CHAPTER 23
Well, David and his men come to the city of Keilah, which
the Philistines were attacking. Before
going there, David does something he’s never done before – he asks God for
advice. And God responds! Truly, God is on David’s side. At any rate, God tells David to go there,
and God will deliver the Philistines to David.
Sure enough, David is successful.
Then Saul hears about it, and his reaction really
sucks. David is there – great, now I can
kill him! Really, Saul? Really?
David just did your job for you, pal.
There is nothing here about how all of Israel reacts, but David must
look like the hero and therefore Saul looks downright treasonous. But David finds out in advance that Saul is
coming and asks God for advice. That’s
twice now David has talked with God.
The Lord tells David that the people of the town will hand David over to
Saul. I’m sure they appreciate what
David did for them, but they know what happened to the priests. They don’t want it happening to them. (Seriously, though, first the priest
slaughter and now this? Saul must
really have a tight hold over the rest of Israel in order to avoid widespread
revolts. I’m amazed that David only has
a few hundred men – 600 we’re told around here – under the circumstances).
David hightails it out of there and has a reunion with
Jonathan. The Bible doesn’t say so
exactly, but this looks like their last ever meeting. The most notable part is
that Jonathan says that David will be king of Israel some day, and Jonathan his
right hand man. That’s interesting,
because Jonathan is the actual heir to the throne. Having the actual heir say this to David would further bolster
the House of David’s claim to be kings, which is likely why this was put in
here.
Anyway, Saul keeps tracking David but David keeps slipping
through his fingers.
CHAPTER 24
And now the shoe goes on the other foot. After David has been constantly on the run
for the last several chapters, he has a chance to get some revenge. David and his men are hiding in a cave, and
as it happens Saul goes in that very same cave to go to the bathroom. David has a great chance to kill Saul. His
men want him to. But no, Saul is still
God’s anointed king. You can’t mess
with that.
All David does is go near Saul and cut off some of his
robe. Then he feels really bad about
it. Really, the logistics of this all
are a big confusing. Let’s assume that
Saul is taking a dump; that would at least mean it’ll take him longer to go to
the bathroom and go away from his robe.
But David and his men have to, 1) recognize it’s Saul, 2) encourage
David to get him, 3) David cuts the robe, 4) feels bad, 5) and then dissuade
his men from going after Saul again – all while Saul is in the cave. And apparently all doing it silently so Saul
never notices. Just how close are they
to Saul? It’s possible, but it just
seems a bit busy.
At any rate, once Saul leaves the caves, David shouts out
and gets Saul’s attention. He tells
Saul that he is wrong to think David will come after and kill him – he just had
his chance and didn’t take it. This is
a fairly well done scene. Saul finds
the former good man that he used to be and admits his guilt. He agrees that he’s been wrong.
But nothing comes of this scene. It’s just a one-off temporary reprieve.
CHAPTER 25
This starts off with some bad news – Samuel is dead. I wonder why the chapter is named after him?
He’s the third most important character in it, and is almost entirely absent
from the second half. The real
question, I suppose, is why Samuel II is named after him. He’s dead before that one even begins!
In fact, Samuel is so unimportant to the plotline at this
point that his death is just thrown in here, and irrelevant to the rest of the
action in Chapter 25. That action is
about David’s new wife, Abigail.
She’s married to Nabal, who is a lout. He’s rich with thousands of sheep and goat,
and early on David’s men go to his place when they hear Nabal is shearing his
flock. David’s men say that they lived
alongside the animals for months and didn’t harm any. So now they’d like to be given some of the animals. Now, later we’ll be told that David’s men
served as protection for the sheep, making sure no one raided them, but here
that doesn’t come up. We have a band of
armed men say, “These sheep of your bosses!
Give us some because we didn’t kill any earlier!” That sounds like a total shakedown. Later on we’ll be given a rational that
makes Nabal sound worse, but I wonder why the rationale wasn’t included
here.
Well, Nabal thinks this request for animals is crap. Who is this David son of Jesse? Screw him!
And word gets back to David, and he responds by gathering 400 of his 600
men to payback Nabal with blood. Yeah,
so far this sounds like a complete and utter shakedown. Also, I should add that given David’s
situation, it would actually make sense if he engaged in shakedowns. He’s on the run, he’s got 600 men to feed,
and these men are warriors. The Bible
doesn’t get into mundane matter like how he clothed and fed them, but he had to
do something. He could rely on the
kindness of strangers – and I guess that’s what he’s trying to do. But when you respond to unkindness by
threatening to slaughter everyone, then are you really depending on the
kindness of strangers or demanding it?
“OK, we’ll be by your flock and not harm anything and see to it that no
one else does, and in return you give us some of you flock. And if you don’t give us anything, we’ll
kill you, your household and all your servants.” Really, even if David’s story is true and his men did serve as
protection, they still come off like a protection racket. No one asked them to serve as protection,
but now that they have, you give them some stuff – or else.
Yeah, so even if David’s story here is true, he’s totally
running a protection racket. Again,
he’s got to pay, feed, and cloth his men someone. Ain’t no manna raining for the sky in this part of the
Bible. (Quick side note: David was
going to attack Nabal with 400 men?
What massive overkill! He’s a
rich guy, sure, but he’s hardly an army unto his self).
However, David never does any massacre – though his plan is
to kill every male in Nabal’s household.
Instead, Nabal’s wife Abigail thinks quickly. She gathers a bunch of stuff and goes to David. She bows before him and offers all of this
stuff and apologizes. She even throws
in an insult to her husband, calling him a scoundrel. David accepts these terms.
He’s getting something, after all.
Abigail goes back home but her husband is drunk at a party,
so she doesn’t tell him what she did write away. Once he sobers up the next day she lets him now how close they
came to be slaughtered and the Bible reports, “At this his heart died within
him, and he became like a stone.” So
he’s really freaked. I guess he
literally didn’t know who David was. In
that case he’s a moron. He dies, 10 days later.
This frees up Abigail to marry David, and they do wed. David also weds a second woman, Ahinoam of
Jezreel, who we just here about in the wedding announcement. In other wedding news, the Bible decides to
tell us here that his first wife, Saul’s daughter Michal is married off to a
new man by her dad.
CHAPTER 26
This is one of those chapters that indicate that this part
of the Bible came from a combination of multiple sources. We’ve already had David spare Saul’s life
once, so now we get it again. This is
another repeat story. We’ve had David
meet Saul twice (once with the lyre, once after Goliath). We’ve had David twice escape from Saul with
help of one of Saul’s kids (once Michal, the other Jonathan). And now we get David having a great chance
to kill Saul, and opting not to.
Here it’s not a cave.
This time, David and another man sneak into Saul’s camp and see Saul
asleep. David again says its wrong to
kill God’s anointed, and instead of killing Saul, takes his spear and water
jug.
He goes away and then taunts Saul’s top military man, Abner,
for the terrible security. You got to
admit, Abner earned that one. The
security here really did suck. (Though the Bible says God put all the men in a
deep slumber, to explain the unlikely event of David making it in and out
unnoticed). Then David again yells to
Saul – just as he did last story. It’s
the same thing; but just told by another author and then later compiled
together as one.
Saul again admits his guilt and apologies. Again, it doesn’t take.
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