“Lord, I was in the far-off land, I loved from Thee to stray,
But when unto myself I came, an outcast far away,
One moment-then the welcome sweet, the kiss, the Father’s home;
Far distant was the distance; to Thy bosom I am come.”
THROUGH the treachery of the Ziphites Saul is once again aroused to seek to get rid of the future king of Israel. Casting off the thought of the way in which his life had been so magnanimously spared in the cavern of Engedi, the three thousand picked men of his army are summoned to attend him in pursuit of David. Marching to the south of Judah, they reach the hill of Hachilah and pitch their camp there. The baggage and provision cars or chariots—wagons, as we should now call them—were as usual packed closely together in a circle, forming what is called “the trench.” Inside this circle the king and his chief officer, Abner, would pass the night.
Such a band as Saul had with him could not come near the place where David was without his knowing it. As a skilful general he probably had his spies or scouts on the lookout at all times. Long before the king knew where to find him David had heard of his coming, and the very first night he went to the place where the camp was pitched, and sees the sleeping monarch and his men around him.
It was from the top of some hill that he looked down upon the camp of Saul. Now he resolves to go into the midst of the sleeping host, and turning to two of his chief men he asks, “Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will go down with thee.” With the quiet courage that confidence in God’s care for him imparted, David has made up his mind what to do. He will not fight battles with Saul, though he well knew that he must prevail; but he will go beforehand with him, and so act that he shall be compelled to give up this cruel hunting for one who had ever treated him in such a way as that no fault could be found in him.
David and Abishai pass down the hill and enter into the trench where the king is with his whole band around him. Now they stand over the sleeper, and Abishai begs David to let him slay Saul at one blow. Well did he know his captain would not harm a hair of his head himself, and now he hears his voice speaking, still words of utmost grace for the poor, guilty king, “Destroy him not: for who can stretch forth his hand against Jehovah’s anointed, and be guiltless? “
The death of Saul shall never be from his hand, nor from one of his followers. He goes on to tell his faithful Abishai, “Jehovah shall smite him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and perish.” To Jehovah he leaves him, in the unshaken determination that nothing shall induce him to stretch forth his hand against the man who had been the anointed of the Lord. Never perhaps did he feel more keenly the pain and distress that this seeking his life cost him, but his resolve does not falter, and with a stern, set face he says to his captain, take I pray thee, the spear that is at his bolster, and the cruse of water, and let us go.
Not very far do they go. Only to the top of the hill opposite to where the camp was, and their movements awakened none of the sleeping host, for a deep sleep from Jehovah was fallen upon them, and preserved David. Now with the whole valley between them, but in full view of Saul and his men, David calls aloud to Abner, and awakens him with the scathing inquiry, why he had not kept a better guard over his royal master, why his sentinels were all asleep when the king was in danger? Then he tells him that one of his people had gone to destroy the king—he does not say how he himself had kept Abishai back from doing so—and then asks them where the king’s spear and cruse of water are.
By this time the whole camp must have been aroused, and all are compelled to hear. Saul knew the voice—far off though it was, and yet he asks, “Is this thy voice, my son David? And David said, It is my voice, my lord, O king..... Wherefore doth my lord thus pursue after his servant? for what have I done? or what evil is in mine hand?” Then come a few words which let us see how bitterly he felt the being driven out of his home, and from his friends, to the wandering outcast life he had led all the time of Saul’s persecution of him. He tells the king, in words which must have touched all hearts there, that if men have stirred him up against him, “cursed be they before the Lord; for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of Jehovah, saying, Go, serve other gods.”
But for the grace of God, David feels this would have been the result of what he had endured, and to him nothing could be greater disaster than to be away from God. Again Saul is touched for the moment, and he replies, “I have sinned: return, my son David: for I will no more do thee harm, because my soul was precious in thine eyes this day: behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly.” David cannot trust these words. He does not contradict them, but will not condescend to answer them. The time has come to let the king see that he recognizes the purpose of God concerning him, and will order his actions in consonance with this.
“Behold the king’s spear! and let one of the young men come over and fetch it. Thus he reminds Saul of the way in which his life has again’ been spared. Seeing also that he has himself been set apart by the Lord God of Israel for the chief place amongst His people, he tells the king that now it is a question not simply of men but of Jehovah—He is acting, and will act, and will render to every man his righteousness and faithfulness. To Him David then commits his safe keeping—in the hearing not only of Saul but of all his men. This was his farewell to the king—never again did they meet—Saul returned to his home at the head of his three thousand, and David went back to his wandering life.
