Verse of the Day — Sunday, October 25, 2026

Israel's first king, Saul, had gone badly wrong. He had disobeyed God more than once, and God had rejected him as king. The prophet Samuel was grieving over it, so God told him to stop mourning, fill his horn with oil, and go to Bethlehem, to a man named Jesse, because God had chosen one of Jesse's sons to be the next king.

Samuel went, and Jesse's sons came in one at a time. The first was Eliab, the oldest, and Samuel took one look at him and thought, "Surely this is the one." That instinct makes sense once you remember Saul. When Saul was chosen years before, the people were struck by how he looked: he stood head and shoulders above everyone else. Eliab seems to have had that same look of a king.

That is where this verse comes in. God tells Samuel to stop paying attention to Eliab's looks and his height, because Eliab is not the one. Then God explains why: people look at the outside, and God looks at the heart. In the original Hebrew, the phrase for how people look is literally that they look "at the eyes," meaning at whatever is right in front of their eyes. The "heart" in Hebrew is more than feelings. It means the whole inner person: what someone thinks, what they want, and what they are committed to.

So Jesse brings out six more sons, and God passes over every one. Finally Samuel asks if there are any others, and Jesse mentions the youngest, who is out watching the sheep and was apparently not even worth calling in. That boy is David. The story notes that he was good looking too, so his looks were never the problem. They simply were not what God was weighing. Samuel anoints him on the spot.

The verse sits at the turning point between two kings. Saul was picked because he looked the part, and it went wrong. David is picked by a God who sees what is going on inside a person, even a shepherd boy his own father forgot to mention.