Samuel was an experienced man. He had judged Israel for years and anointed its first king. So when God sent him to Bethlehem to anoint another, and Jesse’s eldest son Eliab walked in, Samuel took one look and thought, surely this is the one. Tall, strong, the right bearing. He had the look of a king.
God’s answer is one of the best-known lines in the Old Testament: “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7, NIV).
Seven sons passed in front of Samuel, and none was chosen. The one God wanted was not even in the room. He was the youngest, out in the field with the sheep, and his own father had not thought to call him.
The Eliab house
Anyone who has gone house hunting knows the Eliab house. It is the one with the fresh paint, the new tiles, the pretty grille on the verandah, the lemon-scented floor. The agent has put a bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter. The sun comes through the living-room window at exactly the right angle when you visit. You walk in and something in you says, yes, this is it.
There is nothing wrong with a well-presented house. Sellers are wise to present their homes well. But fresh paint can cover a crack. New tiles can sit on a slab that is holding water. A handsome kitchen can sit on wiring from forty years ago. The Eliab house might be exactly what it looks like. It might also be a very tall, very handsome problem.
Meanwhile, round the corner, there may be a plain house nobody wants to view twice. Tired paint. A dated bathroom. An overgrown yard. Buyers walk past it. And yet its roof is sound, its foundation is dry, its title is clean, its drainage works, and it sits on a street where neighbours have lived for thirty years. It is the youngest son, still out in the field.
What the heart of a house is
A house does not have a heart in the way a person does, but it does have an inside that matters more than its outside. Buyers who learn to look past the presentation tend to ask different questions:
- Is the structure sound? What does an independent inspection say about the roof, the foundation, the walls and the steel?
- Where does the water go when it rains hard?
- What is the state of the electrics and plumbing behind the walls?
- Are the title and boundaries in order?
- What is the street like at night, in the rainy season, on a weekday morning?
None of those can be seen from the gate. All of them matter more than the colour of the kitchen cupboards, which you can change in a weekend.
Why we fall for the tall son
Samuel’s mistake is an understandable one. Israel’s first king, Saul, had also been chosen partly for his looks; the Bible notes that he stood head and shoulders above everyone else (1 Samuel 9:2). Samuel was looking for more of the same. We do that too. We are drawn to houses that look like the ones we admire, or that will impress the relatives, or that match the picture in our heads of what “success” is supposed to look like.
There is also the matter of excitement. House hunting is tiring and a good first impression is a relief. When a house looks right, we want it to be right, and we start explaining away the damp patch and the sticking window. It takes discipline to walk round a beautiful house as sceptically as a plain one.
Sending for David
When Samuel finally asked whether there were any more sons, Jesse admitted there was one left, the youngest, tending sheep. Samuel said they would not sit down to eat until he came. That is a helpful picture for a buyer. Before you commit, ask whether there are any houses you dismissed too quickly. Go back to the plain one. Take someone who knows buildings. Imagine it painted and cleared and lived in.
You may still choose the attractive house, and that may be the right choice. Sometimes the tall son is also the sound one. The point is not to prefer ugliness. It is to choose based on what is really there, not only on what is presented.
The same lesson, turned round
There is a gentler application too. Many of us live in the plain house. It has never been photographed for anything. The paint is not new. Visitors do not gasp. It is easy to feel a little ashamed of it, especially beside a sibling’s or a friend’s.
But God does not look at the things people look at. He sees a roof that has kept a family dry for twenty years, a table where children grew up, a door that has been opened to people in need. He was not impressed by Eliab’s height, and He is not impressed by granite counters. He is looking, as always, at what is inside.
David, the one nobody had called in from the field, became the king. It is worth remembering the next time you drive past the plain house on the corner, or pull up at your own.
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