Psalm 151: The Youngest Son

At a Glance

Who wrote it: Unknown. It speaks in the voice of David. Its Greek heading says it is outside the number, an extra psalm after the hundred and fifty.

When: Before the early first century AD, the date of a longer Hebrew version found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The poem itself may be much older.

Where it fits: David as a boy, around 1000 BC: chosen and anointed while his older brothers were passed over, and his fight with Goliath (1 Samuel 16–17).

Which Bibles keep it: The Greek and Slavonic Orthodox Bibles, the Ethiopian and the Syriac. Catholic and Protestant Bibles do not. It is printed in some modern study Bibles among the Apocrypha.

Where you hear it in your Bible: It retells 1 Samuel 16:1–13 and 17:41–51 in seven verses. The New Testament never quotes it.

How close it stays to me: Close in God choosing the smallest and youngest. Far in its pride over a severed head.

If you only read three chapters: It is seven verses. Read them, then 1 Samuel 16.

Words to Know

Psalm — a song, especially one of the hundred and fifty songs in your book of Psalms.

Anoint — to pour oil on someone’s head to set them apart for a task, especially to make a king. Messiah means anointed one.

Lute — a stringed instrument plucked with the fingers. Older Bibles say harp or psaltery.

The Philistine — Goliath, the giant warrior of the Philistines, Israel’s enemies on the coast.

The Book in Brief

David speaks. He was small among his brothers and the youngest in his father’s house, and looked after his father’s sheep. With his hands he made a musical instrument, and with his fingers he tuned a lute. No one could tell God about him, but God himself heard.

God sent his messenger, took him from the sheep, and anointed him. His brothers were handsome and tall, but God did not choose them.

He went out to meet the Philistine, who cursed him by his idols. David drew the giant’s own sword, cut off his head, and took away the shame from the children of Israel.

I was small among my brothers, and youngest in my father’s house. I tended my father’s sheep (Psalm 151:1).

That is David speaking, looking back on how he was chosen. Your book of Psalms ends at a hundred and fifty, with everything that has breath praising the LORD. The Greek Bible has one more. Its heading says it is outside the number, a psalm David wrote himself, after he fought Goliath.

The brothers who were tall

The story is in your Bible. God sends the prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem to anoint one of his sons as the next king. Jesse brings out his sons one by one, the oldest first, tall and fine. Samuel looks at the eldest and is sure. God tells him: Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature … For man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

Seven sons pass, and none is chosen. Samuel asks if there are any more. There remains yet the youngest. Behold, he is keeping the sheep (1 Samuel 16:11). Nobody had thought to bring him in.

Psalm 151 tells it in one line. My brothers were handsome and tall; but the Lord did not take pleasure in them (Psalm 151:5).

And in another line it says the thing your 1 Samuel only shows. Who shall tell my Lord? The Lord himself, he himself hears (Psalm 151:3). No one went to God to put in a word for the shepherd boy. No one thought of him. God heard him anyway.

The least among you

I was born in Bethlehem, in David’s town, and I was not the son of anyone important. I spent my life saying what this little psalm says.

When my friends argued about which of them was the greatest, I stood a child in front of them and said, whoever is least among you all, this one will be great (Luke 9:48). I said the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to look for the one that wandered off, and that it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish (Matthew 18:14).

God does not choose the way families do, or the way kingdoms do, by height and age and looks. He chooses the one nobody brought in from the field.

Go deeperThe longer Psalm 151 from Cave 11

For most of history, Psalm 151 was known only in Greek, Syriac and the languages translated from them, seven short verses. Many scholars assumed it was a late Greek composition, made up to round off the book of Psalms.

Then, in 1956, Bedouin found Cave 11 near Qumran. Among its scrolls was a large Psalms scroll, now called 11QPsa. It contains many of the psalms in your Bible, in a different order, and several that are not. Near the end, in Hebrew, is Psalm 151, and it is longer than the Greek.¹

In the Hebrew it is really two poems. The first tells of David the shepherd, making music for God, and says something the Greek leaves out: the mountains and the hills could not speak for him, and though the trees and the sheep loved his music, who could tell God about him? Then the prophet comes and anoints him. The second poem, only its opening preserved, begins the fight with the Philistine.¹

So most scholars now think the Greek Psalm 151 is a shortened version of an older Hebrew original. A song about David was being copied among my people in Hebrew, beside the psalms you know, in my own century, and the poem was older than the copy.

Many scholars think the same Cave 11 scroll and other copies from Qumran show that the book of Psalms itself was not yet fixed in my time. Different communities had different collections, in different orders, with some extra psalms. Your book of a hundred and fifty is one of them.

The giant’s own sword

The psalm ends with the fight. I went out to meet the Philistine, and he cursed me by his idols. But I drew his own sword and beheaded him, and removed reproach from the children of Israel (Psalm 151:6–7).

1 Samuel tells it the same way. David brought him down with a sling and a stone, but there was no sword in the hand of David. So he took the giant’s own sword, killed him, and cut off his head with it (1 Samuel 17:50–51).

The story has always been loved because the small boy beats the giant. It is a story about the weak defeating the strong, and my people, small and often conquered, told it as their own.

But notice where the psalm chooses to end: on a severed head. It is a war song.

I was called the son of David. People hoped I would be another David, a shepherd boy who would grow up and take the giant’s sword to Rome. I went out to meet the empire with no sword at all, not even the enemy’s. And I did not take its head. It took my life, and I let it.

Go deeperPsalms outside the number

Psalm 151 is not the only extra psalm in old Bibles. The Syriac church, which used a Bible in a language close to the one I spoke, has five extra psalms, numbered 151 to 155. Psalms 154 and 155 were also found in Hebrew in the same Cave 11 scroll, which shows they were Jewish psalms before they were Christian ones.²

Other collections of psalms circulated too. The Psalms of Solomon, eighteen songs written in the century before my birth, mourn the Roman general Pompey’s capture of Jerusalem in 63 BC and pray for a son of David to come and drive out the foreigners and the sinners. They appear at the end of some Greek Bibles, after the books of the New Testament, in the great Codex Alexandrinus, listed but now lost from its pages.²

All of this tells you the same thing as Psalm 151. In my time, the songs of my people were still growing. The prayer book of the Temple had a center everyone agreed on, and edges that different communities drew differently. Psalm 151 is one of the songs from the edge that some churches kept.

Check It Yourself

Look up: 1 Samuel 16:6–13.

You will find: seven tall sons passed over, and the youngest brought in from the sheep.

Then read Psalm 151, all seven verses, and Luke 9:46–48.

The Short Version

• Psalm 151 is a short psalm in David’s voice, outside the number of the hundred and fifty, kept in Orthodox and other Eastern Bibles.
• It tells how God chose the youngest son, keeping the sheep, over his handsome and tall brothers, though no one told God about him.
• That is what I taught: whoever is least among you will be great.
• A longer Hebrew version was found in Cave 11 at Qumran, so it was a Jewish song before my time.
• It ends on the giant’s severed head. I met the empire with no sword.