Why the Lord Chose David

330. “Draw me, we will run after you, the king has brought me into his chambers.” It is written, “A psalm for David when he was in the Judah Desert.” The Creator chose King David from all the kings in the world, as it is written, “But I chose David to be over my people Israel.”

331. This is because since the day David followed the flock in the desert, he was looking at the craft of the Creator and praised and said, “When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers.”

332. At night, when all the people in the world lie in their beds asleep, he would sit and speak, and would look at the sky, at the moon, and the stars and the signs, and the works of the sky, and he would say, “When I behold Your heavens.” It is written, “Lord our lord, how mighty is Your name,” and he was always fearing and praising and exalting the Creator.

333. Afterwards, he was running from his father-in-law, yet with all the troubles he had had, he praised and prayed to the Creator. When he was in the Judah Desert, when King Saul was chasing him, he would say psalms, as it is written, “A psalm of David when he was in the Judah Desert,” where he was being chased.

334. He said, “God, You are my God; I will seek You.” “God, You are my God” is three names. Elokim [God] is the degree of David, the Sefira Malchut. “My God” is Rosh, as this Sefira stands above him, and it is a pillar on which the whole world—Malchut—stands, as it is written, “And a righteous is the foundation of the world,” Yesod [foundation] of ZA. “You is upper right, Hesed of ZA, as it is written, “You are a priest forever,” meaning that You, Hesed of ZA, are a priest. For this reason, three degrees “God,” “my God,” and “You.” “I will seek You” means I will visit you every day, always.

335. “My soul thirsts for You.” As one is thirsty for a drink, so am I, my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You, for the soul and the flesh to be adhered to You. “In a barren land and tired without water,” where there is no light of Torah and illumination of the upper light.

336. “So I have seen You in the holy” means that although I am in the desert, where there is no light of Torah and upper light, I see You, to adhere to You, and I crave You, to behold Your might and glory. This is as it is written, “Draw me, we will run after you,” for when You draw me after You, we will all want to be with You, since “we will run” comes from the word “desire” [in Hebrew].

337. “The king has brought me into his chambers.” These are the chambers of the Garden of Eden. When the Creator created Adam HaRishon, He took him from the dust of the Temple, and from there he was created. “And breathed into his nostrils the soul of life.” From there, He opened for him the door to the Garden of Eden and let him into seventy holy chambers and halls, and made for him ten Hupot [wedding canopies], like those Hupot that the Creator is destined to do for the righteous in the Garden of Eden, and the high angels were dancing before Him, and there was joy there.

338. There the Creator passed before him the spirits and the souls that are destined and intended to be in people who will come out from him.

339. When he got to King David, He saw that he had no life at all. He said to the Creator, “Who is it that I do not see life for him?” Finally, the Creator told him that it was King David. When Adam HaRishon saw this, he gave him seventy years of his years, which are the seventy years of the life of King David.

Each organ from the organs of Adam HaRishon gave him life of its own, and Adam HaRishon was deficient seventy years from those one thousand years that he should have lived, as it is written, “For in the day you eat thereof, you will surely die,” and the day of Adam HaRishon is one thousand years. Hence, he was meant to live one thousand years, but he lived only 930 years since he had given seventy years to King David.

340. It is written, “Draw me, we will run after you,” since the letters of the holy name were engraved above, in ZA, and below, in Malchut. When the letters of Malchut were protruding and ascending to the other letters of ZA, all the holy camps of Malchut were traveling in their journeys with dread and shame since they had no audacity toward the upper letters.

341. This implies that all those people in the world who have no shame, have no part in the next world. All the audacious ones who were in Israel, when they looked at the letters of the holy name in the plate of the holy crown of the High Priest, their hearts would break, and they would examine their actions whether they are good, since the plate stood on a token and a banner, so anyone who looked at it was ashamed of his actions.

342. The letters of the holy name HaVaYaH that was engraved on the plate were shining and protruding and glittering. Anyone who looked at that glittering would see the letters when they are protruding, and his face would fall for fear of his master, and he would break his heart before the Creator.