All who were with Saul must have heard the words of David. They knew now that the envious hatred of the king had caused him to be as an exile in his own land, and many a heart may have been touched by his generous treatment of their master. That David was no rebel seeking his own glory became known by all. And later on many of these men may have been amongst those who found themselves attracted irresistibly to the son of Jesse, while yet he was an outcast from the land and kingdom of Israel.
After seeing the noble way in which David had acted, when having his enemy put completely into his power by God, it is with a sense of disappointment we read what immediately follows in the scripture history. “And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul shall despair of me, to seek me any more in any coast of Israel: so shall I escape out of his hand.”
It seems scarcely possible that this can be the man who had spoken—from his heart, too—such words of complete confidence in Jehovah, and whose fearless action in going into the very midst of the band who were seeking his life proved that they were not mere words, but a living reality in his soul. That night must have tried David to the uttermost. His faith rose to the call upon it, and never faltered throughout that painful scene, but the reaction came, and then—wearied and worn physically—he failed.
Like Peter at a later day, he trod the surging waves triumphantly as long as he looked at his Master, but when his eye was turned to the dark depths all around him he began to sink. There was no power in himself to sustain him. His own thoughts—and perhaps the advice of his followers—now govern him, and he forgets to consult Jehovah through the priest. His plans are made according to his sense of the danger he is in from Saul, and they take him to again seek a refuge in the enemy’s land.
This time, however, he goes as head of a company which is powerful enough to win him a certain respect, even as a refugee from the hand of Saul. The Philistines doubtless knew all about the cause of his leaving the land of Judah, and the king of Gath seems to have been a generous kindly man, and received him in a kindly manner. For a short time he remains in the royal city, but not for long could David stay there. He had indeed started on a course of deception, but the living in the presence of Achish was too painful for him, and he begs to be assigned some place where he and his followers can form a little colony of their own, as it were, for the time of their being away from their own land.
To this also Achish agrees, and gives him a place called Ziklag, on the boundary of the country, where David and his men would form a great defense to Philistia as a sort of outpost garrison. Thus he became of great service as long as he remained there. Nevertheless it is sad to see how even the man of faith is weak as water if that faith is not exercised in a living way through daily dependence upon God.
Not that any of us can throw stones at David. If we are honest we most of us have to own that we have had our Ziklags—the times when we sank under the pressure of trials far lighter than his, but when we forgot our resource in God, and tried to escape from the trial by our own wisdom, and by turning to others to help us, even to the world it may be.
If David fails, the infinite grace that has watched over and kept him hitherto does not fail. Even while at Ziklag there were numbers of trusty men who came to him, not only out of Judah, but of Saul’s own tribe of Benjamin. Nor were they the least or lowest who came, but some of the most distinguished archers and gingers, those who could use both the right hand and the left in warfare, a feat that was rare, and so is specially named. The land of Philistia is one of the most fertile parts of the country even now, and though much of it is being overwhelmed by the ocean of sand which is gradually sweeping up from the desert, yet its groves of olives and figs, and orchards where apples flourish, besides the immense stretches of cornfields, prove what it must have been formerly.
In such a land David and his ever-increasing company would not find it very difficult to subsist, yet they were driven to make constant incursions into the districts near, where dwelt those tribes whom the Israelites should have expelled when first they entered Canaan. The Amalekites were one of these whom David now invaded, taking their spoil and destroying the people. As this was a common mode of life amongst the Philistines and other of the border tribes, it excited no surprise amongst them when Achish questioned David as to where one of these warlike raids had been made, and he in reply told him that they had gone against Judah and some of its villages.
It is sorrowful to see the continual deception thus practiced by the one whose frank open character had endeared him to many. The ruler of Gath seems to have been a man who was trustful and unsuspecting, and believed what David said, and thus had increased confidence in him. This we see when at last—after a longer peace than usual—the armies of the Philistines are to be gathered together to invade the land of Israel. Then the king tells David of this, and also that he expects the help of himself and his men in the coming campaign. To this the son of Jesse can offer no resistance. He replies, “Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do.”
In his heart, however, he must have bitterly felt the degrading part he would now have to take: to go against his own countrymen and king as an ally of the people he had so often defeated! It was the natural result of his sin in putting his trust in the world rather than in God. Yet even here the grace that so often delivered him does not fail. God uses the lords of the Philistines themselves to rescue David from the terrible position he had put himself in. The army is assembled at Aphek. The Israelites are encamped at Jezreel. The hour comes when the various companies of the Philistine army are led out in review previous to marching to the field of battle.
