Caleb and Joshua conquer the land of promise and eventually the nation is ruled by a succession of Judges. But disobedience to the Lord’s commands, ever present since the days of Adam and Eve, is the cause of invasions of surrounding peoples, in particular the Philistines. Eventually God raises up a righteous prophet by the name of Samuel, who is the last of the Judges.
The people are not satisfied with how things are, and demand a king to rule over them, to be like other nations round and about. Samuel warns them that this is further disobedience, but God calls Samuel to anoint Saul of the Tribe of Benjamin to occupy that high position. This turns out to be a disaster due to Saul’s disobedience, and Samuel is then sent to anoint David from Bethlehem, of the Tribe of Judah.
Samuel told Saul, “Your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be commander over His people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.” (1 Samuel 13:14)
No matter that David’s failings are written large over the pages of Scripture, he was “a man after God’s own heart”, and knew God with a degree of intimacy seldom found amongst God’s people. His Psalms give record of that, and of his steadfast faith.
“For thus says the LORD: ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel’ . . . . “Thus says the LORD: ‘If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that there will not be day and night in their season, then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne.” (Jeremiah 33:17, 20-21)
The Promise remains within the Tribe of Judah, but is now narrowed down to the House of David, and he was yet another true man of FAITH
