Too Little, Too Late.

So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments and went, he and two men with him. And they came to the woman by night. And he said, “Divine for me by a spirit and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you.” The woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the necromancers from the land. Why then are you laying a trap for my life to bring about my death?” But Saul swore to her by the Lord, “As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.” Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” He said, “Bring up Samuel for me.” When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul.” The king said to her, “Do not be afraid. What do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see a god coming up out of the earth.” He said to her, “What is his appearance?” And she said, “An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe.” And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage.

Then Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” Saul answered, “I am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams. Therefore I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do.” And Samuel said, “Why then do you ask me, since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy? The Lord has done to you as he spoke by me, for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David. Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek, therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day. Moreover, the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines.”

Then Saul fell at once full length on the ground, filled with fear because of the words of Samuel. And there was no strength in him, for he had eaten nothing all day and all night. And the woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified, she said to him, “Behold, your servant has obeyed you. I have taken my life in my hand and have listened to what you have said to me. Now therefore, you also obey your servant. Let me set a morsel of bread before you; and eat, that you may have strength when you go on your way.” He refused and said, “I will not eat.” But his servants, together with the woman, urged him, and he listened to their words. So he arose from the earth and sat on the bed. Now the woman had a fattened calf in the house, and she quickly killed it, and she took flour and kneaded it and baked unleavened bread of it, and she put it before Saul and his servants, and they ate. Then they rose and went away that night. – 1 Samuel 28:8-25 ESV

The scene that takes place in this chapter is fascinating and difficult to understand. Saul had long ago lost access to God’s guidance because of his disobedience. God had removed His Spirit from Saul.

Now the Spirit of the LORD had left Saul, and the LORD sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear. – 1 Samuel 16:14 NLT

Now, when Saul finds himself facing the threat of war with vastly superior Philistine army, he is at a loss as to what to do and decides to seek God’s advice and help. But God is not talking. And not only that, Samuel, the prophet of God, is dead. To make things even worse for Saul, Abiather, the sole remaining priest who had escaped Saul massacre of the all the priests of Nob, had taken the high priest’s ephod with him and was not residing with David. The ephod contained the Urim and Thummim, which was used to seek God’s will (1 Samuel 23:6-12). So Saul was out of luck and out of options. Which led him to do the unthinkable and unholy. He sought out a medium or a witch. While Samuel had been alive, he had persuaded Saul to remove those who practiced witchcraft, divination and sorcery from the land. God had given the people of Israel very clear orders concerning these matters when they had entered the land of promise:

When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. – Deuteronomy 18:9-12 ESV

God knew the danger of these practices and had forbidden them among His people. He had other plans for them. He was to be their only source of wisdom and direction.

“You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…” – Deuteronomy 18:13-15 ESV

But once again, Saul disobeyed God. He sought out a medium, in an attempt to get divine help in his time of need. He was desperate and allowed his fear to get the best of him. But not wanting everyone to know what he was doing, Saul disguised himself and went to visit the medium or witch at night. He attempted to cover his actions through deceit, not wanting the people to know what he was doing. And when the medium was reticent to assist him out of fear for her life, Saul assured her that nothing would be done to her – in direct defiance of God’s command.

What is very fascinating about this story is that the woman was actually able to conjure up Samuel from the dead – or so it would appear. This passage does not validate the practice of necromancy or communication with the dead. It would be wrong to use this story as a proof that seances really do work. What this woman and those like here really were doing was conjuring up evil spirits. Their practice was demonic. But in this case, God supernaturally intervened and allowed the spirit of Samuel to appear. Even the woman was shocked at what she saw. “When the woman saw Samuel, she screamed” (1 Samuel 28:12 NLT). Whatever appeared before her was unexpected and disturbing to her. Even she couldn’t believe her eyes. That the vision she saw was Samuel, the dead prophet, was clear to her and to Saul. And the message Samuel gave was clearly from God.

What Samuel had to say to Saul was not good news. If this had been an evil spirit, it would have lied to Saul, telling him what he wanted to hear and giving him false counsel. But Samuel told Saul exactly what was going to happen, and it was anything but comforting.

“Why ask me, since the Lord has left you and has become your enemy? The Lord has done just as he said he would. He has torn the kingdom from you and given it to your rival, David. The Lord has done this to you today because you refused to carry out his fierce anger against the Amalekites. What’s more, the Lord will hand you and the army of Israel over to the Philistines tomorrow, and you and your sons will be here with me. The Lord will bring down the entire army of Israel in defeat.” – 1 Samuel 28:16-19 NLT

This was clearly a case of too little, too late. While Samuel had been alive, Saul had ignored his counsel. He had repeatedly refused to accept the prophet’s advice, instead choosing to disagree with God’s word concerning David and stubbornly attempting to derail what God had ordained. It is vital to note that there is no remorse or repentance associated with any of Saul’s actions. When he found himself faced with the overwhelming threat of annihilation at the hands of the Philistines, he did not call out to God in repentance. He did not confess his sins. Oh, he fell on his face, but only out of fear over what he had heard the prophet say. At no point does Saul admit his wrong and beg God to forgive him. He is stubborn to the end. He wanted God’s guidance and protection, but remained unwilling to live his life according to God’s will. 

How often do we find ourselves in difficult circumstances and forced to call out to God? The very One whom we have refused to show proper honor and respect in the good times becomes our go-to source in the bad times. We get in trouble and suddenly our prayer lives take on a whole new significance. We cry out. We beg God to save us. And there is nothing wrong with crying out to God. In fact, we are commanded to call on God in times of trouble. But it is important that God desires for us to come to Him humbly and with a heart of repentance. Saul knew this. He had heard those very words from the mouth of the prophet years earlier.

"What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.” – 1 Samuel 15:22 NLT

Years later, when David had become king, and after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba, he would write the following words:

You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.
    You do not want a burnt offering.
The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
    You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God. – Psalm 51:16-17 NLT

Saul would find himself face down in the dirt, but his prideful heart would remain unrepentant and stubbornly unwilling to confess his disobedience toward God. Sorrow over sin is not the same as repentance. Fear of the circumstances facing us is not the same as a reverent fear of God. Saul wasn’t seeking a relationship with God, he simply wanted deliverance from his problems by God.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Truth or Consequences.

In those days the Philistines gathered their forces for war, to fight against Israel. And Achish said to David, “Understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army.” David said to Achish, “Very well, you shall know what your servant can do.” And Achish said to David, “Very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life.”

Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in Ramah, his own city. And Saul had put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land. The Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, “Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “Behold, there is a medium at En-dor.” – 1 Samuel 28:1-7 ESV

Over the last few chapters, we have seen a repetitive, back-and-forth treatment of the lives of the two main characters in this story: David and Saul. One minute we’re given a look into the life of David, and then the scene shifts to that of Saul. Sandwiched n-between were the two face-to-face encounters between the two men where David confronted Saul after having chosen not to take his life. Now, in chapter 28, the two men appear together, but not physically. In these opening verses of the chapter we are given a brief, but sobering look into what happens when decide to disobey God and take matters into our own hands. While the author has gone out of his way to contrast David and Saul, in these opening lines it is as if he is trying to show that both men have created unnecessary and uncomfortable circumstances for themselves because they have chosen to disobey God.

David is living with the Philistines. Granted, he and his men, along with their families, occupy the city of Ziklag, in a more remote area within Philistia, but they are still considered vassals or servants of King Achish. In fact, King Achish was under the false impression that David and his 600 men were actually going out and fighting against Israel on his behalf. Where would he have gotten such an idea? From David himself. Each time David and his troops went on a raid, they would attack the enemies of Israel. But when they returned, they would report to Achish that they had been raiding areas within Judah. So Achish believed that David, because of Saul, had switched his loyalties and was now a faithful servant of the Philistines.

Now David had to think of himself as some kind of genius. By moving to Philistia, he had escaped the constant pursuit of Saul and he had a safe haven from which he could continue his attacks against the enemies of Israel. What a brilliant idea he had come up with. But his ingenious deception was about to blow up in his face. Because the inevitable happened. The Israelites declared war on the Philistines and King Achish turned to David, demanding that he join forces with him.

King Achish told David, “You and your men will be expected to join me in battle.” – 1 Samuel 28:1 NLT

The dream scenario David had created was about to turn into a nightmare. If he refused to do battle with the Israelites, King Achish would realize that it had all been a ruse and that he had been tricked by David. If David agrees to fight with the Philistines, he would be attacking his own people and forfeiting his right to be their next king. He would be a traitor. So, in the heat of the moment, David gave Achish an ambiguous commitment.

“Very well!” David agreed. “Now you will see for yourself what we can do.” – 1 Samuel 28:2a NLT

David is forced to continue his deception of King Achish, delaying the inevitable decision he must make. And the king, unaware of what David is up to, assuming that he has the full support of David and his men, gives David a rather awkward situation.

Then Achish told David, “I will make you my personal bodyguard for life.” – 1 Samuel 28:2b NLT

David, who once served as the personal bodyguard of the king of Israel, we now the bodyguard for the king of the Philistines (1 Samuel 22:14). Imagine David’s embarrassment at having to try and explain this promotion to his men. This was a predicament to end all predicaments. He found himself between a rock and a hard place.  And his circumstances were all his doing. He had no one to blame but himself.

What about Saul? He found himself facing a war against the Philistines and he was missing one of his best warriors and 600 of his most battle-hardened soldiers, because he had chosen to make David and his men outlaws. His incessant, obsessive attempt to take David’s lifehad forced David to switch sides (or so Saul had concluded). Not only that, the prophet of God, Samuel, was dead. And God had removed His Spirit from Saul, leaving him without divine direction. He was a king without a Sovereign to whom he could turn for help and guidance. So he assembled his men for battle.

When Saul saw the vast Philistine army, he became frantic with fear. He asked the Lord what he should do, but the Lord refused to answer him, either by dreams or by sacred lots or by the prophets. – 1 Samuel 28:5-6 NLT

God wasn’t talking. The prophet was dead. David was AWOL. The Israelites were vastly outnumbered. And Saul was scared out of his wits. But this desperate situation had been of his own making. He is the one who had disobeyed God and failed to wipe out the Amalekites. He is the one who refused to wait for the prophet and offered sacrifices to God in direct disobedience to the law of God. He is the one who refused to accept God’s decree that David was to be the next king of Israel and, instead, had repeatedly attempted to take David’s life. Now David had sided with the enemy and Saul was facing consequences that were a direct result of his disobedience and poor decision-making. And, finding himself between a rock and a hard place, Saul would make one more ungodly decision, turning to a witch for help. 

God had made it very clear that this kind of activity was forbidden for the Israelites.

“If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.” – Leviticus 20:6 ESV

“There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead,  for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.” – Deuteronomy 18:10-12 ESV

Two men. Two different circumstances. But both found themselves in their own particular predicament because of disobedience to God. Rather than seek and submit to the will of God, they had determined to take matters into their own hands. Now they both were faced with the consequences of their God-less decision making. Thomas L. Constable provides us with a sobering summary of what is going on here.

This whole pericope illustrates that, when opposition from ungodly people persists, God’s people should continue to pray and trust Him for protection rather than taking matters into their own hands. If we initiate a plan without seeking God’s guidance, we may remove one source of aggravation and danger only to find ourselves in another. Such plans may result in some good, but they may also put us in situations where we find it even more tempting to disobey God (cf. Jacob). We should, instead, remember God’s promises (e.g., 1 Pet. 1:3-9; 2 Pet. 1:2-4) and pray for His guidance (cf. Phil. 4:6-7). – Dr. Thomas L. Constable, Notes on 1 Samuel, 2009 Edition

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Detours and Delays.

Then David said in his heart, “Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.” So David arose and went over, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath. And David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal's widow. And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him.

Then David said to Achish, “If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns, that I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?” So that day Achish gave him Ziklag. Therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.

Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites, for these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as Shur, to the land of Egypt. And David would strike the land and would leave neither man nor woman alive, but would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and come back to Achish. When Achish asked, “Where have you made a raid today?” David would say, “Against the Negeb of Judah,” or, “Against the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites,” or, “Against the Negeb of the Kenites.” And David would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, “lest they should tell about us and say, ‘So David has done.’” Such was his custom all the while he lived in the country of the Philistines. And Achish trusted David, thinking, “He has made himself an utter stench to his people Israel; therefore he shall always be my servant.”– 1 Samuel 27:1-12 ESV

David was human. He was a flesh-and-blood man who had a sin nature like anyone else and had to constantly struggle with his own inner fears, feelings of doubt, and the nagging questions regarding his fate. He loved God and wanted to do be obedient to the will of God, but he also was driven by an innate desire to stay alive. And the longer his feud with Saul continued, the more he must have struggled with believing God was going to one day make him king. In this chapter we are given a glimpse into one of David’s weaker moments. Nowhere in the chapter is God mentioned. At no point do we see David seeking the will of God. In fact, it would appear that David’s decision to find refuge in the land of the Philistines was made without any input from God. He might have received well-meaning advice from this men, but his choice to return to the very place where he had been forced to act like a madman to save his life, was most likely not something God had told him to do. But thankfully, God was still in control.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. – Proverbs 19:21 ESV

David’s last journey into Philistine territory, recorded in chapter 21, nearly got him killed. In order to escape the pursuit of Saul, David had showed up in Gath, seeking refuge from Achish, the king of the Philistines. And it just so happened that David was carrying the sword of Goliath, the Philistine champion he had defeated in battle. When the Philistine officers questioned the wisdom of providing sanctuary to David, and hinted to the king that he would be better off dead, David feigned madness and “pretended to be insane, scratching on doors and drooling down his beard” (1 Samuel 21:13 NLT). Unwilling to kill a lunatic, Achish let David escape with his life.

And now, here was David, once again, seeking to find refuge among the Philistines. His doubt and fear clouded his thinking and, evidently, erased his memory of what had happened the last time he attempted to use this particular strategy.

This time, David was welcomed by Achish with open arms and even given his own city, Ziklag, within the territory of the Philistines. David relocated his 600 men, along with their families, to their new base complete with houses, walls, and protection from Saul. This would have been a welcome upgrade from the caves in which they had been hiding for so long.

While living in the land of the Philistines, David employed a strategy that allowed him to go out and attack the enemies of Israel, of which there were many. The text mentions the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites. All of these nations occupied the land of Canaan and were part of the people groups that God had commanded Joshua and the people of Israel to completely remove from the land when they occupied it. But they had failed to do so. Over and over again, in the book of Joshua, we read of the Israelites’ failure to fully obey the command of God.

