Psalm 151 (LXX 151) - I Was Small Among My Brethren

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The Coptic Orthodox Church receives Psalm 151 as Scripture and chants it in worship, sharing its reception with other Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox traditions. At the opening of Bright Saturday’s Midnight Praises, while the Church keeps vigil beside Christ’s tomb, she sings of the small shepherd who defeats the giant with the giant’s own sword. The burial is not the end of the story. The song already announces the enemy’s defeat.

The Psalm gathers David’s hidden shepherd life, his music, his anointing over his older brothers, and his victory over Goliath. Human eyes admire height, beauty, and visible strength. The Lord chooses the small one tending sheep. The seven verses move from an overlooked servant to a deliverance that belongs to all Israel.

Psalm Metadata

Field	Notes
Reception	Received as Scripture in the Coptic Orthodox Church and used in worship.
Hebrew / NKJV numbering	Absent from the Hebrew Masoretic Psalter and the NKJV, whose Psalter ends at Psalm 150.
Septuagint / Coptic numbering	Psalm 151, supernumerary after Psalm 150. “Supernumerary” means beyond the numbered collection of 150, not spiritually dispensable.
Accepted author	David by the Septuagint superscription.
Period in author’s life	David’s youth, shepherding, Samuel’s anointing, and battle with Goliath.
Christological reading	David the small shepherd prefigures Christ, the humble King and Shepherd who defeats the devil.
Coptic lectionary/service use	Bright Saturday, opening of Midnight Praises: “Glory be to our God” in the apocalyptic tune, followed by Psalm 151. This reading is not yet included in the site’s reverse-lectionary index.

Historical and Scriptural Context

Brenton’s superscription identifies this as David’s own Psalm, composed when he fought Goliath. It brings together two moments from his youth: his anointing in 1 Samuel 16 and his victory over the Philistine in 1 Samuel 17. The Lord’s choice comes before the public victory. David does not make himself king by defeating an enemy; he receives an anointing he could not give himself.

David’s public courage begins in hidden faithfulness with sheep, music, and obedience. Before he carries a sword, he carries a psaltery. Before he defeats the giant, he is formed in hidden service. The Psalm looks back on these gifts with gratitude, not self-congratulation.

Geographical Significance

The Psalm itself names no places. Its narrative background supplies them: Samuel comes to Bethlehem in 1 Samuel 16:4, and the armies gather in the Valley of Elah, between Socoh and Azekah, in 1 Samuel 17:1-2. The movement is from the father’s sheep to a confrontation before Israel.

Bethlehem also belongs to the Gospel’s account of Christ’s birth. That connection does not make every detail of David’s life a prediction. It helps the Christian reader recognize the humble Shepherd-King whose victory comes through willing obedience rather than worldly display.

The Characters 👥

David. Small among his brothers, youngest in his father’s house, shepherd, musician, anointed one, and conqueror of Goliath.

David’s brothers. Handsome and tall, but not chosen for this calling. Their appearance cannot decide God’s election; the Psalm does not say that beauty or stature is itself evil.

The Lord. The one who hears, sends, takes David from the sheep, and anoints him.

Samuel. The prophet sent to anoint David in 1 Samuel 16, illuminating the Psalm’s reference to God’s “angel,” or messenger.

The Philistine / Goliath. The idol-cursing enemy whose sword becomes the instrument of his own defeat.

Israel. The people whose reproach is removed by the small shepherd’s victory.

Christ. In the Church’s typological reading, the true David: the humble Shepherd and King who defeats the devil and delivers His people.

Small among the brethren and formed in hidden praise (Psalm 151:1-2)

Before the reading: Psalm 151 is absent from the Hebrew Masoretic text and therefore from the NKJV and the usual Protestant Old Testament. It is preserved in Greek, Old Latin, and Syriac. Related Hebrew poems were found in the Qumran Psalms Scroll, 11Q5: the complete 151A concerns David’s anointing in 1 Samuel 16, while the fragmentary 151B concerns Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. James A. Sanders published the Psalm 151 material in 1963. He explains the Greek form as an edited combination that shortens and rearranges the poems, including the omission of six phrases, about a verse and a half, between Greek verses 2 and 3. The difference is thus one of ancient textual form, not simply different numbering. The reading below follows Brenton’s English Septuagint, the seven-verse form received in the Church’s worship.¹

151:1 This Psalm is a genuine one of David, though supernumerary, composed when he fought in single combat with Goliad. I was small among my brethren, and youngest in my father’s house: I tended my father’s sheep.
151:2 My hands formed a musical instrument, and my fingers tuned a psaltery.

