2 Samuel 7:8

I took thee from the sheepcote. There is in Nathan's message a marked advance upon the words of all previous prophecies. Hitherto God's promises had been general, and no tribe, and much less any special person, had been chosen as the progenitor of the Messiah. The nearest approach to the selection of a tribe had been the prediction of Judah's supremacy until Shiloh came ( Genesis 49:10 ); but it was not even there expressly declared that Shiloh should be of Judah's race. But now David is clearly chosen. Jehovah takes him from the sheepcote; Hebrew, "the meadow" (see Psalms 78:70 ). It was in the meadows, the Naioth, round Ramah, that Samuel had gathered the young men of Israel to study their ancient records, and raise their country to a sense of its high calling. In those meadows David had been formed for his high vocation; but he had returned from them to Bethlehem, to feed his father's sheep. And now, "from following the ewes that gave suck," Jehovah takes him to be "his servant," a word of high dignity, applied to but few persons in the Old Testament. It signifies the prime minister, or vicegerent of Jehovah, as the theocratic king, and is the special title of Moses among God's people, and, among the heathen, of Nebuchadnezzar, as one summoned to do a great work for God. But it is in the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah that the title reaches its full grandeur. For there, first of all, Israel is called Jehovah's servant, because it was Israel's office to be the witness for the oneness of God amidst the debasing polytheism of all the nations round. And then, finally, the servant is Messiah, as being the personal Representative of God upon earth. The title is now given to David as the type of Christ's kingly office, and also as the sweet singer, who added a new service to the worship of God, and made it more spiritual, and more like the service of angels round God's throne.