordan in those days and were a terror to Israelite shepherds—David had most likely been engaged in repelling one or more of the Philistine marauding expeditions so common in those turbulent days. Bethlehem, we know, was a strong place or garrison of these hereditary foes of Israel (see 2 Samuel 23:14; 1 Chronicles 11:16).