But the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the people of Judah could not drive out, so the Jebusites dwell with the people of Judah at Jerusalem to this day. – Joshua 15:63 ESV

However, they did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer, so the Canaanites have lived in the midst of Ephraim to this day but have been made to do forced labor. – Joshua 16:10 ESV

Yet the people of Manasseh could not take possession of those cities, but the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land. – Joshua 17:12 ESV

Their unwillingness or inability to drive out the inhabitants of the land would leave them with a constant threat of war and the potential for idolatry. These nations would prove to be a constant source of temptation and trouble. So David used his new headquarters in Ziklag as an outpost from which he sent raiding parties against the enemies of Israel. And his strategy included the complete annihilation of every man, woman and child, so that no one could tell Achish what he was up to. In fact, David would leave Achish with the impression that he was actually fighting the enemies of the Philistines, falsely reporting the locations of his raids.

When Achish asked, “Where have you made a raid today?” David would say, “Against the Negeb of Judah,” or, “Against the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites,” or, “Against the Negeb of the Kenites.” – 1 Samuel 27:10 ESV

So what do we do with all of this? David appears to have gone to the land of the Philistines without God’s permission. Yet, while he was there, he continued to fight the enemies of Israel, clearing the Promised Land of the nations that Joshua and the people of Israel had failed to remove. But in order to do what he did, David had to lie to King Achish. Everything he did while living in Ziklag was based on subterfuge and deception. So was he in the will of God? Was he doing what God would have him do? The text doesn’t provide us with an answer. But in the very next chapter we’ll see that David’s plan was going to eventually place him in a very difficult position. It would seem that David’s decision to seek refuge among the Philistines was not the will of God, but it did not thwart or derail the plan of God. The Proverbs have much to say about our plans and God’s will.

We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. – Proverbs 16:9 NLT

The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way? – Proverbs 20:24 NLT

The prophet, Jeremiah, prayed these powerful, self-disclosing words to the Lord:

I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself,
that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.
Correct me, O Lord, but in justice;
not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing. – Jeremiah 10:23-24 ESV

Years later, even David would pen these words:

The Lord directs the steps of the godly.
    He delights in every detail of their lives.
Though they stumble, they will never fall,
    for the Lord holds them by the hand. – Psalm 37:23-24 NLT

We can’t thwart God’s plan, but we can certainly cause ourselves a great deal of pain and suffering when we attempt to circumvent his plan with our own. We can complicate our lives by introducing detours into His divine will for our lives. Abraham and Sarah came up with the great idea to use Hagar as a means to fulfill God’s promise to give them a child. But in doing so, they were trying to do God’s will man’s way. Saul tried to seek God’s aid by offering sacrifices to him. But he failed to do it God’s way, instead taking on the role of the priest himself and bringing down God’s wrath rather than His blessing. Peter tried to dissuade Jesus from fulfilling God’s will that He die, by forbidding Him to do so. But Jesus accused him of siding with the enemy, seeking the will of Satan rather than that of God.

We must be very careful to keep our wills from taking precedence over that of God. It is not that we can stop what He has planned, but we can certainly make more difficult the path He has laid our for us. Like a driver who refuses to use his GPS, we can wander off the path and find ourselves seemingly lost and delayed in our journey, but God continues to recalculate our way, providing us with another way to reach the destination He has in store for us. Thankfully, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

A Case Of Déjà Vu.

Then David went over to the other side and stood far off on the top of the hill, with a great space between them. And David called to the army, and to Abner the son of Ner, saying, “Will you not answer, Abner?” Then Abner answered, “Who are you who calls to the king?” And David said to Abner, “Are you not a man? Who is like you in Israel? Why then have you not kept watch over your lord the king? For one of the people came in to destroy the king your lord. This thing that you have done is not good. As the Lord lives, you deserve to die, because you have not kept watch over your lord, the Lord’s anointed. And now see where the king’s spear is and the jar of water that was at his head.”

Saul recognized David’s voice and said, “Is this your voice, my son David?” And David said, “It is my voice, my lord, O king.” And he said, “Why does my lord pursue after his servant? For what have I done? What evil is on my hands? Now therefore let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If it is the Lord who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering, but if it is men, may they be cursed before the Lord, for they have driven me out this day that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods.’ Now therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth away from the presence of the Lord, for the king of Israel has come out to seek a single flea like one who hunts a partridge in the mountains.”

Then Saul said, “I have sinned. Return, my son David, for I will no more do you harm, because my life was precious in your eyes this day. Behold, I have acted foolishly, and have made a great mistake.” And David answered and said, “Here is the spear, O king! Let one of the young men come over and take it. The Lord rewards every man for his righteousness and his faithfulness, for the Lord gave you into my hand today, and I would not put out my hand against the Lord’s anointed. Behold, as your life was precious this day in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord, and may he deliver me out of all tribulation.” Then Saul said to David, “Blessed be you, my son David! You will do many things and will succeed in them.” So David went his way, and Saul returned to his place. – 1 Samuel 26:13-25 ESV

Once again, David had found himself with a prime opportunity to take the life of Saul and end his nightmarish existence as a fugitive. He and Abishai had made their way into the camp of Saul as he and his troops slept. They stood over Saul’s sleeping form and Abishai begged David for permission to take his life. But just as before, David refused to take the life of the Lord’s anointed. But he did take Saul’s spear and water jug.

Now, David stood a safe distance away and gave Abner, Saul’s commander, an unexpected wake-up call. David yelled across the valley, accusing Abner and his troops of dereliction of duty. He informs them that while they slept, someone had snuck into their camp and could have killed their king, because they had failed to do their jobs. And David held up Saul’s spear and water jug as proof. This was not only an assault on Abner, but a clear statement to Saul that David had more respect for the Lord’s anointed than Saul’s own men did. When Saul’s men had failed to provide the king with protection, David had been the one to prevent Abishai from taking his life. David was still a faithful servant of the king.

Not only that, there was no proof that he had done anything to deserve the treatment he had received from the hand of Saul. He even asked Saul to provide evidence. If Saul could provide David with a specific crime he had committed that was in violation of the law of Moses, David was willing to do the appropriate thing and offer a sacrifice as atonement. But if, as David seems to suspect, Saul’s actions against him were based on nothing more than the bad advice of men, then David calls down a curse from God on them. Why? Because David had not only become persona non grata in the kingdom of Israel, he had no access to the tabernacle. That meant he was not able to offer sacrifice for sins and receive forgiveness. David’s despair over this matter was clearly evident in his words to Saul:

“For they have driven me from my home, so I can no longer live among the Lord’s people, and they have said, ‘Go, worship pagan gods.’ Must I die on foreign soil, far from the presence of the Lord?” – 1 Samuel 26:19-20 NLT

The tabernacle was where the presence of God dwelt. The Israelites were the people of God. By being forced to live apart from the people and without access to the tabernacle, David was effectively being forced to seek another god to worship. And the thought of that was too much for him to bear. David craved restoration with the people of God and restored access to the tabernacle of God. This is reflected in one of the psalms he wrote during his days in the wilderness.

O God, you are my God;
    I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
    my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
    where there is no water.
I have seen you in your sanctuary
    and gazed upon your power and glory.
Your unfailing love is better than life itself;
    how I praise you! – Psalm 63:1-3 NLT

I lie awake thinking of you,
    meditating on you through the night.
Because you are my helper,
    I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings. – Psalm 63:6-7 NLT

And David’s passion-filled words to seem to get a compassionate reaction from Saul. Just as he had before, Saul appears to see the error of his way and confesses, “I have sinned. Come back home, my son, and I will no longer try to harm you, for you valued my life today. I have been a fool and very, very wrong” (1 Samuel 26:21 NLT). But David was no fool. He knew better than to trust the words of Saul. He had heard this speech before and had learned that “The mouths of fools are their ruin; they trap themselves with their lips” (Proverbs 18:7 NLT). Saul had no intention of calling off his hunt for David, and David knew it. Which is why, after their conversation ended, “David went his way, and Saul returned to his place” (1 Samuel 26:25 ESV).

David’s exile would continue. His longing for the presence of God would increase. His desire to be with the people of God would grow with each passing day. But during those dark days of the soul, God would be with David. He would guide him, protect him, teach him and mold him into the kind of king He desired David to be. Taking Saul’s life would not have put an end to David’s problems. To do so would have simply created bigger issues for him. He would have been in violation of God’s law. He would have been guilty of taking matters into his own hands and trying to accomplish God’s will his own way. So, David returned to the wilderness. But he was going to learn that he was not alone. Contrary to what David and the people of Israel believed, God was not restricted to the tabernacle. His presence was not bound to a building. He was right beside David every step he took in the wilderness. He was with David as he sought sanctuary in the caves. He was watching over David as he slept under the stars. He was David’s constant companion, ever-watching protector, wise counselor, and faithful guide. It was David’s experiences in the wilderness that would lead him to pen the words of his most famous psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd;
    I have all that I need.
He lets me rest in green meadows;
    he leads me beside peaceful streams.
He renews my strength.
He guides me along right paths,
    bringing honor to his name.
Even when I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid,
    for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
    protect and comfort me.
You prepare a feast for me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
    My cup overflows with blessings.
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me
    all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
    forever. – Psalm 23 NLT

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

The Fool On the Hill.

Then the Ziphites came to Saul at Gibeah, saying, “Is not David hiding himself on the hill of Hachilah, which is on the east of Jeshimon?” So Saul arose and went down to the wilderness of Ziph with three thousand chosen men of Israel to seek David in the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul encamped on the hill of Hachilah, which is beside the road on the east of Jeshimon. But David remained in the wilderness. When he saw that Saul came after him into the wilderness, David sent out spies and learned that Saul had indeed come. Then David rose and came to the place where Saul had encamped. And David saw the place where Saul lay, with Abner the son of Ner, the commander of his army. Saul was lying within the encampment, while the army was encamped around him.

Then David said to Ahimelech the Hittite, and to Joab’s brother Abishai the son of Zeruiah, “Who will go down with me into the camp to Saul?” And Abishai said, “I will go down with you.” So David and Abishai went to the army by night. And there lay Saul sleeping within the encampment, with his spear stuck in the ground at his head, and Abner and the army lay around him. Then Abishai said to David, “God has given your enemy into your hand this day. Now please let me pin him to the earth with one stroke of the spear, and I will not strike him twice.” But David said to Abishai, “Do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be guiltless?” And David said, “As the Lord lives, the Lord will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish. The Lord forbid that I should put out my hand against the Lord’s anointed. But take now the spear that is at his head and the jar of water, and let us go.” So David took the spear and the jar of water from Saul’s head, and they went away. No man saw it or knew it, nor did any awake, for they were all asleep, because a deep sleep from the Lord had fallen upon them. – 1 Samuel 26:1-12 ESV

Chapter 25 provided us with a brief respite from the ongoing conflict between Saul and David. But chapter 26 picks up where chapter 24 left off. When we last left Saul, he was headed home after his near-death encounter with David. He had unknowingly walked right into an ambush, choosing to relieve himself in a cave where David and his men had been hiding. But David had spared Saul’s life, choosing instead to confront him face-to-face and assure Saul that he posed no threat to his kingdom. He was not going to lift his hand against Saul. And we’re told that “Saul went home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold” (1 Samuel 24:22 ESV).

Chapter 25 introduced us to a new character, Nabal, who displayed all the classic characteristics of a biblical fool and whose unwise actions almost caused the unnecessary deaths of everyone associated with him. But Abigail, his wife, had intervened and prevented David from doing something he would long regret. Nabal’s rashness and ungodliness were going to be the death of him – literally. This fool would die a fool’s death. But while David had been able to walk away from Nabal with his integrity intact, he would soon discover that there another fool in his life who had not gone anywhere. Saul may have gone home, but he wouldn’t stay there for long. While he had shown signs of remorse in his last encounter with David, he had not given up his quest to see David put to death. And when the Ziphites betrayed David to Saul a second time (1 Samuel 23:19), informing Saul of his whereabouts, he mustered 3,000 soldiers to hunt him down.

Verse three tells us, “Saul encamped on the hill of Hachilah, which is beside the road on the east of Jeshimon.” Saul’s stubborn refusal to give up the hunt is truly remarkable. His remorse-filled words, spoken to David during their conversation outside the cave had sounded so sincere.

“You are a better man than I am, for you have repaid me good for evil.  Yes, you have been amazingly kind to me today, for when the Lord put me in a place where you could have killed me, you didn’t do it. Who else would let his enemy get away when he had him in his power? May the Lord reward you well for the kindness you have shown me today. And now I realize that you are surely going to be king, and that the kingdom of Israel will flourish under your rule.” – 1 Samuel 24:17-20 NLT

But Saul was a fool. It's interesting to note that the name of the fool in the last chapter, Nabal, actually meant “fool”. It refers to a particular type of fool, one who is overly self-confident and particularly close-minded. He tends to act as his own god and freely gratifies his own sin nature. This type of fool is the worst kind and can only be reproved by God Himself. The prophet Isaiah describes this type of fool (nabal):

For fools speak foolishness
    and make evil plans.
They practice ungodliness
    and spread false teachings about the Lord.
They deprive the hungry of food
    and give no water to the thirsty. – Isaiah 32:6 NLTThis kind of fool is typically godless in nature. It is not that they don’t believe in God, but that they act as if God does not exist. This was Saul’s problem. He kept pursuing David in spite of the fact that God had clearly ordained him to be Saul’s replacement. Saul refused to accept God’s will and was willing to risk anything and everything in his attempt to circumvent God’s divine authority. He was so busy chasing David, that he had no time to meet the needs of his nation or its citizens. David had become much more than a distraction, he was an obsession.

