(9) This verse corresponds word for word with Samuel, only omitting "God" after "Lord." Literally, and David walked on, a walking and growing great--a common Hebrew metaphor of gradual and progressive increase or decrease. (Comp. Genesis 8:5, and the use of the term andante, "walking," in music.)

Lord of hosts was with him.--The Lord of Hosts is doubtless a contracted form of the fuller expression, Lord God of Hosts, as it appears in Samuel. The Lord (or God) of Hosts is a title derived from God's supremacy over the host of heaven, i.e., the stars, worshipped as deities by the races environing Israel, insomuch that the very word for God in the old Babylonian is represented by a star (*); and in the later Assyrian character star was represented by the symbol for God thrice repeated. Assur, the supreme deity of the Assyrian Pantheon, is called in the inscriptions "king of the legions of heaven and earth," or "of the great gods." Similar titles were given to the Babylonian Nebo and Merodach. The Hebrew phrase is therefore, in one sense, equivalent to a concise assertion of the statement, "Jehovah your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords" (Deuteronomy 10:17 : comp. also Psalm 95:3; Psalm 97:7). That the hosts in question are the stars appears from Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 40:26; Judges 5:20.

Very anciently the stars were conceived of as the army of heaven, marshalled in orderly array. (Comp. Isaiah 40:26; Isaiah 24:21; Isaiah 14:12-13.) The Lord of the hosts of heaven is a fortiori Lord of all earthly hosts; hence the fitness of the phrase in passages like the present. Lastly, we may observe that it is a grand idea of revealed religion that He who guides the stars in their courses guides also the destinies of individual men, elevating one and abasing another, according to the eternal principles of goodness and truth (Isaiah 57:15).

11:1-9 David was brought to possess the throne of Israel after he had reigned seven years in Hebron, over Judah only. God's counsels will be fulfilled at last, whatever difficulties lie in the way. The way to be truly great, is to be really useful, to devote all our talents to the Lord.And inquired not of the Lord,.... For though he did inquire in some sense in an external, careless, and hypocritical manner, yet not done seriously, sincerely, and heartily, nor with constancy; it was accounted as if he inquired not at all, 1 Samuel 28:6 the Targum adds another reason of his death, because he killed the priests of Nob; but that is not in the text:

therefore he slew him; or suffered him to be slain:

and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse; translated the kingdom of Israel out of Saul's family, upon his death, into Jesse's, even unto David; for the sake of which observation this short account is given of the last end of Saul.