Reading: 1 Samuel 21-24, Psalm 84
Have you ever been desperate? Not desperate like I often am for an excellent burrito after a long day’s hike, but really, truly desperate. Without the slightest clue of what you were going to do next. It is a situation that is rarely faced in our modern, heavily safety-netted world. Now, we sometimes feel desperation about things that are less than certain, but how often are we really wholly lost? Not often.
We join David today at a point in life where he is desperate. He has been chased away from the service of Saul. The king of his own nation wants to kill him. Saul’s enemies, the Philistines, know exactly who David is and have reason to hate him. He doesn’t have his soldiers or his weapons. Where is he going to go?
He goes to the priests. I don’t think this is coincidental. David is afraid and alone, and he goes to the tabernacle, to the house of God. It seems like he doesn’t really know why, but that is where he goes first. Uncertain of the priest’s loyalty, though, he doesn’t tell him that he is on the run. He asks him for bread. The only bread available is the holy bread of the presence that only priests are supposed to eat. Given his desperate circumstances, David takes it. This incident will get recalled much, much later in the story by one of David’s descendants in reference to not using God’s laws in an oppressive way. One of the easily missed elements of the story is how desperate David was, and how his desperation led him to seek the house of God before anything else. In addition to the bread, Ahimelech gives David Goliath’s sword, which he has in his keeping.
Okay, in our story there is a guy watching this whole exchange between David and the priest. His name is Doeg, the Edomite, and he is in the service of Saul. David notes his presence but does nothing, which he will regret later. From the tabernacle, David flees to the Philistine city of Gath. Note that David is now carrying Goliath’s sword. Goliath, who was from Gath. What is David up to here? I’m really not sure what his intentions were, but we are treated to a fantastic scene where the Philistine King Achish recognizes that David is the real king of Israel! David realizes that this is not a good place for him to be and pretends to have gone crazy. Crazy people in the ancient world were generally considered to be possessed, so Achish can’t get rid of him fast enough.
From there David flees to a cavern in the wilderness. But he is not abandoned. His family finds him. Some of his soldiers find him. A bunch of the marginalized in society find him. They all follow him- they know who the real king is. David becomes a wandering bandit lord. He finds refuge for his parents with the king of Moab, but returns to Israel and lives in a forest.
Saul, meanwhile, is waiting for news of David. Doeg the Edomite shows up and tells Saul that the priests gave David bread and the sword of Goliath. Saul reacts in the way we have come to expect: he has them all put to death. The soldiers of Israel won’t do it out of fear of the God of Israel, so Saul gives the task to the foreigner, Doeg. He kills the entire priestly line and wipes out the city of Nob, which was the city of the house of Aaron. Only one man escapes of the entire house, and he follows David. This is both a story showing the further deterioration of Saul and a further judgment on the faithless priests.
David is has a priest with him, and God starts giving him missions. The Philistines are attacking Israel, and Saul is busy killing the priests of God. So God tells David to go fight the Philistines. David is exiled, desperate, little more than a bandit lord, but when God tells him to fight the Philistines, he goes and defeats them. Despite his circumstances, he is still acting like the king of Israel, which Saul continues not doing so.
In response to his victory, Saul decides he absolutely must hunt David down, leading to a fantastic story about David’s humility and understanding of his position. Saul is informed of where David is hiding, and he turns out with an army to hunt him down. In the meantime Jonathan, Saul’s heir, finds David and reassures him of his support of David’s claim to the throne. While Saul is hunting David, he goes into the cave where David to relieve himself. He is in the most helpless of positions, and David is right there with a sword. He has the opportunity to kill Saul and take over the kingdom. He knows he has the support of the people, and even of the most obvious alternative claimant, Jonathan. Even the Philistines know he is the real king. But he doesn’t do it. Instead he lets Saul go, then follows him out of the cave and declared that he will not strike any blow against Saul, but will let God judge between them. Saul, in a moment of lucidity, recognizes that David is righteous and will be king after him. He asks David to swear not to destroy Saul’s descendants when he takes the throne, and David does so.
The continuing saga of David and Saul is sort of like a double judge cycle, running in opposite directions. Saul is playing the part of the bad judge, getting worse and worse as time goes along. Today he is going around slaughtering priests! David is going the other direction. In the worst of circumstances he continues to be faithful to the call of the king to fight Israel’s battles. He protects the priesthood. He even throws his own claim to the throne on the will of God- David will not become king by his own hand, but only at God’s.