So, Saul and his troops set up camp on the hill of Hachilah. He foolishly thought he was in the right. He foolishly considered himself safe, falling asleep that night, surrounded by his 3,000 well-trained soldiers. But David and Abishai, his nephew, snuck into the camp that night and crept right up to Saul as he and his crack troops lay fast asleep. Samuel goes on to qualify that their heavy sleep was God’s doing: “a deep sleep from the Lord had fallen upon them” (1 Samuel 26:12 ESV). Once again, David found himself in a tempting situation where his arch-enemy was seemingly handed to him on a silver platter. Even Abishai recognized a golden opportunity when he saw one, begging for permission to put Saul to death right then and there. But David’s response was firm and and crystal clear:

“No!” David said. “Don’t kill him. For who can remain innocent after attacking the Lord’s anointed one? Surely the Lord will strike Saul down someday, or he will die of old age or in battle. The Lord forbid that I should kill the one he has anointed! But take his spear and that jug of water beside his head, and then let’s get out of here!” – 1 Samuel 26:9-11 NLT

David had learned a lot from his encounter with Nabal and Abigail. While the timing seemed perfect and his justification for killing Saul seemed plausible, he knew that he had been given no green light from God to take the life of the king. If vengeance was necessary, that was up to God. If Saul was meant to die an untimely death, that too was up to God. David refused to make evil plans or practice ungodliness. In other words, he refused to act like a fool. He wasn’t going to lower himself to the same level as Nabal or Saul. He chose to do the godly thing. He determined to leave his own destiny and the fate of his enemies in God’s hands. We find in the Proverbs a number of verses that provide apt descriptions of David’s actions:

One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil,
    but a fool is reckless and careless. – Proverbs 14:16 ESV

The anger of the king is a deadly threat;
    the wise will try to appease it. – Proverbs 16:14 NLT

Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom.
    Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. – Proverbs 3:7 NLT

But the Scriptures also provide us with insights into the nature of Saul’s perplexing behavior.

Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?
    There is more hope for a fool than for him. – Proverbs 26:12 ESV

Wisdom is better than foolishness, just as light is better than darkness. For the wise can see where they are going, but fools walk in the dark. – Ecclesiastes 2:13-14 NLT

Two men stood on a hill. One was a fool, the other was wise. Both knew God. Both had been appointed and anointed by God. But one was living his life as if God didn’t exist, the quintessential trademark of a fool. As this chapter unfolds, we will continue to see a stark contrast between these two men. Their lives were inseparably linked, but the outcome of their lives would prove to be radically divergent. Wisdom and folly. Two ways of life that lead to two very different outcomes. 

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Driven By Desire and Distraction.

When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.” Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife. When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.

David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim. – 1 Samuel 25:39-44 ESV

In these closing verses of chapter 25, we are given a glimpse into an area of David’s life that was going to prove an ongoing problem for him throughout his life. He loved women. And this attraction to the opposite sex would be a constant thorn in his side even after becoming king. He would even pass on this propensity to his son, Solomon, who took David’s obsession with women to a whole new level.

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh’s daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, “You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.” Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. And in fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord. – 1 Kings 11:1-3 NLT

And all of this, as the passage reflects, was in direct violation of God’s commands.

The king must not take many wives for himself, because they will turn his heart away from the LORD. – Deuteronomy 17:17 NLT

Yet, after David finally became king, he would continue his practice of accumulating wives, in direct violation of God’s command.

After moving from Hebron to Jerusalem, David married more concubines and wives, and they had more sons and daughters. – 2 Samuel 5:13 NLT

David was a man after God’s own heart, but he was far from perfect. Women were his Achilles heel. And he found Abigail highly attractive. On top of that, she was godly, wise, assertive, brave, insightful, and a take-charge kind of woman. And it didn’t hurt that she was recently widowed. In fact, David didn’t seem to give Nabal’s body time to cool off before he made the move on Abigail, asking her to marry him.

The text ends with the statement that “David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives” (1 Samuel 25:43 ESV). It also references Michal, David’s first wife, whom he had to leave behind when he fled from Saul. She was eventually given to another man, but David most likely didn’t know that at the time. So effectively, he had three wives at one time. Again, in direct disobedience to the will of God.

Why is this important? It provides us with an insight into the life of this man who would prove to be Israel’s greatest king and who, as has already been pointed out, was declared by God to be a man after His own heart. David loved God. He wanted to serve God. He had a deep desire to honor and obey God. But he also had a sin nature, just like the rest of us. And one of David’s weak spots would be his attraction to women. Satan would repeatedly use this weakness to his own advantage, tempting David to give in to his overactive libido. David would learn to justify his actions, excusing his sexual obsession as natural and normal. And yet, this sinful proclivity was a spiritual weakness, a chink in his armor that would make him an easy target for the enemy.

There are some less-than-flattering similarities between David and the Old Testament judge, Samson, when it comes to this issue. During a time when the Jews were being tormented by the Philistines because of their disobedience, God raised up Samson to be their judge and deliverer. He was a powerful man, but he had a particular weakness.

One day when Samson was in Timnah, one of the Philistine women caught his eye. When he returned home, he told his father and mother, “A young Philistine woman in Timnah caught my eye. I want to marry her. Get her for me.” – Judges 14:1-2 NLT

Like David, Samson couldn’t keep his eyes or his hands off of women. His mother and father tried to reason with Samson and talk him out of choosing a wife who was a pagan, but he would not listen.

“Get her for me! She looks good to me.” – Judges 14:3 NLT

Later on we read, “One day Samson went to the Philistine town of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute” (Judges 16:1 NLT). And then, “Some time later Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the valley of Sorek” (Judges 16:4 NLT). Each of these women would prove to be a thorn in Samson’s side. They would cause him much grief and sorrow. And his dalliance with Delilah would result in his own death.

David too, would struggle with a lustful, almost lascivious attraction to women. The most infamous story concerning David and his love affair with the opposite sex involves his affair with Bathsheba. David was the king. He was rich, powerful, and happily married to several women already. But one day, as he walked on the rooftop patio of his palace, he spied Bathsheba bathing alfresco. David was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The passage tells us “In the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites…However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1 NLT). David wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He was the warrior-king, but instead of doing battle with the Ammonites, David would end up battling his own lusts and losing. His lust for Bathsheba quickly turned to action and he had sex with her. When their affair resulted in her pregnancy, he began a cover-up campaign, that eventually led him to have her husband, a faithful soldier in his army, purposely exposed and killed on the front lines of battle. All so David could marry his wife and cover up his illicit affair.

James provides us with a stark explanation of how this whole process works.

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:14-15 NLT

David was a man after God’s own heart, but he had a problem. His heart was divided. He loved women. He saw them as a source of satisfaction, comfort, pleasure and self-worth. They made him feel good. They provided him with companionship. Perhaps they helped fulfill his need for conquest. Whatever drove his love affair with women, it would end up distracting him from what should have been his primary focus: His love for and dedication to God.

The chapter ends with the statement that “Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim” (1 Samuel 25:44 ESV). This is important, because, while it might be easy to use this as an explanation why David took Abigail to be his wife, it falls short. Years later, when David became king and Saul was dead, he would send for Michal, demanding that Ish-bosheth, the sole remaining heir to the throne of Saul, hand her over.

So David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, saying, “Give me my wife Michal, to whom I was betrothed for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.”  Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband, from Paltiel the son of Laish. But her husband went with her, weeping as he went, and followed her as far as Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, “Go, return.” So he returned. – 2 Samuel 3:14-16 ESV

In spite of the fact that David had married multiple wives since his departure from Saul’s palace, he had not been able to stop thinking about Michal. He had to have her. So he had her forcibly removed from her husband. And like so many of David’s decisions regarding women, this one would prove to be less-than-ideal. Michal would end up despising David and his God. Their marriage would produce little in the way of love and no offspring.

David had a propensity to be driven by desire, and that desire would prove to be a distraction throughout his life. Even in his old age, near the point of death, an attractive woman would play a significant role in his life.

King David was now very old, and no matter how many blankets covered him, he could not keep warm. So his advisers told him, “Let us find a young virgin to wait on you and look after you, my lord. She will lie in your arms and keep you warm.”

So they searched throughout the land of Israel for a beautiful girl, and they found Abishag from Shunem and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful, and she looked after the king and took care of him. But the king had no sexual relations with her. – 1 Kings 1:1-4 NLT

We all have weaknesses. Each of us has our spiritual Achilles heel, which Satan, our enemy, knows about and takes full advantage of at every opportunity. He tempts, lures and entices us. He baits the hook with the very thing we find most attractive. It may be sex, popularity, material possessions, pleasure, a sense of accomplishment, power, or any of a number of things. In essence, our weakness is nothing more than an insight into what we have made an idol in our life – a god that serves as a stand-in or substitute for the one true God. For David, women because his go-to choice for satisfaction, self-worth, and a sense of joy. Sexual pleasure was his idol of choice. What is yours? What do you turn to other than God? What do you worship in place of God? Anything that we allow to rob God of worship is a weakness in our lives that must be confessed and removed. When God said, “You must not have any other god but me” (Exodus 20:3 NLT), He meant it. And David was going to have to learn to believe it.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

The Subtle Snare of Self-Salvation.

And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand! For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male.” Then David received from her hand what she had brought him. And he said to her, “Go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice, and I have granted your petition.”

And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk. So she told him nothing at all until the morning light. In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. And about ten days later the Lord struck Nabal, and he died. – 1 Samuel 25:32-38 ESV

David knew the hand of God when he saw it. As he and his men stood there with their weapons at the ready, prepared to wipe out Nabal and every male in his household, Abigail had showed up with a gift of food and a word of wise counsel. She had bowed down before David and begged his forgiveness. And she appealed to David to refrain from doing something he would later regret. Nabal was a fool. He was insignificant and not worth the time and effort it would take to enact revenge. She wisely warned David, “When the Lord has done all he promised and has made you leader of Israel,  don’t let this be a blemish on your record. Then your conscience won’t have to bear the staggering burden of needless bloodshed and vengeance” (1 Samuel 25:30-31 NLT).

Her words struck a chord with David. They were like a cold glass of water thrown in his face, waking him up to the reality and danger of what he was about to do. And he was grateful, not only to her, but to God for having sent her. “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you to meet me today!” (1 Samuel 25:32 NLT). He knew this was a God-ordained encounter with Abigail. He clearly sensed that God had sent her to prevent him from doing something he would later regret. Killing Nabal would have been an act of vengeance, but not an act of God. David had not sought out or received any word from God to take the life of Nabal or anyone else. But the temptation of self-salvation and taking revenge on those who offend us always lingers within us. David had been offended by a rich fool and he was man enough to do something about it. But a man after God’s own heart would leave vengeance up to the Lord. And that is exactly what Abigail reminded David of. God had bigger plans for David. He was going to be the next king of Israel. Nabal was a bump in the road on the way to the throne room, and David would be better off letting God deal with him.

It’s interesting to note that when David had been given the opportunity to kill Saul, he had refrained from doing so. He even told Saul, “May the Lord judge between me and you, may the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you” (1 Samuel 24:12 ESV). At that point, David had been willing to leave the judgment of Saul in the hands of God. But when it came to Nabal, David had suddenly determined to take matters into his own hands. Only the words of Abigail prevented David from doing the unthinkable and committing an act of fratricide against fellow Jews.

And when David heard the words of Abigail, he immediately recognized the gravity of what he had been about to do. He said to her,  “Thank God for your good sense! Bless you for keeping me from murder and from carrying out vengeance with my own hands” (1 Samuel 25:33 NLT). There is the key to understanding this exchange between Abigail and David. His sin was not his anger with Nabal, but his desire to carry out vengeance against Nabal with his own hands. What he was about to do was an act of self-salvation, but not self-preservation. Nabal was no threat to David. All he had done was offend David by treating him with contempt and disrespect. He had hurt David’s pride. And David had been willing to slaughter Nabal and everyone associated with him in a needless act of revenge.

It’s interesting to note that, years later, when David was king, he would have another opportunity to take revenge on someone who treated him with disdain and disrespect. It was when his son, Absalom, had taken over Jerusalem and David had been forced to flee for his life. On his way out of town, he had been confronted by a man named Shimei, a member of the clan of Saul. As David and his men made their way out of the city, he threw stones at them and loudly cursed David.

“Get out of here, you murderer, you scoundrel!” he shouted at David. “The Lord is paying you back for all the bloodshed in Saul’s clan. You stole his throne, and now the Lord has given it to your son Absalom. At last you will taste some of your own medicine, for you are a murderer!” – 2 Samuel 16:7-8 NLT

David’s men offered to kill Shimei, but David restrained them, saying:

“My own son is trying to kill me. Doesn’t this relative of Saul have even more reason to do so? Leave him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to do it. And perhaps the Lord will see that I am being wronged and will bless me because of these curses today.” – 2 Samuel 16:11-12 NLT

David’s encounter with Abigail had taught him a valuable lesson: To leave vengeance in the hands of God. He was to do nothing without God’s expressed permission. Taking Nabal’s life might have assuaged David’s damaged pride, but it would have done far more damage to his reputation. It would appear from studying the life of David, that he was a man prone to impulsive behavior. He was susceptible to giving in to his inner impulses and failing to think things through. His affair with Bathsheba is a case in point. He let his physical passions override his reasoning. He saw her and he wanted her. So, he took her. He didn’t think it through. And when his actions got him in trouble and she became pregnant, he threw reason to the wind, and went into self-preservation mode. He attempted to cover up his indiscretion with a carefully thought-out plan to have Uriah, he husband returned from war so that it might appear that the child was his. And when is efforts failed, his self-preservation efforts escalated and he had Uriah murdered, so he could take Bathsheba as his wife.

Self-salvation is tempting, but it never turns out like we were expecting. Taking matters into our own hands may feel good for the moment, but the repercussions can be devastating. Too often, our desire for revenge is based on nothing more than our own damaged pride. There is no real threat to our safety, but we find ourselves offended by something someone has said to us or about us. Perhaps it’s a rumor that someone has spread falsely representing us. It could be a simple case of someone showing us disrespect or treating us in a way we find distasteful. Our first impulse is to get even, to teach them a lesson. But what would God have us do? How would He prefer we respond? For David, the best course of action was no action at all. He was to leave Nabal in God’s hands. Rather than seeking revenge on Nabal, he was to rest in the sovereign will of God.

Jesus gave us some similar advice in the Beatitudes.

“You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.” – Matthew 5:38-42 NLT

We are to be driven by a bigger purpose than our own self-salvation and preservation. God has bigger plans for us than worrying about what others think and wasting out time attempting to protect our reputations. God had greater plans for David than eliminating a fool who happened to offend him. There were greater enemies to fight. There were much more significant wars for David to wage. He was to leave Nabal in God’s hands. And because he did, David would see God deal with Nabal as only God could. When Abigail told Nabal all that had happened and how David had been planning to come and destroy him, “he had a stroke, and he lay paralyzed on his bed like a stone. About ten days later, the Lord struck him, and he died” (1 Samuel 25:37-38 NLT). God avenged David. God dealt with Nabal. And David learned that the salvation of God is preferable to self-salvation every time.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Wisdom From God.

Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared and five seahs of parched grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys. And she said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. And as she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them. Now David had said, “Surely in vain have I guarded all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him, and he has returned me evil for good. God do so to the enemies of David and more also, if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him.”