The Psalm begins with smallness. David does not present himself as naturally impressive. He is small among his brothers and youngest in the house. His first work is shepherding, and his hands are trained in music before battle. What others might overlook is already a place of service before God.

The music matters. David’s fingers tune a psaltery before they hold the enemy’s sword. Hidden praise precedes public courage. Prayer and ordinary responsibilities are not an interruption of a servant’s calling; they are places where faithfulness takes shape.

After Psalm 150 commands every breath to praise, Psalm 151 shows a young David whose life is already shaped by song. The Psalm beyond the familiar 150 looks back to the human singer through whom so much of the Psalter is received.

The Lord hears and chooses differently (Psalm 151:3-5)

151:3 And who shall tell my Lord? the Lord himself, he himself hears.
151:4 He sent forth his angel, and took me from my father’s sheep, and he anointed me with the oil of his anointing.
151:5 My brothers were handsome and tall; but the Lord did not take pleasure in them.

The Lord Himself hears. David’s hiddenness is not invisibility. No one needs to advertise him to God. The Lord sends, takes, and anoints. David’s account gives the initiative to God at every step.

Language insight: “He sent forth his angel”

The Greek word behind “angel” is angelos, meaning a messenger, whether human or heavenly. In this narrative, the messenger is understood as Samuel, whom God sends to Jesse’s house to anoint a king. Brenton’s wording need not suggest an otherwise unrecorded visit by a heavenly angel. It presents the human prophet’s mission as God’s action.²

This section closely echoes 1 Samuel 16. The Lord tells Samuel not to look at appearance or height, because the Lord sees the heart. Psalm 151 turns that history into prayer. The handsome and tall brothers are not condemned as evil, but their impressiveness does not establish their calling.

Gems from the Fathers: Humility after being chosen

Saint Athanasius gives a direct use for this Psalm in his Letter to Marcellinus, section 25. If someone insignificant is chosen for authority over his brothers, he should not become proud against them, but glorify the God who chose him and chant Psalm 151, which Athanasius calls David’s own. His warning is exact: “do not be exalted against them.”³ To sing David’s smallness truthfully is to refuse to use God’s gift as a reason to look down on anyone else.

The spiritual insight is severe and freeing. Charisma, polish, public confidence, and visible success are not the same as faithfulness. Yet being overlooked is not proof that we are secretly greater than everyone else. The Psalm gives neither the prominent person permission to boast nor the unnoticed person permission to resent. Both stand before the Lord who hears and chooses.

“The oil of his anointing”

David’s royal anointing points beyond itself to Christ, the Anointed One. In Luke 4:18, Jesus announces His anointing by the Spirit for good news and deliverance; Acts 10:38 describes His ministry in the same terms. Psalm 45:7, quoted of the Son in Hebrews 1:9, speaks of the oil of gladness. These connections reveal the fullness of the Shepherd-King’s calling, not merely a more successful version of David’s career.

The believer also receives an anointing from the Holy One (1 John 2:20, 27). In Coptic life this is heard in connection with Holy Myron, the sacrament of Chrismation following baptism, through which we receive the seal of the Holy Spirit.⁴ David’s royal anointing is not identical to this sacrament. It nevertheless helps us receive consecration as a gift for faithful service, not a badge of personal importance.

Christ’s humility reaches its fullness in His willing obedience. Philippians 2:5-11 brings us before the Son who takes the form of a servant and obeys unto death on the Cross. His lowliness is not helplessness. It is the freedom of divine love giving itself for our salvation.

Goliath, idols, and the enemy’s own sword (Psalm 151:6-7)

151:6 I went forth to meet the Philistine; and he cursed me by his idols.
151:7 But I drew his own sword, and beheaded him, and removed reproach from the children of Israel.

The battle is theological before it is military. Goliath curses by idols. David’s victory is not only a tactical upset; it defeats the enemy who has brought reproach upon Israel. The final words turn attention away from a young man’s achievement to a people’s deliverance.

Gems from the Fathers: The enemy’s weapon turned against him

Saint Augustine, expounding the Goliath heading of Psalm 144, reads David as a figure of Christ. David takes the giant’s sword, and Christ turns the devil’s instruments against their former master. Augustine writes, “This our David also did, He overthrew the devil with his own weapons”.⁵ His immediate example is people once used to destroy other souls becoming believers and turning their tongues against the devil. This is commentary on the shared David-and-Goliath narrative, not a direct exposition of Psalm 151.

