16:6,7
Eliab was Jesse’s oldest son. On seeing him Samuel thought that Eliab was the one. Now Samuel was a man of God, a man who heard God speak and listened to him, yet here we see that his initial thoughts were wrong, and were guided by outward appearances. We need to be aware that our thoughts are subject to not being spirit led. However, Samuel did not make a mistake, for God spoke to him, corrected him, and Samuel accepted the correction. We need to base our lives on listening to God. Hopefully as we spend more time with the Lord our thinking will become ever more Christlike, but we delude ourselves if we think we will ever reach perfection this side of eternity. The disciples had about as much spiritual insight as the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, but what was the difference between them and the Pharisees and Sadducees? They learnt from Jesus, the religious leaders did not.
Eliab appeared to be impressive, but God looks at the heart of a man or woman.
16:8-11
The rest of Jesse’s sons, bar one, appeared before Samuel. Samuel was now listening to the Lord, rather than judging by outward appearances. So Samuel knew that none of these sons were the one the Lord wanted. After the seventh son had passed, and the Lord’s anointed was not among them, Samuel reacted differently to the way Saul would have reacted. Saul would then have used his own judgement., but Samuel thought there must be another son somewhere. So he inquires of Jesse. There was one son, the youngest, who was out tending the sheep. It isn’t clear why Jesse didn’t consider bringing David along in the first place.
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