When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt. Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant. Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent. Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal. And now let this present that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord. Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live. If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God. And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And when the Lord has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel, my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself. And when the Lord has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.” – 1 Samuel 25:18-31 ESV

In these verses, we are provided with a stark contrast between Nabal and Abigai, and it shows up in their speech, their choice of words. When Nabal had first encountered the men sent by David, he responded rashly and rather harshly.

“Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?” – 1 Samuel 25:10-11 ESV

Nabal treated David’s men with disrespect and dishonor. His words were flippant and filled with disdain. All the time that his shepherds had been tending his flocks in the wilderness of Paran, David and his men had provided protection. One of Nabal’s own shepherds confirmed this fact when he appealed to Abigail to intervene.

“These men have been very good to us, and we never suffered any harm from them. Nothing was stolen from us the whole time they were with us. In fact, day and night they were like a wall of protection to us and the sheep.” – 1 Samuel 25:15-16 NLT

And yet, Nabal refused to acknowledge any of this and treated David with contempt rather than showing him gratitude. He was a fool. He fit the biblical definition of a fool.

Wise words bring approval, but fools are destroyed by their own words. – Ecclesiastes 10:12 ESV

Fools’ words get them into constant quarrels;
    they are asking for a beating.

The mouths of fools are their ruin;
    they trap themselves with their lips. – Proverbs 18:6-7 NLT

And Nabal was about to get a beating from David. In fact, David was planning on wiping out Nabal and every one of his men.

“A lot of good it did to help this fellow. We protected his flocks in the wilderness, and nothing he owned was lost or stolen. But he has repaid me evil for good. May God strike me and kill me if even one man of his household is still alive tomorrow morning!” – 1 Samuel 25:21-22 NLT

But wiser minds prevailed. Abigail, the wife of Nabal, when apprised of the situation, stepped in and determined to right the wrong her husband had done to David. This was probably not the first time she had been forced to intervene in her husband’s affairs. She is well aware of his reputation and, as his wife, she had first-hand experience with his foolishness. She was extremely blunt when describing him to David.

“I know Nabal is a wicked and ill-tempered man; please don’t pay any attention to him. He is a fool, just as his name suggests.” – 1 Samuel 25:25 NLT

But it was her words of reconciliation to David that provide us with the greatest insight into the difference between Abigail and her husband. Her words and actions were marked by wisdom and insight. And what she exhibited was far more than mere human intelligence. She was not just a smart woman. She was a godly woman.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
    and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. – Proverbs 9:10 ESV

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
    all those who practice it have a good understanding. – Psalm 111:10 ESV

Abigail was wise because she was godly. She feared the Lord. She saw the hand of God at work in the life of David. God had provided her with insight into the circumstances surrounding David’s life. While Nabal saw David simply as a man on the run, a fugitive from justice; Abigail saw him as the next king of Israel.

“The Lord will surely reward you with a lasting dynasty, for you are fighting the Lord’s battles.” – 1 Samuel 25:28 NLT

“When the Lord has done all he promised and has made you leader of Israel,  don’t let this be a blemish on your record. ” – 1 Samuel 25:30-31 NLT

Abigail was not just buttering David up, stroking his ego in an attempt to get on his good side. She had divine insight from God. She had been given wisdom from God that enabled her to assess the situation and recognize that David, as God’s hand-picked successor to Saul, would not want to do anything that would blemish his future reputation or dishonor the name of God. Her words and actions reveal her wisdom.

From a wise mind comes wise speech;
    the words of the wise are persuasive.

Kind words are like honey —
    sweet to the soul and healthy for the body. – Proverbs 16:23-24 NLT

Every aspect of Abigail’s handling of this delicate and dangerous situation reveals a divinely inspired understanding of human nature and the keys to the successful mitigation of difficult circumstances. Her provision of food for David’s men and her choice of words for David’s ears were both divinely inspired. One of the most insightful things Abigail did that day was to get David to see things from God’s perspective. She knew David would be upset, and rightfully so. She fully understood how her husband’s foolish actions and words would cause David to take offense and be tempted to seek revenge. But what would God have David do? She wanted David to understand that God was working through her to prevent the unnecessary slaughter of innocent people, an action that would place a permanent blight on David’s reputation. It is impossible to think about this fact and not fast-forward to a future event in David’s life when he failed to heed the words of Abigail.

“When the Lord has done all he promised and has made you leader of Israel, don’t let this be a blemish on your record. Then your conscience won’t have to bear the staggering burden of needless bloodshed and vengeance.” – 1 Samuel 25:30-31 NLT

Years later, after David had become the king of Israel, he would have an affair with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his soldiers. And when she became pregnant with his child, he would arrange for her husband, Uriah, to be exposed to enemy fire on the front lines, in order that he could legally take Bathsheba as his wife. And he would know what it was like for his conscience to bear the staggering burden of needless bloodshed.

The words of Abigail were wise because they were godly. And they were godly because they came from the mouth of a godly woman. And we will see that David was going to recognize the hand of God in the actions of Abigail. His God would use this woman to accomplish His will regarding David.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Fear Foolishness.

When David’s young men came, they said all this to Nabal in the name of David, and then they waited. And Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?” So David’s young men turned away and came back and told him all this. And David said to his men, “Every man strap on his sword!” And every man of them strapped on his sword. David also strapped on his sword. And about four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage.

But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, “Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master, and he railed at them. Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them. They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. Now therefore know this and consider what you should do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his house, and he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him.” – 1 Samuel 25:9-17 ESV

We discover in these verses that Nabal was a man who lived up to his name, which happened to mean “fool”. He had all the classic characteristics of a biblical fool.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,
    but a wise man listens to advice. – Proverbs 12:15 ESV

The wise don’t make a show of their knowledge,
    but fools broadcast their foolishness. – Proverbs 12:23 NLT

Short-tempered people do foolish things… – Proverbs 14:17 NLT

He was arrogant, full of himself, quick-tempered, resistant to counsel, and ignorant of the consequences of his behavior. He treated David, a mighty warrior, as if he were a nobody. He showed him no honor or respect. He looked down his nose at him, foolishly saying, “Who does this son of Jesse think he is? There are lots of servants these days who run away from their masters. Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I’ve slaughtered for my shearers and give it to a band of outlaws who come from who knows where?” (1 Samuel 25:10-11 NLT). He knew exactly who David was. Even the Philistines had heard about David’s reputation as a mighty warrior. But Nabal, knowing that David was a man on the run, made a very foolish decision to treat David with disrespect and disdain. 

One of Nabal’s shepherds, when he had witnessed what his foolish master had done, ran and told Abigail, Nabal’s wife. Even his words reveal the depth of Nabal’s problem: “he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him” (1 Samuel 25:17 ESV). Nabal’s foolishness ran so deep that he could not even recognize the folly and danger of his own actions. And he was totally resistant to the wise counsel of those around him who might have been able to protect him had he only listened.

What would have possessed Nabal to act so foolishly and risk the wrath of someone as powerful as David? We have to remember that, according to the Bible, foolishness is not a mental or psychological problem, it is spiritual. At the heart of Nabal’s folly was lack of respect for and fear of God. He had placed himself at the center of his own life, making himself his own god and arbiter of his own fate. Ultimately, foolishness is the lack of wisdom. And Psalm 111 tells us:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
    all those who practice it have a good understanding. – Psalm 111:19 ESV

Scripture repeatedly warns us that a person who denies, ignores, or neglects God lacks wisdom and inevitably displays the characteristics of a fool.

• He acts thoughtlessly: He gives little or no thought to God; refusing to consider the truth about God. His treatment of others is simply a byproduct of his lack of thought regarding God’s holiness and judgment.
• He becomes dull-minded:  When a man fails to consider God, his mind becomes dulled by the things of this world. He begins to lose the ability to see clearly, having his spiritual vision clouded by materialism, success, comfort, and pleasure. not being sharp in his thoughts about God. His mind becomes intoxicated with the things of this world and he sluggish toward God.
  • He becomes senseless: A man who neglects God finds himself lacking in wisdom and acting contrary to good common sense. Because he is deficient in his thoughts about God, he becomes in his ability to think clearly and sensibly. He may be smart and successful, but he will be plagued by senseless decision-making and the harmful outcomes it brings.
  • He will be without understanding: Because he fails to grasp or comprehend God; he will end up with wrong conclusions or thoughts about God. He will wrongly assume that God is not there or that God does not care about what he is doing. He will make godless decisions because he is essentially living a God-less life.
  • He will exhibit an ignorance of God: He won’t truly know God. Because he has left God out of his thought processes, he will display behavior that reveals his faulty understand of God. He won’t fear God’s holiness. He won’t worry about God’s judgment. He won’t seek God’s wisdom. He won’t see a need for God’s forgiveness.
  • He will be unwise: Without God in his life, he will lack wisdom. If fact, regardless of what he tries to do, he will act contrary to wisdom. His behavior will make sense to him, but it will actually lead to dangerous and foolish outcomes.

These characteristics, while true of the lost, should be especially scary to the believer, because any of us can exhibit these same qualities at any time. All it takes is for us to neglect God in our lives, to fail to fear Him and treat Him with the honor, respect and worship He is due. When we leave God out of our lives, we open up the door to foolishness. Foolishness if nothing more than a lack of wisdom and, as the psalmist said, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Nabal was a fool because Nabal was ungodly. If he didn’t fear God, why in the world would he fear David? If he was willing to treat God with disrespect, what would prevent him from treating David the same way?

It is interesting to note that, in the Proverbs, there are five different types of fools mentioned. They seem to run on a continuum, moving from bad to worse. There is the simple fool, the silly fool, the sensual fool, the scornful fool and the stubborn fool. Each is characterized by a different Hebrew word. The last one, the stubborn fool, is the word, “nâbâl”, which just happens to be the name of the character in our story. 

According to the Proverbs, this is the most dangerous type of fool. A stubborn fool rejects God and His ways. He is self-confident and close-minded. He is his own god, freely gratifying his own sin nature. It is his goal to draw as many others as possible into following his ways. His actions tend to impact all those around him, just as Nabal’s actions were going to result in the deaths of all those around him. The Proverbs make it clear that only God can reprove a stubborn fool. And we will see in the story that, while David had a heart for God, he ran the risk of acting foolishly himself. He was going to let the foolish actions of Nabal cause him to respond in a godless, foolish way. But wiser heads would prevail.
 

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Suffering Fools Not-So-Gladly.

Now Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah.

Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paran. And there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. The man was very rich; he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved; he was a Calebite. David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep. So David sent ten young men. And David said to the young men, “Go up to Carmel, and go to Nabal and greet him in my name. And thus you shall greet him: ‘Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have. I hear that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel. Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we come on a feast day. Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.’” – 1 Samuel 25:1-8 ESV

This chapter is going to serve as the centerpiece between chapters 24 and 26, linking the two stories they contain. In chapter 24, we saw David pass on what appeared to be a God-given opportunity to take the life of King Saul. He would not raise his hand against the Lord’s anointed. Chapter 26 will present us with a very similar story in which David is presented with another tempting and seemingly divine opportunity to get rid of Saul once and for all. Sandwiched in-between these two chapters is the story of David’s encounter with Abigail and Nabal. The central figure in the story is Abigail. Her relationship with her rich, but foolish husband, Nabal, will provide a timely comparison to that of David and Saul. We will find intentional hints dropped along the way that reveal how much Saul is like the character of Nabal. And Abigail will provide a hard-to-miss illustration of how someone is to handle the “fools” in their lives.

But before we address David’s encounter with Abigail and Nabal, we have to deal with David’s loss. The chapter opens with the announcement of the death of Samuel. This would have been a shocking blow to David. Samuel, the prophet and the last of the judges of Israel, had played an integral role in the nation’s transformation into a monarchy. He had witnessed and overseen the establishment of Saul as the very first king over the nation of Israel. He had done so somewhat reluctantly, seeing their demand for a king as an indictment against him as their judge. But there was more to the story. We’re told in 1 Samuel 8 that Samuel had two sons, Joel and Abijah, who both served as judges, but they didn’t exactly have sterling reputations.

Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. – 1 Samuel 8:3 ESV

It was the thought of these two men judging over them that moved the people to demand a king. But Samuel took offense. He had been the one to rule over and guide them. He had served as God’s mouthpiece, dispensing judgment and providing direction for the people. But with the appointment of Saul as king, Samuel’s role changed dramatically. He became a counselor to the king and a prophet to the people. He still had a vital role to play, presenting Saul with the difficult news that his kingdom was coming to an end and that God had already chosen his replacement. He was the one to anoint David to be the next king. But now, as the nation stood on the brink of a major change, as the transfer of power from one man to another grew closer, Samuel died. The last judge of Israel passed off the scene. A new era was beginning. The period of the kings was about to begin in earnest and it would represent one of the most volatile and unstable periods in the history of the nation of Israel. David and Saul would end up representing the two diametricallyopposite extremes of kingly conduct and character. Israel would know what it was like to have godly kings and godless, foolish, immoral kings.

And that is where the story of Abigail and Nabal comes in. David and Saul had parted ways after their encounter outside the cave in the wilderness of Engedi. Saul had shown remorse over his treatment of David and acknowledged his realization of the fact that David was going to replace him. It was God-ordained. But David did not return with Saul. He continued to live in the wilderness with his men, knowing that not much had changed. The transfer of power from Saul to himself was up to God and according to His timing. He would have to continue to wait until God decided the timing was right. And that brought him into the wilderness of Paran, where he had a “chance” encounter with Nabal. 

We’re told that Nabal was rich, having 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats. He also had a wife named Abigail. And the text tells us, “The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved; he was a Calebite” (1 Samuel 25:3 ESV). We are immediately presented with the contrasting characters of these two individuals. They have been joined together in marriage, but they could not be more dissimilar in their natures and behaviors. Later on in the story, Abigail will rather bluntly share with David, “I know Nabal is a wicked and ill-tempered man; please don’t pay any attention to him. He is a fool, just as his name suggests” (1 Samuel 25:25 NLT). His very name meant “fool.” Somewhat of an odd name for any parents to name their child, but the name obviously fit. Nabal was a surly, egotistical, arrogant and unwise individual who had made a name for himself in the world and enjoyed a life of relative wealth. In the Bible, the designation, “fool” had nothing to do with intelligence. It is more of a spiritually-oriented label. David would one day write in one of his psalms, “Only fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!” (Psalm 14:1 NLT).

