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ANSWER: forty years
" David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years." - 2 Samuel 5:4. And God did not choose him because of his age, but his heart was completed devoted to Him.
David was anointed as a King by Prophet Samuel
(1 Samuel 16:13 esv :- Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.). The age associated with conscription into the Israelite army was twenty (Numbers 1:45 - So all those listed of the people of Israel, by their fathers' houses, from twenty years old and upward, every man able to go to war in Israel— ). David's three oldest brothers are mentioned as having followed Saul to battle against the Philistines (1 Samuel 17:13- The three oldest sons of Jesse had followed Saul to the battle. And the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.). David was the eighth (and youngest) of Jesse's sons (1 Samuel 16:11 -Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.” ). However, David was old enough to have been entrusted with tending the sheep (which he was doing when Samuel came to anoint him), and he had been strong enough to kill both a lion and a bear to protect the sheep (1 Samuel 17:34-36- ...when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth... ). He was also skilled with the lyre (1 Samuel 16:18 - One of the young men answered, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him.”). Based primarily on the minimum possible age gap between a third son who was twenty (or possibly younger in 1 Samuel 16) and David, then the absolute upper limit on how old David could have been when he was anointed (there being no mention of intervening sisters, multiple wives of Jesse, or multiple births (twins, etc.)), and consistent (in my estimation) with an age where he would have possessed sufficient physical stature and strength to have killed a lion and a bear singlehandedly, would have been seventeen (although quite possibly younger, if Shammah (Jesse's third son) had just turned twenty at the time he joined the army; or if there were any extra time gaps at all between the births of Shammah and David, or between the events of 1 Samuel 16 and 1 Samuel 17).
Bible Version: ESV
image attribution to www.lambsongs.co.nz.
Courtesy (Content ) : Tim Maas - https://ebible.com/questions/18411-how-old-was-david-when-he-was-anointed-by-samuel
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