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 by “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 lays stress on the royal attendant in question being a young man. Probably, the one spoken of in this place 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 thus 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 vales round 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, and there the young pupil of the seer no doubt quickly acquired among his companions that reputation and skill which induced the “young man” of the court of Saul to tell his afflicted master of the shepherd son of Jesse, famous for his “cunning in playing.”
And a mighty valiant man, and a man of war. — The description of the Bethlehemite David at a mighty valiant man can well be explained from 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 respecting 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 we know in those days frequented the thickets of the Jordan, and were a terror to the Israelitish shepherds, David had most likely been engaged in repelling one or more of the Philistine marauding expeditions so common in those wild 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.)