It is clear from the Torah text that Jesse was not proud of his son, David. The prophet Samuel had to ask Jesse if all his sons were present before he called David to meet with Samuel. I’ve heard several Christian pastors preach sermons on the topic of David being an illegitimate son of Jesse, but they are missing out on an important truth, since they ignore the teachings of rabbinic sages.
According to Jewish tradition, although Jesse was a largely righteous man, he was not immune to temptation and at one point a slave-girl of his caught his eye and he began to be tempted to sleep with her. What he was not told was that his wife caught wind of his intentions and, secretly, dressed up as the slave girl and took her place on the night Jesse finally consumated the affair.
The affair resulted in a pregnancy, and Jesse’s wife had the baby in secret and gave it to the slave-girl to raise, because she didn’t want her husband to know she’d deceived him and again go lusting after the slave-girl.
So, if the sages are to be believed, and in this case I think they can, David was not really an illegitimate child after all; he was only believed to be illigitimate and Jesse’s wife revealed his legitimacy after David’s anointing to be king.
As a messianic, this holds special significance. David is often thought of to be a picture of what the messiah would ultimately be like, as was Joseph. Here, in this teaching on David’s apparent illegitimacy as well as his actual legitimacy, we have the first way in which his life reflects that of messiah Yeshua.
Like David, Miryam, the mother of Yeshua, had the appearane of an illegitmate pregnancy when the Ruach haKodesh made her pregnant as a young virgin. The single pregnancy gave her the appearance of an illegitimate birth, but anyone who has read the Gospel accounts knows, as Yosef, the husband of Miryam was told by an angel of the L-RD, that Yeshua’s birth was not a result of infidelity, but a legitimate birth after all.
Legitmate or not, of course, they all require baby furniture, so it’s a good thing Yosef was a carpenter.