Hebrews 2:14-15 brings the Paschal connection into focus: through death Christ destroys the one who held the power of death and frees those enslaved by its fear. Death and the Cross become the place of the enemy’s defeat because Christ freely enters death to overcome it. Fear is not His weapon. It is part of the bondage from which He releases us.

This makes Psalm 151 more than an underdog’s success story. The small shepherd becomes Israel’s champion through the Lord’s gift, and Goliath’s sword becomes his own judgment. In Christ the apparent defeat of the Cross is revealed as victory. His Passion is sovereign, willing obedience, not the devil overpowering Him.

The removal of reproach is not permission to humiliate an enemy or harm someone we dislike. The Christian struggle is against sin and the devil, not a warrant for violence against our neighbors. Christ delivers a people, and those He frees are called to share His mercy rather than imitate Goliath’s contempt.

The Church’s Voice in Worship

Psalm 151 has an established Coptic service use. Coptic Reader places it at the opening of Bright Saturday’s Midnight Praises, during Apocalypse Night. The priest faces east before the sanctuary, holding the book of Psalms wrapped in a white linen veil, and chants “Glory be to our God” in the apocalyptic tune, followed by Psalm 151. The procession follows the Psalm.⁶

This comes after the 150-Psalm sequence associated with Christ’s burial at the conclusion of Great Friday’s Twelfth Hour. Coptic Reader distinguishes the priest’s opening Psalms 1-3 from the deacons and congregation continuing the rest inaudibly from Psalm 4. Psalm 151 is not part of that 150-Psalm rubric; it belongs to the ensuing Bright Saturday Midnight Praises. Bishop Youssef’s Night of the Apocalypse explains the continuity and reads David’s shepherding and victory in relation to Christ.⁷

The Church has prayed the 150 at the burial. Now, while Christ lies in the tomb, she chants the 151st: the small shepherd draws the giant’s own sword and removes his people’s reproach. Read beside Hebrews 2:14-15, this is a song of victory at the grave. The One who has willingly died is destroying death’s dominion. We do not have to pretend the tomb is empty already in order to confess that the buried Lord is our Deliverer.

The site’s reverse-lectionary index does not yet include this Psalm 151 reading. That is a gap in the index, not an absence from the Church’s worship.

Iconography Connection

King David, by Fadi Mikhail, offers a Coptic visual counterpart to this Psalm. The crowned, haloed psalmist holds a harp-like stringed instrument; smaller scenes below show the shepherd among his sheep and his victory over Goliath. Music, hidden service, and deliverance belong to one life. Mikhail’s artist biography identifies his apprenticeship under Isaac Fanous. This modern Neo-Coptic icon is linked for reference, not reproduced; reuse permission has not been established.

The Rijksmuseum print David doodt Goliath (1708) remains a Western biblical-art alternative, catalogued as CC0. It depicts the victory, but is not Orthodox iconography. Good Shepherd or Anastasis imagery can illuminate the Psalm’s Christian reading without being identified as a direct illustration of Psalm 151.

Spiritual Fruit

1. Do not despise hidden formation. Give ordinary work and prayer your honest attention even when no one notices. David’s sheep and music belong to his calling before the battlefield does.
2. Receive responsibility without superiority. When entrusted with authority, thank God and serve those beside you. Athanasius gives Psalm 151 to the chosen person as a remedy against pride, not a celebration of being better than his brothers.
3. Let God hear what you cannot make others see. Bring the hurt of being overlooked into prayer without turning it into contempt for those who are noticed. The Lord Himself hears.
4. Live your consecration. Remember the gift of the Holy Spirit received in Holy Myron. Offer Him your words, decisions, and service rather than treating anointing as a past ceremony with no claim on the present.
5. Bring fear of death to the victorious Christ. Grief and fear need not be denied. At the tomb the Church places a song of deliverance on our lips, teaching us to entrust ourselves and those we love to the Lord who freely entered death for us.
6. Let deliverance make you merciful. David removes Israel’s reproach; he does not merely improve his own standing. Seek another person’s good rather than an occasion to display your strength.

Teaching Notes

Small among the brethren and formed in hidden praise (Psalm 151:1-2)

• Ask: Which ordinary responsibilities are you tempted to neglect because they do not seem spiritually important?
• Watch for: Turning David into a self-made hero or treating “supernumerary” as meaning outside the Coptic Church’s Scripture.
• Key phrases: “small among my brethren”; “youngest”; “tended my father’s sheep”; “tuned a psaltery.”