The lords of the country pass on first, each at the head of his thousand or hundred. Last of all comes Achisb, and with him David and his band.
Their evidently unexpected appearance arouses the jealous suspicion of the Philistine princes, and they ask Achish, “What do these Hebrews here?” The king tries to conciliate them by telling them that David has been with him a long time and he has found no fault in him; but this angers them still more, and they demand that he and his followers shall be at once dismissed from their army. They recall the time when the women sang of his victory over them, and naturally feel that he may become an adversary to them in the battle instead of an ally.
Thus is David spared the terrible necessity of fighting against Israel; yet when Achish tells him of the determination of his lords that he shall be sent back to Ziklag he falls so low as to expostulate with him about it, apparently resenting the slight put upon him. The end is that he and his men take the road back to their homes and families—as they think—but they find a very different place from the one they had left a few days before.
The city is a heap of smoking ruins, deserted and desolate. All their wives and children are gone, their property also, and something like despair settles down upon the hearts of all the band. What could they do but weep? “Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.”
There was something even worse in David’s cup of sorrow now than in that of these men who had followed him to Aphek. David loved his men, and it is very sure that he was loved by them. What must then have been the intensity of his grief when he found they were blaming him as the cause of all this terrible desolation of their homes? “And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters.” His own men stone him! The men who had lived with him and shared all his wanderings, and risked their lives for him! has it come to this that their hands threaten the life they have been seeking to shelter? Well may David be greatly distressed If his own faithful followers forsake him what is left for him? Never in his life before had he such suffering. Never had he so left the path of faith, and God meant by this severe chastisement to recall him to Himself. In His grace He causes David once more to turn to Him in contrition and real repentance through the terrible heartbreak it was to him to find his men actually regarding him as the cause of their depths of sorrow and speaking of stoning him. Long have his eyes been blinded, but now they are opened and he sees how far off he had strayed, sees that it is indeed he who has been the author of this calamity to his whole company, and his soul is grieved bitterly. “But David encouraged himself in Jehovah his God.” He finds that the instant he turns again to the One he had well nigh forgotten for the moment there is pardon and guidance.
Once more the priest is consulted, for now David is again with God, and he says to Abiathar, “I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David.” Now he asks of Jehovah whether he shall pursue after the troops who have wrought such desolation at Ziklag. They had probably left traces sufficient to show the way they had gone. The answer comes to him, “Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.” How wonderful the grace of God thus to encourage His servant! Very soon the whole band is marching on the tracks of the enemy, but some of his men find their strength failing, and by the time they reach the brook Besor they are too weary and faint for the toil of fording it.
Two hundred are therefore left behind there, while their leader and four hundred continue the pursuit. On the way they find an Egyptian lying in the field, apparently dying, and great as their haste is they are too pitiful to pass him by. He is taken to David, and food given to him, and when he has eaten the figs and clusters of raisins he revives, for he was really dying of starvation, having had no food for three days and nights. The compassion of David and his men which caused them to stop in their march to succor this poor young Egyptian is soon rewarded, for when he is asked who he is, and where he had come from, he tells them that he was servant to one of the troop of Amalekites who had invaded and destroyed Ziklag.
At once David sees the use he may be to them. He asks him if he can guide him to this troop, and the young man replies that he could; but as his cruel master had left him to die in the field when he fell sick three days before, he dreads falling again into his hands. Thus he says, “Swear unto me by God, that thou wilt neither kill me, nor deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will bring thee down to this company.”
He kept his promise and guided them to the place where the Amalekites were feasting and reveling because of the great spoil they had taken, unconscious that the avenger was near.
Falling suddenly upon them they are smitten utterly, excepting the men mounted on camels, who fled before them. Now the captives are sought for and soon found; and what a meeting that! Not one of all the wives, or sons and daughters missing. All are recovered. Neither is anything lost of all they had carried away, everything is restored, and besides this there are herds and flocks which had been taken from other places and which now fall into David’s hands, and he calls them “David’s spoil.”
What a song or psalm of thanksgiving the heart of the son of Jesse must have sang that night Now he thinks of his weary men at the brook Besor and hastens back to them, and there decrees that it shall be a standing rule that those who tarry with the stuff—as these men had—shall have an equal share with those who went down to the battle. He has just been dealt with in infinite grace and now deals in grace with his men. He will not enrich himself either with the spoil, for as soon as they reach Ziklag he sends presents of it to all the elders of the places where he had been treated with kindness while in the land of Judah, thus showing his gratitude to them.