In Psalm 10, we are given an even more descriptive assessment of the fool, but in terms of their wickedness:

4 The wicked are too proud to seek God.
    They seem to think that God is dead.
5 Yet they succeed in everything they do.
    They do not see your punishment awaiting them.
    They sneer at all their enemies.
6 They think, “Nothing bad will ever happen to us!
    We will be free of trouble forever!” – Psalm 10:4-6 NLT

It seems that David and his men had encountered the shepherds of Nabal while they were hiding out in the area of Paran. Because of their presence there, David’s men had made the area safe from Amalakites and Philistines. They had served as a kind of military presence in Paran, ensuring the safety of its residence, and this had included Nabal’s shepherds and his sheep. So David determined to seek aid from Nabal, expecting him to gladly extend courtesy out of gratitude. He sent his men with a message for Nabal.

“Peace and prosperity to you, your family, and everything you own! I am told that it is sheep-shearing time. While your shepherds stayed among us near Carmel, we never harmed them, and nothing was ever stolen from them. Ask your own men, and they will tell you this is true. So would you be kind to us, since we have come at a time of celebration? Please share any provisions you might have on hand with us and with your friend David.” – 1 Samuel 25:6-8 NLT

But David was in for a rude surprise. His kind words were going to be met with stubborn defiance. This encounter was going to push David to the limits. He was already struggling with his ongoing feud with Saul. He had been hiding and running for some time now. And he had just heard the devastating news that his mentor, Samuel, had died. He was not in a good mood. He was not a man to be trifled with. And yet, at this low point in his life, David found himself coming face-to-face with Nabal, the fool.

David was going to receive an invaluable lesson on how to handle the fools in his life, and it would come from an unlikely source, the wife of Nabal. And this lesson would serve David well in his ongoing relationship with Saul. 

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

A Heart-to-Heart Talk.

“See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand. For by the fact that I cut off the corner of your robe and did not kill you, you may know and see that there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it. May the Lord judge between me and you, may the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you. As the proverb of the ancients says, ‘Out of the wicked comes wickedness.’ But my hand shall not be against you. After whom has the king of Israel come out? After whom do you pursue? After a dead dog! After a flea! May the Lord therefore be judge and give sentence between me and you, and see to it and plead my cause and deliver me from your hand.”

As soon as David had finished speaking these words to Saul, Saul said, “Is this your voice, my son David?” And Saul lifted up his voice and wept. He said to David, “You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil. And you have declared this day how you have dealt well with me, in that you did not kill me when the Lord put me into your hands. For if a man finds his enemy, will he let him go away safe? So may the Lord reward you with good for what you have done to me this day. And now, behold, I know that you shall surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hand. Swear to me therefore by the Lord that you will not cut off my offspring after me, and that you will not destroy my name out of my father’s house.” And David swore this to Saul. Then Saul went home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold. – 1 Samuel 24:11-22 ESV

There are those who struggle with the Bible’s references to David being “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22). After all, this is the man who committed adultery with Bathsheba, then had her husband killed so he could marry her. He was far from perfect morally or spiritually. So why the lofty designation as a man after God’s own heart? Today’s passage provides us with a glimpse into the very heart of David. Under the worst of conditions and after a great deal of stress and emotional duress, David reveals his true heart, and provides a stark contrast to the dark and hardened heart of Saul.

David has just passed on the opportunity to take Saul’s life. He had the motive, the means, and the full support of his men. But he refused to act, telling his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this to my lord the king. I shouldn’t attack the Lord’s anointed one, for the Lord himself has chosen him” (1 Samuel 24:6 NLT). He allowed Saul to walk out of the cave with his life, but missing a small section of the hem of his royal robe. When Saul stepped out of the cave and into the light of day, David followed and confronted him. He called out to Saul, addressing him as “My lord the king!” (1 Samuel 24:8 ESV). David treated Saul with honor and respect. There was no screaming. No angry accusations. No claims to holding the moral high ground. All David wanted to do was to assure Saul that he had nothing to fear from David. He was not attempting to usurp his throne or take his life. He was still a loyal servant of the king and recognized Saul as the Lord’s anointed (vs. 10).

David started out his address to Saul by referring to him as king. But then he shifted his emphasis, calling Saul, “father” (vs. 11). David was Saul’s son-in-law, but he also viewed Saul as mentor. He had been Saul’s armor bearer and court musician. He had lived in the palace, served at the king’s side, and ministered to Saul in some of his most dark and lonely moments, playing his lyre in order to calm Saul’s tormented heart. David had proved himself faithful, serving as one of Saul’s commanders and successfully defeating countless numbers of the nation’s enemies, even while on the run. He had faithfully served Saul even while Saul was obsessively seeking to kill him. So David told Saul, “May the Lord judge between me and you, may the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you” (1 Samuel 24:12 ESV). This is where we are given what is probably the most vivid explanation for David’s designation as a man after God’s own heart. In spite of all he had been through and the countless reasons he may have had to justify being angry with and taking action against Saul, he responded with restraint. He focused his attention on God, rather than Saul. At no point does he judge or accuse Saul. David even gave Saul the benefit of the doubt, excusing Saul’s actions as nothing more than the result of bad advice. David was going to leave any judgment up to God. And if there was a need for any avenging to be done, as far as David was concerned, that was God’s purview, not his. David was going to trust God. And the heart of David is best seen in the psalms of David. Psalm 57 was written during the days in which David was hiding in the caves, seeking refuge from the relentless pursuit of Saul.

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy!
    I look to you for protection.
I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings
    until the danger passes by.
2 I cry out to God Most High,
    to God who will fulfill his purpose for me.
3 He will send help from heaven to rescue me,
    disgracing those who hound me.
My God will send forth his unfailing love and faithfulness. – Psalm 57:1-3 NLT

Psalm 142 was written during the same period of David’s life.

4 I look for someone to come and help me,
    but no one gives me a passing thought!
No one will help me;
    no one cares a bit what happens to me.
5 Then I pray to you, O Lord.
    I say, “You are my place of refuge.
    You are all I really want in life. – Psalm 142:4-5 NLT

David had a heart for God. He sought after God. He trusted in God. In his darkest moments, he called out to God, seeking deliverance and direction from God. And he let Saul know that he had nothing to fear from him. As far as David was concerned, Saul was the king and would remain so until God deemed otherwise.

It is interesting to note that Saul was moved by David’s words. He was legitimately moved by what he heard. Even he saw the stark contrast between his heart and that of David. Perhaps it was the words of the ancient proverb that David quoted: “Out of the wicked comes wickedness.” Saul may have been given a sobering glimpse into the darkness of his own heart. The Proverbs of Solomon say,  “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23 ESV). Jesus told His disciples, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person” (Matthew 15:18-20 ESV). As David stood before Saul that day, he provided Saul with a less-than-flattering reminder of all that he had become. David served as a stark counterpoint to Saul’s godlessness, heartlessness, faithlessness and self-centeredness. And he could not help but respond, “You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil” (1 Samuel 24:17 ESV).

These two men, one the anointed king of Israel and the other, the anointed king-elect of Israel, could not have been more different. But the greatest contrast between the two of them was not external, but internal. It was the spiritual conditions of their hearts. David was committed to seeing his life through the lens of God’s sovereignty. He was going to trust in God’s will and leave his life in God’s all-powerful hands. Saul had been committed to preserving his own legacy, at all costs – even attempting to thwart the revealed will of God. He was a man after his own heart, not God’s. He was self-consumed and overly obsessed with doing whatever he had to do to protect his way of life. And when he stood there that day, in a face-to-face encounter with David, he got a glimpse into the condition of his heart. He would be convicted. He would show remorse. He would feign repentance. And he would walk away. But his heart would remain unchanged.

In His sermon on the mount, Jesus spoke these words concerning false prophets, but they apply to the situation between Saul and David as well.

“You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.” – Matthew 7:16-20 NLT

David’s actions revealed the true nature of his heart. And Saul’s heart had been exposed as what it really was: Dark, diseased, and devoid of a healthy relationship with God.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Opportunity Versus Authority.

When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, “Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi.” Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wildgoats’ Rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, “Here is the day of which the Lord said to you, ‘Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.’” Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe. And afterward David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord’s anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord’s anointed.” So David persuaded his men with these words and did not permit them to attack Saul. And Saul rose up and left the cave and went on his way.

Afterward David also arose and went out of the cave, and called after Saul, “My lord the king!” And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage. And David said to Saul, “Why do you listen to the words of men who say, ‘Behold, David seeks your harm’? Behold, this day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you today into my hand in the cave. And some told me to kill you, but I spared you. I said, ‘I will not put out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord's anointed.’” – 1 Samuel 24:1-10 ESV

Distracted by the surprise attack by the Philistines, Saul was forced to call of his pursuit of David, allowing him time to escape to the wilderness of Engedi. But it was not long before Saul was back on the war path, accompanied by 3,000 highly trained soldiers. His mission: Capture and kill David. But chapter 24 is going to provide a striking contrast between Saul, the current king of Israel, and David, the God-appointed king- elect of Israel. Time and time again we have read of Saul’s relentless pursuit of David and his obsessive compulsion to take his life. Now we will see the tables turned. This time around, David will have the chance to take matters into his own hands and eliminate the threat of Saul once and for all. 

As David and his men were hiding in one of the caves in the wilderness of Engedi, Saul entered, seemingly alone, and placing himself in a very vulnerable position. Little did he know that the very man he pursued was there in the darkness watching his every move. And when David’s men saw Saul walk into their hideout, they spied what they believed to be a God-ordained opportunity.

“Now’s your opportunity!” David’s men whispered to him. “Today the Lord is telling you, ‘I will certainly put your enemy into your power, to do with as you wish.’”– 1 Samuel 24:4 NLT

Their assessment of the situation was quick and incredibly clear – at least to them. God had obviously sent Saul into the cave for the sole purpose of David taking his life. What else could it be? The timing was perfect. Saul was alone. He was defenseless. Of all the caves in the wilderness of Engedi, he had chosen this one. What else could it be but a divinely ordained opportunity for David to out an end to this nightmare?

There was only one problem: Nowhere in the text does it indicate that God had given His permission for David or anyone else to take the life of Saul. Regardless of the picture-perfect circumstances and the seemingly divine nature of the opportunity, what was missing was the divine authority for David to lift a finger against Saul.

But David, emboldened by the advice of his men, crept forward and in the darkness of the cave, sliced off a section of Saul’s robe. He had chosen to spare Saul’s life, but his action was intended to send a deliberate and crystal-clear message to Saul that he could cut his reign short at any time. What David did was an act of rebellion, and he soon had second thoughts. The text tells us:But then David’s conscience began bothering him because he had cut Saul’s robe. He said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this to my lord the king. I shouldn’t attack the Lord’s anointed one, for the Lord himself has chosen him.” So David restrained his men and did not let them kill Saul. – 1 Samuel 24:5-7 NLT

His action had been presumptuous and without divine authority. God had not given him permission to take matters into his own hands. Earlier, when Jonathan had told David, “You shall be king over Israel” (1 Samuel 23:17 ESV), those words must have registered in David's mind and given him the confidence to believe that God had anointed him to be the next king of Israel. But God had not told David when or how his reign would come about. Saul was still the king. Technically, he was the anointed sovereign over the nation of Israel. Saul had been chosen by God, and at no time had God given David permission to take his life in order to speed up the process of his coronation. David was susceptible to the same thing we all face as followers of God: To believe that the end justifies the means. It was far too easy for David to assume that if he was to be the next king, then getting rid of the current king must be part of God’s plan. But God had not disclosed to David the means by which He was going to bring about the transition of power from one man to the next. That was God’s concern, not David’s.

The Scriptures are full of warnings about confusing our plans with those of God.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.
 – Proverbs 19:21 ESV

We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps. – Proverbs 16:9 NLT

We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer. – Proverbs 16:1 NLT

LORD, we know that people do not control their own destiny. It is not in their power to determine what will happen to them. – Jeremiah 10:23 NET Bible

David had no shortage of well-meaning friends providing well-intended advice. But what he really needed was a word from God. The opportunity may have looked right, but without God’s approval, the outcome was going to turn out all wrong. It is interesting to note that David would eventually admit to Saul, “the Lord gave you today into my hand in the cave” (1 Samuel 24:10 ESV). This is not an admission on David’s part that he believed God had given him permission to kill Saul. He was simply saying that this encounter had not been a coincidence. He had been put to the test by God. And David’s own men had made that test even more difficult by counseling David to take Saul’s life. But he didn’t. David even saw his cutting off of the section of Saul’s robe as an act unsanctioned by God. He had overstepped his bounds.

Opportunity means nothing without God-given authority. In fact, there is an interesting side story that involves Saul himself. In the early days of his reign, when he had been king for only two years, he found himself besieged by the Philistines. He was outnumbered. He had 3,000 men, but was facing 6,000 Philistine cavalry, 30,000 chariots and infantry “as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude” (1 Samuel 13:5 ESV). Needless to say, his troops were terrified. In fact, the passage tells us:

When the men of Israel saw that they were in danger (for the people were distressed), then the people hid in caves, in thickets, in rocks, in holes, and in pits. And some of the Hebrews crossed over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. – 1 Samuel 24:6-7 ESV

Here’s the point. Saul had been instructed by Samuel the prophet to wait in Gilgal for seven days. When the seven days passed and the prophet was nowhere to be found, Saul took matters into his own hands. He was facing a formidable foe with demoralized troops. Saul seized the opportunity. He commanded his servants, “‘Bring a burnt offering and peace offerings here to me.’ And he offered the burnt offering. Now it happened, as soon as he had finished presenting the burnt offering, that Samuel came” (1 Samuel 13:9-10 ESV). Saul thought that he had done the right thing. They were in trouble. The prophet wasn’t there. Somebody needed to offer a sacrifice to God before the battle ensued. But while Saul had the opportunity, he did not have the authority. And he would have to suffer the consequences for his disobedience.

When confronted by Samuel, Saul explained, “‘The Philistines will now come down on me at Gilgal, and I have not made supplication to the Lord.’ Therefore I felt compelled, and offered a burnt offering” (1 Samuel 13:12 ESV). Saul’s compulsion was not to be confused with God’s permission. His urge to do something was situation-induced and self-authorized. And as a result, his offering brought God’s wrath, not blessing. Acting on behalf of God, but without the permission of God, is a sign of disobedience, not faithfulness. God had a plan. Saul got impatient. He took matters into his own hands. But just because an opportunity presents itself does not mean God is in it or has given His permission for it. God’s will can only be done God’s way. Opportunity without authority will almost always result in calamity.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Rock of Escape.

