David is anointed and crowned king to serve the purpose of God to bring His presence into the world through the Children of Israel, for the sake of all nations. But there is even more to this. The divine indwelling of the world is consistently contextualized in terms of God’s marriage of the world. This is why the first narrative in Scripture begins with the creation of the dyad of heaven and earth, ending with the creation of Man as the marital dyad of male and female- anticipating the last narrative in Scripture which is the integration of Heaven and Earth as Bridegroom and Bride, Jesus Christ taking the City of God, into which all the matter of the cosmos has been gathered and perfected, as His own spotless bride. Samuel is absolutely shot through with marital themes and language.
Consider, for example, the principal sins at the beginning of the book. God had taken Israel as His own bride on Sinai, giving them the plan for the tabernacle (Exodus 25-31). The tabernacle was the dwelling place of God (Exodus 40), yet it was polluted by Israel’s actions (Leviticus 11-15). But why would Israel’s sins pollute God’s house? It is because God has taken Israel to wife, such that His House is also God’s House. We find that the stewards of the tabernacle in 1 Samuel 2 used to lay with the women who were serving at the entrance of the tent of meeting (1 Samuel 2:22). When Hannah prayed for a son, her prayer was answered at the doorpost of the sanctuary (1 Samuel 1:9). Birth announcements are made at the doorway because the doorway signifies the birth canal. Women are signified in architectural language (Genesis 2:22, Eve is built) such that the tabernacle and temple are feminine. The consecrated women of the sanctuary signified the inviolable purity of the temple of God- that Eli’s sons lay with the very women who served the entrance of the tent manifests the gravity of their sin.
That Hannah receives the word of Samuel’s birth at the entrance of the same building underscores the symbolic freight of Samuel’s birth: the tabernacle, as the House of God and the Bride Israel alike, is their family home. It is therefore the bridal chamber of God and Israel, the place where the seed is conceived. God had promised from the beginning the coming of a “seed” who would deal a crushing blow to the death-dealing serpent. The war between God and Satan was a war between two lineages: the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. It is in this context that the sons of Eli are called sons of Belial (1 Samuel 2:12). They are of the lineage of the serpent. We meet others of serpentine lineage elsewhere in the book- Nahash, king of Ammon has a name which means serpent (1 Samuel 11). Goliath, the giant of Gath, is of the clan of the Nephilim, the seed of the serpent (Joshua 11:22, 1 Samuel 17:4).
The history of the Book of Samuel is the history of the conflict between these two lineages: God is working at Israel so that He can take her as Bride and bring forth the seed through her. The enemy, as he always does, is seeking to usurp the Bride of God and utilize her energy for his own evil purposes. Man is the heir of the world- to conquer the world, the enemy must capture man. Samuel, whose birth was announced at the very place which signified the birth canal of the Bride of God, is born again within the sanctuary by the word of God- called as a prophet, a son of God, he then facilitates the rebirth of the whole nation by opening the doors of the house of the LORD and sending forth his word to all Israel (1 Samuel 3:15ff). This marks the birth of a spiritual lineage which is traced through the remainder of the book. Saul is called and anointed in the context of Samuel’s liturgizing in his homeland, the land of Zuph (1 Samuel 9-10). As Saul journeys into the city where he will meet Samuel, he meets women coming out to draw water (1 Samuel 9:11). This type-scene is a classic image of the man who first encounters his wife as she draws water. One finds similar scenes in the lives of Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and even Jesus- who discusses marriage with a Samaritan woman as she draws water in John 4.