Holy Church considers many Old Testament figures to be saints.
Today when you open your trusty copy of the 2005 Martyrologium Romanum you will find, just below the St. Thomas Becket, this interesting entry:
2. Commemoratio sancti David, regis et prophetae, qui, filius Iesse Bethlehemitae, gratiam invenit ante Deum et oleo sancto a Samuele propheta unctus est, ut populum Israel regeret; in civitatem Ierusalem Arcam foederis Domini transtulit ac Dominus ipse mox ei iuravit semen eius in aeternum mansurum esse, eo quod ex ipso Iesus Christus secundum carnem nasciturus esset.
You readers can come up with your renderings of the Latin original, either in a smoother version or perhaps in a slavishly literal way.
Changing tracks slightly, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art there is a series of paintings of Old Testament figures, including King David. These are elements from an altar piece by Florentine painter Lorenzo Monaco (known also as Piero di Giovanni +1422).
Moses is at the top left. Next to him is Abraham. Below him on the bottom right is Noah with his ark.
By thy way, since I took that photo, the paintings have been rearranged… in case you go looking.
Here is David, holding a psaltery. Greek psallo means “to pluck”. While there are also bowed psaltery, this one is plucked by the fingers rather than bowed or struck with a pick or plectrum.
When you get the audio guide at the Met and listen to experts talk about the works, sometimes you get a sample of period music. In this case, you get to hear some music played on a psaltery.
You can hear, below, a sample of bowed psaltery together with a small harp, also appropriate to David, as well as plucked psaltery in two versions of a Medieval Lament for Tristan, which would have been in vogue at the time the painter was working on the altar piece.
Listen as you do your translation!
Also, here again is Tristan’s Lament on a psaltery.
And, just for fun… here is another image of a psaltery bunny from a late 13th c. French manuscript. He even had the audience moved to sorrow.
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A remembrance of the holy David, king and prophet, who found grace before God as the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite and was anointed with holy oil by the prophet Samuel, so that he might rule the people (of) Israel; he bore the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant into the city of Jerusalem in triumph and the Lord then promised him that his seed would endure eternally, because from it Jesus Christ would be born bodily.
That psaltery piece reminds me a lot of the Seikilos Epitaph! Very calming to listen to while translating.
Speaking of David the musical poet, 2 Samuel 6 depicts one of his occasions of music:
15 And David and all the house of Israel brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord with joyful shouting, and with sound of trumpet.16 And when the ark of the Lord was come into the city of David, Michol the daughter of Saul, looking out through a window, saw king David leaping and dancing before the Lord…
Compare then Luke 1:
41 And it came to pass, that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: 42 And she cried out with a loud voice, and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. 43 And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
It seems to me that David’s leaping for joy at the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord was a prefigurement specifically of John leaping for joy at the arrival of Mary with Jesus, which clearly casts Mary as the new Ark of the New Covenant.
One of the verses of the Souther Gospel hymn (but originally Medieval Latin) “Jerusalem, my Happy Home.”
There David stands with harp in hand
As master of the choir:
Ten thousand times would we be blessed
Who might this music hear.