The Lord hears and chooses differently (Psalm 151:3-5)

• Ask: How does Athanasius’s instruction change the way we receive authority or respond to being overlooked?
• Watch for: Equating outward impressiveness with holiness, or imagining that being unnoticed proves personal superiority. Explain the messenger as Samuel in the narrative background, without changing Brenton’s text.
• Key phrases: “he himself hears”; “took me from my father’s sheep”; “the oil of his anointing.”

Goliath, idols, and the enemy’s own sword (Psalm 151:6-7)

• Ask: Why does the Church chant this victory beside Christ’s tomb rather than wait until the Resurrection feast?
• Watch for: Calling fear Christ’s weapon, treating His Passion as involuntary defeat, or using the giant’s death to justify hostility toward people. Keep Augustine’s example of converted believers distinct from Hebrews’ teaching about death.
• Show: The linked Neo-Coptic King David icon joins the psalmist, shepherd, and victor. If using the Rijksmuseum alternative, label it as Western biblical art and keep the Lord’s gift, not human violence, at the center.

Glossary

• Supernumerary: Beyond the collection of 150. Brenton uses this term for Psalm 151; it does not deny the Psalm’s reception in the Coptic Church.
• Masoretic text: The received Hebrew textual tradition whose Psalter contains 150 Psalms.
• Goliad: Brenton’s form of Goliath.
• Messenger: The meaning of Greek angelos, which can refer to a human envoy or a heavenly angel. Samuel supplies the narrative background here.
• Chrismation / Holy Myron: The sacramental anointing following baptism, through which the baptized receive the seal of the Holy Spirit.
• Typology: A real Old Testament person or event that points forward to Christ without every detail becoming a separate prediction.

Translation and Source Notes

Embedded Scripture is from Brenton’s English Septuagint (LXX), Psalm 151, including his superscription and the name “Goliad.” Coptic Reader establishes the service placement; its liturgical translation is not substituted for Brenton’s reading. Psalm 151 has no Masoretic counterpart. Augustine follows LXX/Latin Psalm numbering: his Goliath Psalm is 143, corresponding to Psalm 144 in the NKJV. The cited NPNF English edition heads the exposition “Psalm CXLIV” and notes “Lat. CXLIII.”

Sources

• Scripture: Brenton, Psalm 151; 1 Samuel 16; 1 Samuel 17-18; Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38; Psalm 45:7 with Hebrews 1:9; 1 John 2:20, 27; Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 2:14-15.

• Patristic witnesses: Saint Athanasius, Letter to Marcellinus, section 25; Saint Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 144 (LXX/Latin 143), section 1, NPNF1, vol. 8, p. 654. Their contributions and direct source links are given in the footnotes.

• Coptic worship: Coptic Reader, Special → Pascha → Saturday → Praises, “Midnight Praises,” opening Psalm 151; and Special → Pascha → Friday → 12th Hour, burial conclusion. See also Bishop Youssef, Night of the Apocalypse, “Midnight Praises.”

• Textual history: James A. Sanders, “Psalm 151,” Bible Odyssey, and “Ps. 151 in 11QPss,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 75 (1963), pp. 73-86; the full Cave 11 Psalms Scroll edition followed in 1965.

Footnotes

1. James A. Sanders, “Psalm 151,” Bible Odyssey, especially “Why are there different versions of Psalm 151?”; Sanders, “Ps. 151 in 11QPss”, ZAW 75 (1963), pp. 73-86. The six omitted phrases amount to about one and a half verses in Sanders’s description, not one and a half English lines. ↩

2. Roger A. Bullard and Howard A. Hatton, A Handbook on the Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon (UBS, 2006), commentary on Psalm 151:4. The narrative identification is Samuel’s mission in 1 Samuel 16. ↩

3. Saint Athanasius, Letter to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms, section 25, Robert C. Gregg translation, in Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (Paulist Press, 1980); brief quotation checked in this online transcription, which identifies the translation and retains the section numbers. ↩

4. Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States, “The Sacrament of Confirmation,” “Administration of the Sacrament”, relating 1 John 2:20, 27 to Chrismation following baptism. ↩

5. Saint Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 144 (LXX/Latin 143), section 1, NPNF, First Series, vol. 8, p. 654. The English edition’s footnote identifies the Latin number as CXLIII. The quoted words are an excerpt from a sentence that continues with the conversion of the devil’s former instruments. ↩

6. Coptic Reader, Special → Pascha → Saturday → Praises, “Midnight Praises,” opening rubric and Psalm 151; Special → Pascha → Friday → 12th Hour, burial rubrics and concluding Psalms. ↩

7. H.G. Bishop Youssef, Night of the Apocalypse, “Midnight Praises,” Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States, hosted by St. John the Baptist Coptic Orthodox Church, Miramar. ↩