It was over, and it was beginning. The long agonizing struggle between David and Saul was over. Saul was dead, and David's reign, the reign of David the king, was beginning. David had been only a shepherd boy when God chose him to be king, saying, "You shall be shepherd of my people." Now he was 30 years old, and the people acknowledged him as king. On that day, the people remembered God's word, so in the person of David, king and shepherd were forever joined. And David made a covenant with the people that it would always be so: the shepherd boy would be king, and the king would be shepherd to the people.

"King" and "shepherd," the words are not foreign to us. We know what they mean, yet in our day-to-day experience we have little or nothing to do with kings, or with shepherds either for …