David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life. David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horesh. And Jonathan, Saul’s son, rose and went to David at Horesh, and strengthened his hand in God. And he said to him, “Do not fear, for the hand of Saul my father shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. Saul my father also knows this.” And the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. David remained at Horesh, and Jonathan went home.

Then the Ziphites went up to Saul at Gibeah, saying, “Is not David hiding among us in the strongholds at Horesh, on the hill of Hachilah, which is south of Jeshimon? Now come down, O king, according to all your heart’s desire to come down, and our part shall be to surrender him into the king’s hand.” And Saul said, “May you be blessed by the Lord, for you have had compassion on me. Go, make yet more sure. Know and see the place where his foot is, and who has seen him there, for it is told me that he is very cunning. See therefore and take note of all the lurking places where he hides, and come back to me with sure information. Then I will go with you. And if he is in the land, I will search him out among all the thousands of Judah.” And they arose and went to Ziph ahead of Saul. – 1 Samuel 23:15-29 ESV

Verse 14 of this same chapter stated that Saul sought David every day. He was on a relentless, obsessive mission to destroy David because he knew that as long as David was alive, his crown was in jeopardy. He had even warned his son, Jonathan, “For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established” (1 Samuel 20:31 ESV). And it seems that Jonathan had taken those words to heart. He risked the wrath of his father and his own life by covertly arranging to see David one more time. And at that reunion with his best friend, he disclosed to David, “My father will never find you! You are going to be the king of Israel, and I will be next to you, as my father, Saul, is well aware” (1 Samuel 23:17 NLT). Jonathan had seen the handwriting on the wall. He somehow knew that David was to be the next king and that it would be the will and work of God. The text tells us that Jonathan “strengthened his hand in God” (1 Samuel 23:16 ESV). He encouraged David to trust God. Not even his father, Saul, was going to be able to stop what God had ordained. Jonathan knew his father was in the wrong and would eventually fail in his attempt to thwart the will of God. It had become increasingly clear to him that Saul’s obsession with David’s death was not only uncalled for, but would prove to be unsuccessful. These words from his best friend and the rightful heir to the throne had to have encouraged David greatly. Jonathan was abdicating any right he had to be the next king because he believed David to be God’s choice for the role.

It is interesting how God sometimes uses others to reveal to us information regarding us that has escaped our notice. All David seemed to know was that Saul was out to kill him. It would seem that he had not yet put two and two together and arrived at the conclusion that Saul’s obsessive-compulsive behavior toward him did have a reason: Saul knew David was God’s choice to be the next king. It took Jonathan to add up the facts and present David with what should have been an obvious conclusion: He was going to be king of Israel. Jonathan assured David that even Saul was well aware of this fact. We are not given insight into David’s reaction at this news, but it had to have been an epiphany for him, a light-bulb-illuminating-over-the-head moment. Suddenly, it all began to make sense. The anointing, spear-throwing, raging, and running all began to come together into a clear picture of what God was going. The last time the two of them had met, David had askedJonathan, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life?” (1 Samuel 20:1 ESV). Now he knew the answer. He was Saul’s God-appointed replacement. No wonder Saul was acting the way he was.

But even with this eye-opening, riddle-solving news, David’s lot in life didn’t undergo any kind of remarkable change. Jonathan would return home and David would find himself still living as a wanted man. In fact, it wouldn’t take long for reality to set back in as David’s location in the wilderness of Ziph was disclosed to Saul by the area’s residents. They ratted David out, informing Saul of his whereabouts, and promising to turn him over to the king. 

To get an idea of what David was thinking at this stage of his life, all we have to do is turn to Psalm 54, which was written at this very time. In this psalm, David bears his heart to God. He calls on God to save him. And he promises to offer sacrifices to God when He does finally provide him with deliverance.

O God, save me by your name,
    and vindicate me by your might.
2 O God, hear my prayer;
    give ear to the words of my mouth.

3 For strangers have risen against me;
    ruthless men seek my life;
    they do not set God before themselves. Selah

4 Behold, God is my helper;
    the Lord is the upholder of my life.
5 He will return the evil to my enemies;
    in your faithfulness put an end to them.

6 With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you;
    I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good.
7 For he has delivered me from every trouble,
    and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.

One of the revealing statements in this psalm is David’s conclusion that those who were seeking him and those who would betray him “do not set God before themselves.” The New Living Translation phrases it this way: “They care nothing for God.” The actions of Saul and the Ziphites had nothing to do with the will of God. David describes them as strangers, ruthless, and enemies; and he refers to their actions as evil. David realized that this was a spiritual battle between those who care nothing for God and God Himself. So David calls on God to do what only He can do. He pleads with God to save and vindicate him, to avenge and deliver him, to hear and help him. David knew that his life was in God’s hands. God had anointed him and would be God who would have to protect and deliver him.

And David would receive yet another timely example of God’s ability to deliver. When Saul heard that David and his men had relocated to the wilderness of Moan, he set out in hot pursuit. The passage tells us, “Saul and David were now on opposite sides of a mountain. Just as Saul and his men began to close in on David and his men, an urgent message reached Saul that the Philistines were raiding Israel again” (1 Samuel 23:26-27 NLT). Just in the nick of time, God stepped in. It would be tempting to write this off as nothing more than a very timely coincidence. But for David, it would have been the very well-timed, miraculous intervention of God. Just when Saul and his men were closing in, God stepped in and provided a way of escape. And God would use the enemies of Israel to deliver the next king of Israel. The Philistines had chosen that particular moment in time to raid Israel, forcing Saul to abandon his pursuit of David and return home. The name of that place became known as the Rock of Escape. God had become a rock of escape for David, protecting him from his enemies and providing a miraculous, perfectly timed deliverance from his enemies. But notice that God did not eliminate Saul. He did not provide a permanent victory over Saul by allowing David to kill him in battle. He simply removed the immediate threat and gave David a glimpse of His capacity to save. God was not interested in removing the difficulties from David’s life as much as He was in getting David to trust the One for whom no problem was to difficult. Saul was not going to go away, but neither was God. David’s life was not going to be problem-free, but David was going to learn that nothing that happened in his life was free from God’s all-seeing eye. Which is why David, years later, would later be able to write these words:

You are my rock and my fortress.
    For the honor of your name, lead me out of this danger.
Pull me from the trap my enemies set for me,
    for I find protection in you alone.
I entrust my spirit into your hand.
    Rescue me, Lord, for you are a faithful God. – Psalm 31:3-5 NLT

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Rejected Savior.

Now they told David, “Behold, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are robbing the threshing floors.” Therefore David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I go and attack these Philistines?” And the Lord said to David, “Go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah.” But David’s men said to him, “Behold, we are afraid here in Judah; how much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?” Then David inquired of the Lord again. And the Lord answered him, “Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand.” And David and his men went to Keilah and fought with the Philistines and brought away their livestock and struck them with a great blow. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

When Abiathar the son of Ahimelech had fled to David to Keilah, he had come down with an ephod in his hand. Now it was told Saul that David had come to Keilah. And Saul said, “God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars.” And Saul summoned all the people to war, to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men. David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, “Bring the ephod here.” Then David said, “O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.” And the Lord said, “He will come down.” Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the Lord said, “They will surrender you.” Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand. – 1 Samuel 23:1-14 ESV

There are many ways in which David was a type of Christ, providing a foreshadowing of the Messiah who was to come. Jesus would be a descendant of David and would be born in the city of Bethlehem, just as David had been. David had been a shepherd and Jesus was the Good Shepherd. Like David, Jesus had been the king-elect, sent by God to become the King of kings and Lord of lords. But also like David, He would experience a time of waiting, in which He would minister on behalf of the people of Israel, but not necessarily receive their full appreciation for His efforts. 

In this passage, David, though pursued by his enemy, Saul, would continue to fight against the Philistines. He was on the run and living in hiding with his rag-tag group of malcontents and misfits, but he had not given up his desire to destroy the enemies of Israel. Jesus too, lived his life as a man without a home, with no place to even lay His head (Luke 9:58). He was surrounded by a motley crew made up of fishermen, tax collectors and other less-than-impressive individuals. And Jesus was constantly pursued by his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadduccees. Both David and Jesus were both fighting the same unseen enemy, Satan, whose every desire was to cut short their rule and reign, in an effort to thwart the plan of God. Even the people of Israel, who greatly benefited by the efforts of both men would, in many ways, turn their backs on them. David would rescue the people of Keilah, only to learn that they would betray him to Saul if given the chance. Jesus would offer the people of Israel salvation from death and freedom from sin, but the majority would turn their backs on Him, rejecting Him as their Messiah, preferring the darkness of their lives over the light of life being offered to them (John 3:19).

David, like Jesus, was faithful to God. He still saw himself as a servant of God, and was willing to fight the enemies of God even while living on the run from Saul. When David received word that the Philistines were harassing the inhabitants of the Israelite city of Keilah and robbing their threshing floors, he immediately determined to do something about it. But not before he sought the will of God. David had learned some valuable lessons from his decision to flee to Gath and then deceive the priests at Nob. The first one had almost cost him his life. The second one had resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of innocent people. And in neither case had he sought out the will of God. So this time he did. And God gave His approval. David and his growing band of men went to Keilah, attacked the Philistines and “struck them with a great blow” (1 Samuel 23:5 ESV). They saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

But news of David’s good deed made its way to Saul, who saw this as just another opportunity to trap David and destroy him. He was not grateful for David’s help against the enemies of Israel. He refused to see David as an ally, but instead, viewed him as a threat and an enemy to his way of life. In the same way, the Pharisees refused to see Jesus as a fellow minister to the people of Israel. He was a threat to the status quo and they were jealous of His growing popularity. They refused to see His miracles and victories over demons and diseases as having come from God. As far as they were concerned, He as the enemy and they were willing to do anything to get rid of Him.

Saul, true to form, made his way to Keilah with a large force to take David, and he was willing to destroy the city and everyone in it if necessary, just to get his hands on David. But David was well acquainted with Saul’s unbridled hatred for him and knew that he would most likely show up at Keilah. So David sought the will of God once more. This time he used the Urim and Thummim.

The Urim and Thummim were a means of revelation entrusted to the high priest. No description of them is given. The Urim and Thummim were used at critical moments in the history of God's people when special divine guidance was needed. The civil leader was expected to make use of this means for all important matters for which he needed direction. – Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology

The book of Exodus provides us with an explanation of their function.

Insert the Urim and Thummim into the sacred chestpiece so they will be carried over Aaron’s heart when he goes into the Lord’s presence. In this way, Aaron will always carry over his heart the objects used to determine the Lord’s will for his people whenever he goes in before the Lord. – Exodus 28:30 NLT

These were evidently two stones that were placed in the pocket of the high priest’s ephod. It is thought that one was light in color and the other was dark. When a decision was necessary, each stone was assigned a different answer or opposing outcome. Whichever one was pulled out was believed to be a divine answer from God. We are told that Abiathar, the only priest to have escaped the slaughter at Nob, had brought along the high priest’s ephod, and now David determined to use the Urim and Thummim to ascertain God’s insights and direction. David wanted to know if Saul was coming and if the people of Keilah would betray him to Saul. God affirmed both questions. So David and his men left Keilah and “went wherever they could go” (1 Samuel 23:13 ESV).

David would return to the caves, but he was far from alone. His entourage had grown to more than 600 men. But more importantly, He was accompanied by God. Even though Saul “sought him every day,” God was with Him and “did not give him into his hand” (1 Samuel 23:14 ESV). David had been rejected by the people of Keilah as their savior, but he had not been rejected by God. His deliverance of them was not enough to forestall his betrayal by them. The very same thing happened to Jesus. In John’s gospel we read the sobering words, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11 ESV). David would continue to experience rejection by his own people. He would find himself under constant threat by Saul. But he would remain faithful to God and committed to his cause to stand against the enemies of God. He would suffer greatly, but his suffering would eventually lead to his exaltation as the king of Israel. Jesus too, would suffer, even to the point of death, but as the apostle Paul reminds us:

…he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. – Philippians 2:8-11 ESV

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Dark Days.

Then Ahimelech answered the king, “And who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king’s son-in-law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No! Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.” And the king said, “You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father’s house.” And the king said to the guard who stood about him, “Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hand also is with David, and they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.” But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priests of the Lord. Then the king said to Doeg, “You turn and strike the priests.” And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod. And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep, he put to the sword.

But one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. And Abiathar told David that Saul had killed the priests of the Lord. And David said to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father’s house. Stay with me; do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me you shall be in safekeeping.” – 1 Samuel 22:14-22 ESV

The moral, spiritual, and mental state of King Saul was on a steep and rapid decline. His animosity toward David was insatiable and he would let anyone or anything stand in the way of his quest to eliminate David once and for all. So, while his treatment of the Ahimelech and the priests of Nob may shock us, it should not surprise us. Even the priests of God were fair game and subject to Saul’s wrath. But while Saul seemed to have lost all fear of and respect for God, his troops had not. He was unable to recruit any of them to carry out his vindictive order to kill the priests. But there was one man who was more than willing, most likely driven by a desire to see himself promoted and rewarded for his efforts. Doeg the Edomite, the man who had been at Nob when David showed up, had made a beeline to King Saul with the news. This Edomite, a foreigner, was more than willing to carry our Saul’s command. Doeg was “the chief of Saul’s herdsmen” (1 Samuel 21:7 ESV), and, like any other ambitious individual, was probably seeking a way to get out of the pasture and climb the palace social ladder. By carrying out Saul’s command when no one else would, he knew he would ingratiate himself to the king and secure his favor. So Doeg slaughtered 85 priests of God that day. And then he killed every living inhabitant of Nob. It was a bloodbath – a senseless, sinful, and Satan-inspired act would turn thepriesthood from Saul to David. A solitary priest, Abiathar, miraculously escaped the carnage that day and made his way to David with the news of what had happened. David was wracked with horror and guilt. He felt responsible for the deaths of Ahimelech and his fellow priests. It was his deception that had led to their destruction. He had lied to Ahimelech that day by telling him he was on a secret mission for Saul. His rash decision to seek refuge from the priests and then lie to secure their help had put them at great risk. And Saul, in his ever-present paranoid state, saw them as traitors and had them summarily executed. 

David most likely assumed that Saul, as the king and a servant of Yahweh, would show the priests the respect they were due. He probably never imagined that Saul would dare lift his hand against the priests of God. But he had been proven wrong. And David was furious. His respect for Saul all but disappeared that day. We get a good idea of David’s mental state at the time, because he wrote a psalm to commemorate the event. In it, he reveals his feelings about Saul.

