A man after God's own heart?

and the evangelical obsession with the coined phrase

This post is for anyone who hears the phrase “a man after God’s own heart” and their eye twitches a little. It’s no secret the evangelicals love to prop David us as their model for leadership. He’s their main guy. Evangelical men love to identify with him, prop him up on a pedestal, and they love to use David to excuse away their own poor behavior. One of the ways they do this is by weaponizing the phrase “a man after God’s own heart” against critics of the moody monarch.

And a flat reading of the text does verify that yes, these words do appear in scripture. There’s one crowd that will say “the bible says it, that settles it,” and they will slam the book shut. But as for me and my friends, we’re open bible folks. We want to ask questions of the text, we want to wonder about the world of the bible, and we want to understand the meaning behind the text. Employing a dynamic reading of the text vs a flat one, helps us ask questions like “who’s talking to who?” and what’s the context” to help us understand various passages.

So, let’s look at the 2 places in scripture where this phrase pops up.

The phrase “a man after God’s own heart” in reference to David first appears in Acts 13:22. And there are a couple things about Paul’s preaching style that one needs to know. The first is that Paul loves to preach through story. Paul regularly retells the story of the people of Israel, the OT narrative in relationship to the arrival of Jesus as Messiah. This is part of a larger pattern. Paul preached about Jesus’ resurrection by telling the story of Israel. He told them what it means that Jesus is the Savior-Messiah-King.

The second thing we need to know about Paul is that he frequently uses a literary tool called a synecdoche while he’s preaching. When Paul uses a synecdoche, it means he’s referencing a part of something while referring to the whole. So, when Paul preached in Acts 13:17-40ish and told his audience how Jesus fits into the story of Israel by referencing David and Moses, he’s summarizing through bits and pieces, but he’s connecting different points of the story, like David’s 1st anointing through his coronation in psalm 2/ 2 Sam 7.

The point of Paul’s sermon isn’t “David is a man after God’s own heart” the point is “Jesus is the Son of God.”

So, while Paul is preaching a sermon about Jesus, Acts 13:22 Paul references the text of Samuel 13:14 quoting the LXX while walking his audience through the story that culminates in the arrival of the Messiah. As he does so, Paul equates “a man after God’s own heart” to someone who “does His will.” Again, this is a supportive point about how the Davidic monarchy connects to Jesus.

So, what is the quote?

In 1 Samuel 13:14, Samuel tells Saul “But now your kingdom will not continue. YHWH has sought out for himself a man who is loyal to him, and YHWH has appointed him to be leader over his people, for you have not obeyed what YHWH commanded you.”

In the text Samuel described David to Saul, but God wasn’t renaming David like he did with Paul in Acts 9, or even giving him a nickname like Peter. Saul has no idea who David is at this point in the story. They’ve never met. The text depicts Samuel communicating to Saul the reason he failed as Israel’s first king (his disobedience), and it reveals what God intends to do about Saul’s failure— appoint a shepherd musician instead.

David is consistently at his best when he’s a shepherd and a musician.

If you remember the story from 1st Sam, ultimately Saul’s idolatry and jealousy corrupted him beyond recognition, so much so that Samuel refused to see Saul ever again (1 Sam 15:35). Later in the text, Samuel tells Saul that “his rebelliousness is as serious as divination, and his disobedience is as idolatry.” (Sam 15:23).

So based on the text, to be a person who is after God’s heart is likely someone who is loyal, obedient, and in pursuit of the heart of the LORD (alone). Again, Samuel doesn’t name David. Nor does YHWH remove Saul from power. YHWH rebuked Israel’s first king through the prophet Samuel. This is what is happening. Once again, the point the point the author is making isn’t as much about David, but the author is using literary contrast to show Saul’s catastrophic shortcoming as Israel’s first king.

David’s later kingship serves a greater (redemptive) purpose in the story, but David isn’t the hero of the story. God is the hero in God’s story about God, and centering David in the story rather than situating him accurately within the narrative takes away from the purpose of the message of the whole book (which is to teach the reader God's story about God & what God is like).

So what happens when we read “For David had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life—except in the case of Uriah the Hittite,” in 1 Kings 15? It doesn’t mean David was sinless “except for this one instance.” The passage in 1 Kings highlights David’s resistance to idolatry that contrast with both his predecessor Saul and his son Solomon. Make no mistake, it isn’t a sweeping declaration about his character or pure motives, but it does give credit where credit is due.

David lived in constant Torah violation, picking and choosing what benefitted him. He withheld justice from Tamar, withheld a trial from Mephibosheth after Ziba falsely accused him of treason which resulted in portions of his lands being taken from him. David was violent in battle and violent against women. David abused his power and was predominantly focused on himself. We see this is patterned behavior throughout 2nd Samuel. David is always worried about his reputation, who’s watching, and what his legacy looks like without much regard for the collateral damage of his actions.

Remember, the bible is full of messy stories with messy people because scripture points us to what God is like. God is the focal point. The goal isn’t to be a man after God’s own heart in name only. The goal is to become godly brothers & sisters, with God, by the power of the holy spirit.

So ultimately, what does this mean? Theologically, this helps us have better conversations about God. David doesn’t need to be on a pedestal to prop us Jesus. Jesus isn’t David 2.0. Jesus isn’t a new and better king that doesn’t make mistakes.

Like my friend Kate Boyd says, Jesus is the good king all on his own.

It matters that we read David rightly because there are a whole lot of men that use David as their example to hide secret sin, excuse inaction, and blame women for their own horrid behavior.

David isn’t the hero of the story.

He isn’t the ideal pastor.

He isn’t a model leader.

He isn’t the ultimate alpha male.

King David is unsafe, and if he were alive today, he wouldn’t be fit to pastor a church.

David was at his best when he was a shepherd and a musician. And there is a lot we can learn about his place in the story and the united monarchy, but God’s redemptive story is about God. And perhaps instead of leaning so heavily on the coined phrase about “a man after God’s own heart” as an evangelical male identity marker we can spend more time asking, “what is the heart of God like for all of us?”

love and hope <3

Liz