Hebrew Word Study – Like His Heart – Kilevavo כִּלְבָב֗וֹ  – Kap Lamed Beth Beth Vav, (lay-bawb’)

I Samuel 13:14: “But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart and the LORD hath commanded him to be captain over his people because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.”

I have written about this on various occasions and once again I am writing about it because I believe this is something very important. Not only that this is the very heart of our ministry at Chaim Bentorah Ministries and that is ministering God’s heart.  So, allow me to continue in this ongoing study of what it means to be a person after God’s own heart.

As religious people go, King Saul was right up there with the best of them. He followed the laws of God, well he followed them religiously.  He would not go into battle without offering a sacrifice. I mean God would certainly not bless their venture into war if they did not offer the sacrifice. King Saul as a Benjamite knew he was not to offer the sacrifice and he had to wait for Samuel to arrive on the scene to offer the sacrifice.  The problem was, that Samuel was a no-show and the army was getting pretty antsy about going into battle. In fact, there were threats of desertion if they did not go into battle right away.  Saul made a quick executive decision: “What does it matter who offers a sacrifice so long as the sacrifice is made?”  Saul then takes it upon himself to offer the sacrifice, after he is the king which must give him some leverage to bend the rules. 

So just as he is about to offer the sacrifice who shows up Samuel not only rebukes him but declares that God has forfeited his kingdom to be given to one who had heart after God. Ok, Saul blew, but he made an executive decision to get that sacrifice performed before going to battle. Is he to lose his kingdom for a bad decision? 

Actually, we Christians are constantly making the same mistake that Saul made.  He saw the blessing of God laid in following God’s rules, not the motive behind keeping those rules. For instance, there are people who will go to church every Sunday, they will not miss a service because the Bible says we are to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. To them, that means going to church.  Next Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, yes, even if they have to miss the first pitch they will make sure they are in that service and make that sacrifice to God.  They may even think that God will bless them and they will win the bet they placed on the game. After all, they deserve something for missing the first few minutes of the most important game of the year. Just as King Saul felt that surely God would bless them if they made that sacrifice before the battle. 

King Saul was a man after his own heart, not God’s heart.  Yet, David wasn’t much better, he was worse actually, a regular rascal.  From all we know, King Saul had only one wife and was faithful to her.  David had a number of wives and then committed murder to cover the scandal.  The difference was that when Saul’s little bump took place, he found it would cost him his kingdom, and boy did he do some confessing and plead with Samuel to bring him before all the people so he could confess his sin. No good, God was not forgiving him. 

What was David’s reaction when he learned of his sin?  It wasn’t to beg God to not take his kingdom away, it was to not take the Spirit of God away. David’s concern was his relationship with God, and King Saul’s concern was his own gizzard. That is because David had a heart after God.

To use the word after suggests that his heart was seeking God. That is not incorrect, but in the Hebrew the word is kilevavo. That first letter is a prefix Kap which indicates like or as. It could be after but only in the sense of identification, not pursuit.  For instance, we say that a child takes after his father. He behaves like his father, thinks like his father, he is a chip off the old block. David had a heart that was like God’s heart. It was a heart of compassion, love, and all the things we would consider flowing from the heart of God. 

When we become a Christian, we give our hearts to God, but in return, God gives us His heart. Our hearts are joined with the heart of God and as a result, we can have a heart like God’s heart.  We can enter God’s heart anytime to experience His heart. He communicates with us through His heart to our hearts. 

Yet, we still have our own hearts and they can be quite wicked Jeremiah 17:9-10. Our discipline is to cling to the heart of God.  It is only natural for a Christian to have a heart like God but that doesn’t mean we always try to follow God’s heart. Like an old married couple, after years of seeking each other’s heart, trying to learn about the other’s heart, as we do with God in prayer and study of His Word, it soon becomes second nature to seek to follow the model of God’s heart.

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