Why do you boast about your crimes, great warrior?
    Don’t you realize God’s justice continues forever?
All day long you plot destruction.
    Your tongue cuts like a sharp razor;
    you’re an expert at telling lies.
You love evil more than good
    and lies more than truth. – Psalm 52:1-3 NLT

David was a warrior himself, but he was appalled at the actions of Saul. He was shocked at the actions of someone he once admired and idolized. He could not believe that Saul, the king of Israel, could do the things he had done. But he knew that God would not let Saul’s actions go unpunished.

You love to destroy others with your words,
    you liar!
But God will strike you down once and for all.
    He will pull you from your home
    and uproot you from the land of the living. – Psalm 53:4-6 NLT

David was confident that God would bring justice and retribution against Saul. He would not allow this immoral act to go unaccounted for. While David was in no position to do anything about it, he knew that God would.

The righteous will see it and be amazed.
    They will laugh and say,
“Look what happens to mighty warriors
    who do not trust in God.
They trust their wealth instead
    and grow more and more bold in their wickedness.” – Psalm 53:6-7 NLT

Through the misguided and unrighteous actions of Saul, David was learning some valuable lessons regarding those who fail to place their trust in God. He saw in King Saul a stark portrayal of the once godly man who abandons his faith in God for reliance upon his own strength and resources. Saul’s blatant betrayal of God was difficult for David to understand. But it drove him in his commitment to place his trust in and maintain his reliance upon God, whatever happened.

But I am like an olive tree, thriving in the house of God.
    I will always trust in God’s unfailing love.
I will praise you forever, O God,
    for what you have done.
I will trust in your good name
    in the presence of your faithful people. – Psalm 52:8-9 NLT

Abiathar, the sole remaining priest, would find refuge with David. The future king of Israel and the future high priest of Israel were suddenly united by one man’s hatred for them and God’s divine plan for them. Neither David or Abiathar knew what God had in store for them. David had no idea what the next few years of his life would hold. Abiathar only knew that he was alone and no longer able to exercise his priestly duties. Both men were unaware of all that God was doing behind the scenes. There was no silver lining to the dark cloud that hung over them. There was no light at the end of the foreboding tunnel in which they found themselves. But they would learn to trust in God by having to place all their hope in God.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Paranoia and Self-Pity.

Now Saul heard that David was discovered, and the men who were with him. Saul was sitting at Gibeah under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear in his hand, and all his servants were standing about him. And Saul said to his servants who stood about him, “Hear now, people of Benjamin; will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that all of you have conspired against me? No one discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day.” Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, “I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, and he inquired of the Lord for him and gave him provisions and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine.”

Then the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father’s house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came to the king. And Saul said, “Hear now, son of Ahitub.” And he answered, “Here I am, my lord.” And Saul said to him, “Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?” – 1 Samuel 22:6-13 ESV

These verses provide us with a stark contrast. David was in a cave surrounded by misfits and malcontents, but now we see Saul sitting under the shade of a tree surrounded by his servants. The contrast doesn’t stop there. David provided protection for his family by sending them to the king of Moab for refuge. Yet Saul was busy accusing his own son of treason and of conspiring with David to kill him. David was surrounded by men who were willing to die for him. Saul was surrounded by men who feared him and some had even abandoned him to follow after David. But the greatest contrast between these two men is their relationships with God. David received a prophetic word from God that told him to leave the Cave of Adullam and return to Judah. But Saul had not word from God. In fact, he had no relationship with God at all. God had removed His Spirit from him. Saul was on his on and was by all accounts, God-less. The result was a growing paranoia. He truly believed everyone was against him. His daughter and son had turned on him. His servants were untrustworthy. No one could be trusted. And his paranoia led to a heavy dose of self-pity. He was all alone. And his little speech to his servants reveals the extent of his self-pity.

“Has that son of Jesse promised every one of you fields and vineyards? Has he promised to make you all generals and captains in his army? Is that why you have conspired against me?” – 1 Samuel 22:7-8 NLT

“You’re not even sorry for me.” – 1 Samuel 22:8 NLT

Saul even accused Ahimelech the priest of treason, seeing his actions to help David as a personal attack against him.

“Why have you and the son of Jesse conspired against me?” – 1 Samuel 22:13 NLT

Without God in his life, Saul was susceptible to all kind of irrational and unrighteous thinking. His capacity to mentally process the circumstances of his life was greatly hindered by his lack of God’s presence in his life. He had become a fool, lacking reason and rational thought. He could not even process the fact that all of this was the outcome of the prophet’s warning that God was removing His hand from Saul’s life and giving his kingdom to another. Saul was in a state of denial and suffering from delusion, thinking that he could somehow prevent the inevitable and stay the hand of God. But his unwillingness to accept the will of God would simply cause him to sin against God, committing greater and greater transgressions, all in a hopeless attempt at self-preservation.

Standing among Saul’s servants that day was Doeg the Edomite, who might be better known as Doeg the Snitch. He had hurried back from Nob eager to share the news that David was there and had been given food and the sword of Goliath by Ahimelech the priest. When Saul heard this report, he immediately sent for Ahimelech, his family, and all his fellow priests who served alongside him at Nob. If Ahimelech had been scared when he saw David show up in Nob (1 Samuel 21:1), he must have been petrified at the news of a summon from the king, and any fears he had would prove to be justified.

Saul was a man possessed, both figuratively and literally. He was constantly beset by a “harmful spirit,” the result of God’s removal of the Holy Spirit from his life. Without the influence of God’s Spirit, Saul’s reasoning was impaired. He became self-absorbed and suspicious of everyone and everything. Over time, he would become a man-obsessed, unable to think of anything other than the destruction of David. Essentially, he would no longer act as the king of Israel. His whole life would be focused on one thing: David’s death. The very thing he was trying to protect: His kingship, would get lost in his obsessive-compulsive quest to kill off the competition. Sadly, Saul would be unable to enjoy the benefits of being king, because he lived in constant fear of no longer being king. 

One of sad realities of godlessness is that it always results in joylessness, discontentment, fear, jealousy, anger… In fact, the apostle Paul outlines the characteristics or “deeds” of a godless or flesh-based life in his letter to the Galatians.

…sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. – Galatians 5:20-21 NLT

Saul was miserable, not because he was losing his kingdom, but because he had lost God. His unhappiness, paranoia, self-pity and misguided attempts at self-preservation were driven by his lack of a relationship with God. His decision-making was totally flesh-based, driven by his own sin nature and devoid of any wisdom from God. He had lost his capacity to see things from God’s perspective. Everything had become all about him. He was no longer concerned about the good of Israel or the honor of God’s name. His only thoughts were for self.

The life of the godless is not a pretty picture. And the truly sad thing is that many, who have a relationship with Christ, can end up living godless lives, refusing to seek His will, listen to His Word, or heed His direction. Rather than living God-centered, God-directed lives, they become self-absorbed and susceptible to the flawed input of their own sin natures. While the Spirit of God never leaves them, they quench and grieve the Spirit through disobedience and wilful, unrepentant sin. Rather than enjoying the fruit of the Spirit and the joys of sanctification, they become obsessed with self-preservation and paranoid about protecting what it is they think they have. Jesus said, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (John 10:10 NLT). Saul had been deceived by Satan into believing that joy would be found in pursuing and eliminating David. But nothing could have been further from the truth. And Satan is constantly attempting to deceive us into believing that our way is preferable to God’s way. But our way is the way of the flesh, and it eventually robs us of joy, kills our capacity to love, and destroys any hope of having a rich and satisfying life. Satan offers what he cannot give. Jesus promises what He died to make possible. The God-less life is a paranoid, self-pitying, joyless life. But the godly life brings joy in the midst of sorrow, peace in the middle of the storm, hope when all looks hopeless, contentment in the face of loss, and strength in spite of our own weakness. 

Off To A Great Start.

David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about four hundred men.

And David went from there to Mizpeh of Moab. And he said to the king of Moab, “Please let my father and my mother stay with you, till I know what God will do for me.” And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold. Then the prophet Gad said to David, “Do not remain in the stronghold; depart, and go into the land of Judah.” So David departed and went into the forest of Hereth. – 1 Samuel 222:1-5 ESV

David left Gath in a hurry, the drool still clinging to his beard and the laughter of the Philistines still ringing in his ears. He had managed to escape with his life, but had been forced to leave his dignity behind. He had put himself in a very dangerous predicament, and had been forced to feign insanity when his plan fell apart. But as a result of this painful predicament, David was learning to trust in God and not himself. It would prove to be a lifelong lesson, but with each passing circumstance, David would learn to lean less on himself and more on God. This would not be the last time David found himself in a tight spot. In fact, he would later write in one on his psalms:

But I am a worm and not a man.
    I am scorned and despised by all!
Everyone who sees me mocks me.
    They sneer and shake their heads, saying,
“Is this the one who relies on the Lord?
    Then let the Lord save him!
If the Lord loves him so much,
    let the Lord rescue him!” – Psalm 22:6-8 NLT

David would know what it was like to be despised and dejected. He would experience many moments of doubt and despair. But through it all, he would discover the reality of God’s presence and power, and what it means to trust Him.

After having escaped from Gath by the skin of his teeth, David headed to an area called Adullam, the former site of an ancient Canaanite city. Adullam was not far from the valley of Elah, where David had slain Goliath. The area is pockmarked with caves, many of which are large enough to hold up to 400 men. It was in one of these caves that David sought refuge. But he would not be alone for long. Somehow, his father and brothers received word that David was there, and they made their way to him, along with their entire households. David’s cave was filling up fast and would soon be standing room only, because the text tells us that “all who were down on their luck came around—losers and vagrants and misfits of all sorts” (1 Samuel 22:2 MSG). David suddenly found himself surrounded by people with money problems, malcontents and an assortment of misfits. These were all individuals who shared one thing in common: A general dislike for King Saul. In one way or another, this man’s reign had impacted them negatively and they were willing to risk all in order to throw in their lot with David, a man with a bounty on his head.

Just hours earlier, David had been surrounded by hostile Philistines. Now, he was surrounded by disgruntled and desperate Hebrews, who were looking to him for leadership and direction. The text tells us that there were 400 men who allied themselves with David and viewed him as their commander. David was no longer alone, but now he found himself responsible for the well-being and protection of hundreds of men and their families. How would he feed them all? How was he going to be able to protect them from the professional soldiers Saul would send to hunt him down? Whether he like it or not, David suddenly found himself a leader. Yes, it was a motley crew of misfits, and they would put David’s leadership abilities to the test, but this was the crucible in which God had chosen to purify and perfect the man whom He had chosen to be the next king of Israel.

One of the first decisions David made was to send his father and mother to stay in the land of Moab. He arranged with the King of Moab to provide his parents with a safe haven, “until I know what God is going to do for me” (1 Samuel 22:3 NLT). David's great-grandmother, Ruth, had been a Moabitess, so there was a familial connection that helps explain David’s decision. His parents would remain in Moab until he had a better idea as to what God had in store for him. David was slowly learning to seek God’s will. He had learned a painful lesson at Gath. Taking matters into his own hands and trying to determine his fate apart from God was a dangerous game to play. He had no clue what the future held, but he was anxious to know what God was going to do. And he wouldn’t have to wait long. One day, a prophet appeared at the Cave of Adullam and gave David a word from God. He was to leave immediately and return to the land of Judah. This would not be the last time during David’s wilderness wanderings that God would speak to him through a prophet. God had not left David alone, and He would not leave him directionless.

We have to remember that David had been anointed by Samuel to be the next king of Israel. It is still not clear whether David was aware of this fact. Up until this point in the narrative, there is no indication that David had ever been told by Samuel what his anointing had meant. David has shown no signs that he knew he was the king-in-waiting. He had been content to be a commander in Saul’s army. He had shown no aspirations of being king or any expectations that God was going to remove Saul and put him in his place on the throne. And yet, we know that God had chosen David to be the next king of Israel. So when we read this story we can’t help but wonder why God chose to do things the way He did. Why was he allowing Saul to persecute and pursue David? Why was David being forced to run for his life and live like a fugitive? Why was God willing to let Saul, a man He had rejected as king, remain king? None of it seems to make sense. It all appears illogical and unnecessary. But God’s ways are not our ways. His plans rarely make sense to us. His methods, more often than not, come across as little more than madness to us. But the life of David is meant to reveal to us the sovereign, all-powerful, all-knowing will of God. David was receiving God’s will one day at a time. We get to see the whole picture. We are given access to the entire story. We know how it ends. And we can see that God was with David every step of the way.

David was going to experience many dark days. He would know what it means to despair and feel the loneliness that comes with leadership. There would be moments when all seemed lost. There would be days when he felt abandoned by God. He would later write:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
    and by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
    enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
    they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame. – Psalm 22:1-5 NLT

But through it all, David would discover the holiness and faithfulness of God. And this lesson, while painful, would be crucial in his transformation from shepherd of sheep to shepherd of the people of God. 

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Temporary Insanity.

And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”

And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?” – 1 Samuel 21:10-15 ESV

The question that should immediately come into your mind when reading these verses is, “What was David thinking?” There seems to be nothing rational or logical in his behavior. Why in the world would David, the very man who killed Goliath, who was from Gath, choose to seek refuge in Gath, and while carrying the sword that once belonged to Goliath? What kind of flawed logic did David use to think that he would be welcomed with open arms? After all, it was David who, in an act of over-achievement, killed 200 Philistines in order to obtain the 100 foreskins Saul had demanded as a dowry for his daughter, Michal. It was David who had served as a commander in Saul’s forces and had won great victories over the Philistines. So what would possess him to think they would provide him with refuge? From what we know of David’s faithfulness to God and his hatred of the enemies of God, it seems quite unlikely that David had gone to Gath to offer his services as a warrior to king Achish. In other words, David was not considering switching sides and fighting for the Philistines against his own people. So why did he go? The text does not tell us. We can only conjecture that David was desperate to get away from Saul and any troops that may be out to seek him. He knew that the last place Saul would look for him was in the land of the Philistines. But David didn’t think his strategy through all the way. He made a rash decision, under duress, and now found himself in a very dangerous spot.

The Philistines immediately recognized David. It's interesting to note that they referred to David as “the king of the land” (1 Samuel 21:11 ESV). They had heard about the songs sung about David, that celebrated his military exploits and lauded him as greater than Saul. It is doubtful that they had heard about David’s anointing, but they most likely viewed David as the true leader of the Israelites. At the affair in the Valley of Elah, Goliath had challenged Saul and his men to send a champion to face him in hand-to-hand combat, but no one would step forward. Day after day he taunted them, but Saul remained in the background, afraid to take up the challenge and take on Goliath. At that moment, the Philistines most likely lost all respect for Saul as a king, and when David ended up slaying Goliath, they saw him as the true king of Israel. But whatever the case, they knew that the man standing before them was an enemy and a threat.

