A Man after His Own Heart

And Samuel said to Saul, thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever.
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 Samuel 13: 13-14 (KJV)

Well, Saul has gone and done it -- ignored a divine commandment, and Samuel takes this opportunity to remind him, several times. Saul's crime is hard to explain in a few words, but suffice it to say that, in the heat of a desperate battle against the Philistines, he made a burnt offering before Samuel allowed it.

Naughty, naughty, naughty. As the price of this infraction, and a few more like it, Saul is going to lose his crown. As Samuel speaks, God is already casting about for someone more suitable -- "a man," as Samuel puts it, "after his own heart." What he means, of course, is someone whose heart is more Godly -- someone more apt to behave himself; that someone will be David.

We use the phrase now to mean more or less the same thing: someone like-minded, or whose feelings are gratifyingly like one's own. Not that we always mean it sincerely; take the character Jones in William Faulkner's novel Soldier's Pay (1925). "Old fool, thought Jones, saying: 'marvelous, magnificent! You are a man after my own heart, Doctor.'"

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!