And David said to Saul, Your servant has been a shepherd of his father's sheep — David's testimony begins with pastoral autobiography, the seemingly irrelevant fact of his shepherd's apprenticeship. The verb *hayah ro'eh*, was a shepherd, establishes David's previous identity, the background from which his present courage emerges. The pastoral world is not the world of warriors, and yet David will show that the skills and faith developed in that isolated sphere prove adequate to the greatest challenge. The shepherd image also invokes the prophetic tradition: Moses was a shepherd; David's shepherding prefigures his future role as shepherd of Israel.

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