The text rather of matter-of-factly states, “And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath” (1 Samuel 21:12 ESV). It was as if David woke up from a bad dream and realized the gravity of his situation. The stupidity of his decision to go to Gath suddenly dawned on him and he was “much afraid.” He was petrified, terrified, and mortified that he had ever come up with this doomed plan in the first place. So, finding himself in a jam, David resorted to deceit. Here was the man who had killed Goliath, defeated hundreds of Philistines in battle, slaughtered 200 Philistines just to pay the dowry for his wife, and who was carrying the sword of his Goliath in his hand, and yet he chose to feign madness rather than trust God and fight his enemies. David somehow forgot all about his anointing and the fact that God had been by his side during all the conflicts of his life. The young man who once shouted, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:27 ESV), and then took the life of Goliath with nothing more than a sling and a stone, was now so fearful in the face of his enemies, that he resorted to acting like a madman. The Message paraphrases verse 13 this way: “So right there, while they were looking at him, he pretended to go crazy, pounding his head on the city gate and foaming at the mouth, spit dripping from his beard.”

What a scene. What a sad situation for the future king of Israel to find himself in. This is the same David who would later write:

Blessed be the Lord, my rock,
who trains my hands for war,
and my fingers for battle;
he is my steadfast love and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield and he in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples under me. – Psalm 144:1-2 ESV

He trains my hands for war,
so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. – Psalm 18:34 ESV

This ill-timed, poorly conceived plan of David would be used by God to teach His young king-in-waiting an invaluable lesson in faith. David would learn, in the future, to place his trust in God rather than his own rash plans and flawed attempts at self-preservation. David would escape with his life, if not his dignity. He would not forget that day. In fact, he ended up penning the words of Psalm 34 as a result of this encounter with King Achish.

I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.
    He freed me from all my fears. – Psalm 34:4 NLT

In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened;
    he saved me from all my troubles. – Psalm 34:6 NLT

The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help.
    He rescues them from all their troubles. – Psalm 34:17 NLT

The righteous person faces many troubles,
    but the Lord comes to the rescue each time.
For the Lord protects the bones of the righteous;
    not one of them is broken! – Psalm 34:19-20 NLT

It is interesting to read these statements in light of what actually happened that day. There is no indication that God intervened. David didn’t take the sword of Goliath and slaughter King Achish and all his soldiers. There was no lightning bolt from heaven that struck down the Philistines and allowed David to walk away safe and secure. There is no mention of any miraculous intervention on God’s part. What really happened was that David resorted to acting like a madman, complete with drool dripping from his beard. Faced with the prospect of death, David had taken matters into his own hands and escaped with his life because he was willing to throw away any sense of pride or dignity he had. And yet, when looking back on that day, David saw his rescue as having come from God. In spite of his actions, God had rescued him. While he had run from the land of God to the land of the enemies of God had remained with him. Even at one of his worst moments, God had not abandoned him. Regardless of how badly David’s poor attempt at self-preservation had turned out, God is the one who rescued David from himself. And that is what God does for His own. God had said David would be the next king of Israel, and he would be. Even David, at his worst moment, couldn’t screw up God’s plan. He could make things harder on himself, but nothing he did would make it too hard for God to fulfill His divine plan for him. Even our bouts of temporary insanity cannot prevent the future fulfillment of God’s plans for us.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)

Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Man On the Run.

Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.

Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s herdsmen.

Then David said to Ahimelech, “Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.” And the priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it, for there is none but that here.” And David said, “There is none like that; give it to me.” – 1 Samuel 21:1-9 ESV

The next ten chapters of the book of 1st Samuel will chronicle the life of David as he spends the next years of his life running from King Saul. Having received the news from Jonathan that Saul was out to kill him, David made his way to Nob, which was about two and one-half miles southeast of Gibeah. There, he sought out Ahimelech, the high priest. David was running out of options. He could no longer go home. His relationship with Samuel, the prophet, had reached an end. David most likely knew that turning to Samuel was the worst thing he could do, because that would be what Saul expected, and so Samuel would be under surveillance. David had said his final goodbyes to Jonathan, knowing that they would probably never see one another again. So, in need of food and shelter, David turned to the high priest.

His arrival at Nob caught Ahimelech off guard. He was surprised and a bit scared to see David arrive by himself, without his usual allotment of troops. It seems that Saul’s volatile nature was well-known and justly feared. Ahimelech jumped to the conclusion that David had showed up as an agent sent by Saul to wreak havoc on the priests of God. This would ultimately prove not to be a farfetched idea. Because in the very next chapter, we will see Saul command the execution of every single priest in Nob because ended up aiding and abetting David (1 Samuel 22:6-23).

David assured Ahimelech that he was not there to do them harm. He lied to the high priest, assuring him that he was on a top-secret mission for the king, the nature of which he was not free to divulge. This deception was used to obtain food and to keep the high priest from asking further questions. It also reveals a certain sense of fear and lack of trust on David’s part. He was not yet willing, ready and able to put all his reliance upon God. He was in a tight spot and was willing to lie in order to preserve his own life. As time went by and David began to see God’s miraculous provision and protection, he would grow increasingly more confident in God’s capacity to care for his every need. But at this point in the story, David was fairly new at this whole fugitive lifestyle, and was simply doing whatever he had to do to stay alive.

When David asked Ahimelech for bread, the only thing the high priest had available was the showbread that was put on display in the tabernacle as part of a weekly sacrifice to God. The book of Leviticus provides us with important details regarding the showbread. It was to be changed out weekly, and the old bread was to serve as food for the priests. But they must eat it in a holy place and only while in a purified state. It was considered holy.

“You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf. And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold before the Lord. And you shall put pure frankincense on each pile, that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the Lord. Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord's food offerings, a perpetual due.” – Leviticus 24:5-9 ESV

Ahimlech’s reticence to share the bread with David and “his men” was based on the requirement that the bread was holy and not to be eaten by anyone who was impure. David was able to assure that his soldiers were ceremonially pure because there were no soldiers to begin with. David was alone. And he had not had sexual relations with Michal that day, because he had been forced to leave her several days prior. David took the bread and, according to Jesus, he was not wrong in doing so.

“Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?” – Matthew 12:3-4 ESV

Jesus referred back to this historical, real-life event, comparing what David did with the disciples eating the heads of wheat on the sabbath. The Pharisees, with their legalistic mindset, had accused them of “harvesting” on the sabbath. For Jesus, the actions of the disciples were justified because they were simply meeting the normal human need to eat. Jesus used the same reasoning on another occasion, when He said to the Pharisees, “If you had a sheep that fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you work to pull it out? Of course you would. And how much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Yes, the law permits a person to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:11-12 NLT). According to Jesus, David was simply trying to stay alive, so his actions were necessary and, therefore, justified.

But what David didn’t know was that his actions were being observed by someone who was on Saul’s payroll, Doeg, the Edomite. This man was the in charge of all of Saul’s flocks. It may be that Doeg had it in for David, because he was jealous of his success. After all, David had started out as a shepherd, but risen to a place of power and prominence in the king’s court, and had even married into the king’s family. Perhaps Doeg hoped that by ratting on David, he would be elevated up the royal food chain and move from the pasture to the palace. But regardless of his intent, Doeg would make his way to Saul with news about his enemy’s presence in Nob. David’s respite would prove brief and the role Ahimelech played in helping David would prove deadly.

Having been forced to leave Gibeah in a hurry, David was unarmed and defenseless. So he inquired of Ahimelech whether there were any weapons in the priestly compound. It just so happened that the sword of Goliath, the Philistine champion whom David had killed in hand-to-hand-combat, was in the tabernacle wrapped in a priestly robe. This was the very same sword David had used to cut off the giant’s head. David, having retrieved the sword, and with his five loaves of ceremonial showbread, said his goodbyes to Ahimelech and began what was going to be a long and difficult period of running, hiding, and learning to trust in God. In the years that lie ahead, David would find himself experiencing a wide range of life lessons that would increase his faith in God and strengthen his resolve to serve God faithfully. The king David would eventually become was the byproduct of the trials and tribulations of this less-than-pleasant phase of his life. For David, the phrase, “no pain, no gain” could have been the tagline for his life. He would find that persecution would have to precede his coronation. Years of suffering would come before his crowning. The daily experience of loss and pain would preface his eventual reign.

Years later, when David had finally experienced release from Saul’s dogged pursuit and had been crowned the king of Israel, he was able to write:

I love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
    my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
    my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
    and I am saved from my enemies. – Psalm 18:1-3 ESV

Great Loss. Great Gain.

In the morning Jonathan went out into the field to the appointment with David, and with him a little boy. And he said to his boy, “Run and find the arrows that I shoot.” As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. And when the boy came to the place of the arrow that Jonathan had shot, Jonathan called after the boy and said, “Is not the arrow beyond you?” And Jonathan called after the boy, “Hurry! Be quick! Do not stay!” So Jonathan’s boy gathered up the arrows and came to his master. But the boy knew nothing. Only Jonathan and David knew the matter. And Jonathan gave his weapons to his boy and said to him, “Go and carry them to the city.” And as soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and fell on his face to the ground and bowed three times. And they kissed one another and wept with one another, David weeping the most. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my offspring and your offspring, forever.’” And he rose and departed, and Jonathan went into the city. – 1 Samuel 20:35-42 ESV

David had experienced incredible life change over a very short period of time. He had gone from shepherding his family’s flocks to serving as the king’s armor bearer. He had been anointed by the prophet of God. He had slain Goliath. He had become a great military leader and champion against the Philistines. The people loved him. They even composed songs about him. But at the same time, David had gone through his incredibly confusing, totally inexplicable on-again, off-again relationship with Saul. One day the king loved him. The next, the king was trying to pin him against the wall with a spear. Saul had even tried to use David’s wife (Saul’s daughter) and best friend (Saul’s son) against him. He had sent troops to hunt David down and kill him. And in the process, David suffered great loss. He had lost his position on the king’s staff. He had lost his prominence as one of the king’s warriors. He had lost his wife, as he was forced to flee for his life. And now he was going to lose best friend, as he received the news from Jonathan that all was not well. He was not going to be able to return to the court, because Saul wanted him dead. 

What is so important for us to remember in all of this is that David had been anointed by Samuel to be the next king of Israel. It is still unclear from the text whether David knew or fully understood what his anointing by Samuel had meant. At no point in the story so far, have we seen any sign that David recognized Saul’s evil intentions against him as the result of Saul’s jealousy over David’s anointing. In fact, David asked Jonathan, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life?” (1 Samuel 20:1 ESV). He seemed genuinely at a loss as to why Saul wanted him dead. And David shows no sign of understanding why Jonathan, the son of the king and natural heir to the throne, might have a problem with his anointing to be the next king. It would seem, at least at this point in the story, that David is oblivious to God’s future plans for his life. All he could see was loss. Whatever Samuel’s anointing had meant, it had left David suffering great loss. He was now going to be a man on the run, a fugitive. He was losing his family, wife, job, best friend, dignity, and any hope of living a normal life.  When he and Jonathan parted ways, it says, “they kissed one another and wept with one another, David weeping the most” (1 Samuel 20:41 ESV). This was a sad day. And the chapter ends on a very sad note, with the words, “And he rose and departed.”

Whether he fully understood it or not, David was the next king of Israel. He had been hand-chosen by God. “The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people” (1 Samuel 13:14 ESV). David was to the God-ordained replacement for King Saul. And with God’s help and the Holy Spirit’s anointing, David would become the greatest king is Israel’s history. But long before David gained access to the throne of Israel, he would know what it was like to suffer great loss. It was as if God was knocking all the props on which David leaned out from under him. He had been a good and faithful shepherd, but God had removed him from the pasture and placed him in the palace. He had been the king’s armor bearer, but God promoted him to giant-slayer. He had been a mighty warrior, defeating the enemies of Israel, but now he be fighting for his life. David had been a happily married man, but had been forced to leave his wife behind in order to stay alive. He had enjoyed a deep and lasting friendship with Jonathan, but the two of them had to part ways, never expecting to see one another again. Everything David had in his life that brought him any fulfillment, joy, support, love, dignity, recognition, accomplishment or sense of self-worth, was being removed. He would give up the comfort of the palace for the dark and dank confines of a cave. He would learn what it was like to go hungry and without sleep. He would struggle with self-doubt, fear, loneliness, despair, and a growing sense of his own weakness.

But God was in it all. I am reminded of the words of Jesus, spoken to His disciples.

“I assure you that when the world is made new and the Son of Man sits upon his glorious throne, you who have been my followers will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life. But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then.” – Matthew 19:28-30 NLT

Like David, the disciples had been called by God. And that calling would prove costly for all of them. Jesus had warned them:

“Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves. But beware! For you will be handed over to the courts and will be flogged with whips in the synagogues. You will stand trial before governors and kings because you are my followers. But this will be your opportunity to tell the rulers and other unbelievers about me. When you are arrested, don’t worry about how to respond or what to say. God will give you the right words at the right time. For it is not you who will be speaking—it will be the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” – Matthew 10:16-20 NLT

Most of them would die as martyrs. All of them would suffer loss and know what it was like to be hated, despised, abused and rejected by men. But God had great plans for their lives. He would use each of them to accomplish His will and, as Jesus promised them, they would do greater works than He had done while on earth.

“I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!” – John 14:12-14 NLT

David was going to learn that the great gain God had in store for him was going to require great loss. God was in the process of making David God-dependent, not self-sufficient. He was teaching David the invaluable lesson of reliance upon Him. All of us have crutches in life, upon which we learn to lean and with which we grow comfortably incapacitated. But God would have us lean on Him. He would have us find our hope, help, strength, worth, fulfillment, and purpose for life in Him. David was a gifted young man, but God was out to make him a godly king. David had in Jonathan a true friend, but he would learn what it meant to have God as his companion. David had risked his life killing 200 Philistines in order to gain the right to marry Michal. But soon, David would discover what it was like to love and be loved by God – a relationship unlike any other in life.

In all of this, David was going to learn the truth behind the words of Jesus, spoken centuries later: “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24 NLT). True allegiance to God requires complete dependence upon God. Experiencing the full power of God demands that we lose our reliance upon any source of support other than God. David was going to be forced to give up a lot, but what he would gain in return would be well worth it.

I love you, Lord; you are my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety. – Psalm 18:1-2 NLT