How are you supposed to understand John and Jesus appearing on the scene and proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom of God? Over the past few days, images of both Adam and David seem especially helpful to me. Adam was called to exercise dominion, to rule and subdue (Gen 1:28), but the setting is so far from Rome and thrones and military might. Adam reflects God’s rule over creation as he works and keeps the garden. Adam’s priestly “working and keeping”—this is how he rules. It’s beautiful, for a few verses anyway. David’s situation, as he lives and flourishes in the wilderness, provides a similar portrait of kingship. It’s similar in that it is not marked by thrones and political power, but it is marked by relational harmony and hesed.

In what follows, I unpack a couple thoughts about how David’s life in the wilderness provides a portrait of kingship that is Adam-like in that the portrait is marked by relational harmony with an absence of power or royalty.

David’s vision

The conceptual overlap between David and Adam is apparent in the relationship between Jonathan and David. Jonathan and David’s deep love and friendship is rooted in a vision of God as living and active in the world. When David fights Goliath, David stands in contrast to Saul because David sees Goliath’s mockery as a joke. Why? Because Goliath mocks the army of the living God (1 Sam 17:26). As Goliath taunts David, David points to a power beyond his own strength: “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand … ” (1 Sam 17:45–46).

Jonathan’s vision

In 1 Samuel 14, Jonathan had a David and Goliath moment. Jonathan is confident that nothing can stop Yahweh from saving “by many or by few” (1 Sam 14:6). Saul on the other hand, with 600 men and all Israel, is scared. Jonathan, like David, has a vision of God that says human frailty is no obstacle; it’s a conduit for God’s Spirit. (As an aside, I find it remarkable how frequently the Spirit of God/Yahweh is mentioned in the stories of David and Jonathan.) Jonathan scoffs at the military might of the Philistines. Jonathan and his armor bearer, accompanied by Yahweh, are more than enough to take on the “uncircumcised garrison” (1 Sam 14:6) of the Philistines, just as David and his five smooth stones are more than enough to take down the giant “uncircumcised Philistine” (1 Sam 17:26). There are so many parallels between David in 1 Samuel 17 and Jonathan in 1 Samuel 14.

David and Jonathan embody what Hannah sings about—“Not by might shall a man prevail!” (1 Sam 2:9). It is no wonder Jonathan and David’s bond was so strong (1 Sam 18:1). Few people see the world as they did.

Kingship and relational harmony

The friendship of Jonathan and David, especially in 1 Samuel 20, demonstrates what it looks like to live in relational harmony in a broken world. Jonathan says to David, “Come, let’s go out into the field (1 Sam 20:11),” and instead of killing David like Cain killed his brother in the field (Gen 4:8), David and Jonathan work together to preserve life and and advance the kingdom of God. They work in covenant and hesed (1 Sam 20:8). As David lives in the wilderness on the run, in this lowly state, he repeatedly demonstrates beatitude-like character that Jesus points to and says, “That is what flourishing looks like.”

Conclusion

What does it look like to see God’s kingdom draw near in the midst of a broken world? I think the authors of the Gospels would say Jesus’s way in the world is the answer, but if you look closely, you’ll find parallels in the Old Testament. Jesus’s way in the world, his way of bringing the kingdom, looks a lot like David in the era before David actually takes the throne. In the wilderness, though he runs for his life, David is still God’s anointed, one to whom the bitter and broken come for refuge (1 Sam 22:1–2). This portrait of David is similar to the portrait of Jesus at the end of Mark 1: “… Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter” (Mark 1:45).

Postscriptum

For more on parallels between Jesus and David along the lines discussed here, see the two chapters on the topic in Patrick Schreiner’s Matthew, Disciple and Scribe: The First Gospel and Its Portrait of Jesus (Baker Academic, 2019) and Matthias Konradt’s “David’s Son and Lord: A Sketch of the Davidic-Messianic Aspects of Matthean Christology” in Christology, Torah, and Ethics in the Gospel of Matthew (Baylor University Press, 2022).

Konradt writes,

The militaristic traits that constitute an important element in the early Jewish expectation of the Davidic messiah play no role at all in the Matthean presentation of Jesus as the Son of David. The Matthean presentation involves a demilitarization of the figure of the Davidic mesiah and at the same time forms in this respect a contrast to David, who owed his rise to become king over Judah and Israel to his military successes. (“David’s Son and Lord,” p. 56)

There are certainly contrasts between Jesus’s kingdom and David’s kingdom, but my point here is that the era of David’s wilderness wanderings in 1 Samuel provides several already-demilitarized snapshots of kingship. David’s wilderness days are particularly helpful for imagining the kingdom of God in ways that overlap with the Gospel portraits of Jesus. Schreiner does a particularly good job explaining the many ways in which biblical portraits of David shape Matthew’s presentation of Jesus. Danny Zacharias’s book is helpful too: Matthew’s Presentation of the Son of David (T&T Clark, 2016).