Lives of Scripture

Shimeah, also called Shammah, was one of Jesse's elder sons and an older brother of David. When Samuel came to Bethlehem to anoint Israel's next king, Jesse presented his sons to him one by one; Shimeah was made to pass before the prophet just as Eliab had been, and like Eliab he was passed over -- "the LORD has not chosen this one, either" (1 Samuel 16:9-10). He is later named among the three eldest sons of Jesse who followed Saul into the campaign against the Philistines, the same standoff in which their youngest brother David killed Goliath (1 Samuel 17:13-14). Shimeah does not reappear as an actor in his own right, but his sons do: his son Jonadab was the "very shrewd" friend of Amnon who devised the scheme leading to Tamar's rape (2 Samuel 13:3-5), and another son, Jonathan, killed a Philistine giant with six fingers and toes at Gath (2 Samuel 21:20-21). Shimeah's story is a minor thread in a much larger family drama -- rejected for the throne himself, yet the father of sons who shaped, for better and worse, the reign of the brother God did choose.