Young David – episode five
In which David leads the people of Bethlehem in a late-night praise song.
Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5
The fifth and final episode of Young David has been playing on the Minno and Angel streaming services since March 2024.
I started writing something about it at the time but had to set it aside because of some real-world things that were keeping me busy; however, the recent news about the upcoming David movie, which this series is sort of a prequel to, prompted me to dust off what I’d written and finish it. And so, here it is.
Like the first four episodes, this one is only about six minutes long, and like the fourth episode, this one is basically a music video with a short dramatic intro.
A few quick thoughts:
This is the second episode in a row to be based on a song, but it’s different from the previous episode in just about every way. In the previous episode (‘Poet’), David tried to compose a song during the day, with no one around him but his sheep, and the song he ended up singing was basically a remix of Psalm 23. But in this episode (‘Worshiper’), David leads his entire town in a praise chorus at night, without any rehearsal or preparation, and the song they sing is a brand new composition that happens to use a few phrases pulled from different biblical texts (including at least one that is not associated with David).
There are people here! Lots of people! Ever since the David movie was announced four years ago, we’ve seen a lot of footage of David and his sheep, but not a whole lot of other human beings. Admittedly, I haven’t been following the behind-the-scenes videos all that closely, but every single demo or preview that I’ve seen has focused on David’s shepherding, while only two of the previous episodes in this series had any human characters besides David: in Episode 2, we met David’s sister Zeruiah and a menacing shepherd named Doeg, and in Episode 3, we met David’s brother Eliab. That’s only three human characters, total, in addition to David. This episode, however, shows David interacting with an entire community of his fellow Bethlehemites—and four of them have dialogue! That means there are five voice actors in this episode’s credits (including the actor who plays David), which is more than the rest of this series has had in its entirety.
Three members of David’s family are seen, heard, or mentioned in this episode:
The episode begins and ends with David talking to his kid sister Zeruiah. We first met Zeruiah in Episode 2, and I explained at the time why I think the biblical Zeruiah was more likely to have been older than David, not younger.
David’s mother calls for Zeruiah and says it’s her bedtime. David’s mother was mentioned in Episode 2, but this is the first time we’ve actually heard her. The Bible mentions David’s mother once, in I Samuel 22:3-4, when David is hiding from King Saul and he arranges for his parents to stay in Moab.
David says his big brother Eliab has gone to Gibeah. We first met Eliab in Episode 3, and he was wearing a military outfit of some kind at the time. The biblical Eliab served in King Saul’s army (I Samuel 17:12-31), and Gibeah was Saul’s hometown and, thus, Israel’s first capital city (I Samuel 10:26, 15:34, etc.), so the Eliab of this series has probably gone back to be with the army.
David says Eliab wouldn’t let him tag along to Gibeah because he, David, is too young and the trip would have been too dangerous. The biblical Eliab also objected to David visiting the military camp, but not because he was concerned for David’s safety; instead, he accused David of abandoning the family’s sheep just to come and watch the soldiers fight (I Samuel 17:28).
David is offended that Eliab thought the trip to Gibeah would be too dangerous for him, and he says, “Dangerous? I’m not a kid, you know! I fought a lion!” This parallels how, when the biblical David offered to fight Goliath on the nation’s behalf, King Saul said David was too young and inexperienced, and David replied that he did have experience because he had already killed at least one lion and at least one bear while watching his father’s sheep (I Samuel 17:32-37).
Note: the David of this episode does not say he killed a lion, only that he fought it. In Episode 1, the lion fell off a cliff almost by accident after David hit it with a rock, and then it walked away.
One of David’s neighbours is called “Mister Ezekiel”. The character is fictitious, but the name is biblical. Most obviously, it’s the name of a prophet who lived during the Babylonian exile about 400 years after this series takes place; there’s an entire book in the Bible named after him. But it’s also the name of a priest who led one of the families that were appointed by David to serve in the Temple (I Chronicles 24:16). Most English translations call this priest “Jehezkel” or “Jehezekel”, but his Hebrew name—yᵊḥezqē'l—is the same as the prophet’s.1
David and Zeruiah are hanging out at home, on the roof, and Zeruiah says, “Wait, you come up here to spend time with God? Don’t you have to go to the tentacle for that?” David replies, “Tabernacle? I find I hear him better up here.” I don’t know to what degree the average Israelite would have thought of going to the Tabernacle as a way to “spend time with God.” It was a place for offering sacrifices, first and foremost, and most of that work was done by the priests and Levites.
As noted above, the song in the previous episode was basically an adaptation of Psalm 23 that introduced some new elements and rearranged the rest, while the song in this episode is more like a modern worship song that happens to use occasional lines or turns of phrase from the Bible, e.g.:
“So great is your faithfulness / Your mercy new every morning”
These lines echo Lamentations 3:22-23: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
Notably, Lamentations is traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, who lived four centuries after David, and not to David himself.
“I see your love / That goes as far as east is from the west”
These lines echo Psalm 103:11-12: “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
This psalm is directly attributed to David in the text.
This episode’s song is called ‘Rhythm of Grace’. According to Google’s Ngram viewer, the phrase “rhythm of grace” has been around since the 1890s, but it really took off in the 1990s, possibly because Eugene Peterson used it in his version of Matthew 11:28-30 in The Message, a very loose paraphrase of the Bible that was first published in 1993. The phrase has been used in religious songs ever since; a quick search at Spotify turns up songs by Wayne Kirkpatrick (in 1997), the Crist Family (in 2010), and Hillsong United (in 2011). And now there’s this.
And that about covers it for now, I think.
You can watch a music video for the song ‘Rhythm of Grace’ here:
You can also watch a teaser for this episode here:
And you can now watch trailers for the entire series, here:
This series will be followed by a feature film, called simply David, at some point in the future. (It does not currently have a release date.)
Past posts on David and Young David:
‘Three — maybe four — Bible-themed projects look for crowd-funding’ (October 24, 2021)
‘Young David animated series coming in 2023’ (June 8, 2022)
‘Livestream news: The Chosen, Testament, The Shift, and more’ (July 6, 2022)
‘Young David series to start streaming next month’ (October 25, 2023)
‘Young David – episode one’ (November 18, 2023)
‘Young David – episode two’ (December 13, 2023)
‘Young David – episode three’ (January 27, 2024)
‘Young David – episode four’ (February 15, 2024)
‘Animated David looking for a new distributor’ (May 15, 2025)
‘Dallas Jenkins’ 5&2 Studios partners with animated David producers’ (August 9, 2025)
TV show recaps:
Prophet Joseph | The Bible | A.D. The Bible Continues | Of Kings and Prophets | The Chosen | History of the World, Part II | Young David | The Promised Land
Movie scene guides:
Risen | The Young Messiah | Paul, Apostle of Christ | Mary Magdalene | Journey to Bethlehem
The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures created in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC, also distinguishes between the two “Ezekiels”. Transliterated into the Roman alphabet, it calls the priest appointed by David “Ezekel” and the later prophet “Iezekiel”.