That prophet who had anointed David to be king over Israel was just dead. His long life of perhaps over one hundred years in the service of God and Israel had now closed. He had also anointed Saul, and had had to grieve over his disastrous failures. Thus had Samuel been used to preserve and renew the links between Jehovah and His people. Saul was still wielding the power of the kingdom, and nothing outwardly emphasized the serious fact that the Spirit of Jehovah had departed from him. For although God may tolerate that which He has already judged morally, sometimes indeed continuing for a considerable time to do so, yet He can never sanction by His presence powers contrary in principle to each other. Sometimes in long-suffering mercy, and sometimes as in the history before us, for the more effective moral preparation of His chosen instrument, He exercises and strengthens faith in the hearts of the faithful, and further uses it for the perfecting of patience.
We may trace these and other precious fruits in the heart of David through many of the Psalms, while, on the contrary, the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes manifest the results of experience—often bitter and disappointing—where the soul has not been chastened and tried in the school of adversity. David could say, “I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy, for thou hast considered my trouble. Thou hast known my soul in adversities” (Psalm 31:7). His character was thus molded upon a divine pattern, not always acceptable or intelligible to those about him (compare 2 Samuel 4:9-12 with 2 Samuel 19:16-23). Saul's great failure had been impulsiveness and disobedience. He could not wait, though on one occasion this seems to have been not altogether without justification, as in his introduction to the kingdom.
God then gave him the opportunity for action, and His Spirit supplied the energy (1 Samuel 11:1-11). Action of this decisive character will always commend itself to men, and it was so in this instance. The people approved of it, and were proud of their king; but on another occasion, where the commandment required him to wait for Samuel, he yielded to mere religious impulse, as he confessed, “I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering” (I Samuel 13:12). And again, contrary to explicit instructions, he yielded to thoughts of nature and spared the man whose destruction had been decreed by divine justice. Human energy is good in itself, but if not exercised in dependence upon God, Satan can and will make use of it in opposition to God's revealed will; but to those who wait upon the Lord divine power comes in, and we are strengthened to obey where human energy proves itself powerless. “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon Jehovah shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:29-31).
This, then, was the lesson David was set down to learn in this chapter of his history, and God had His own way of teaching it. In a time of need David turns to man for help, instead of to God! He proves its unprofitableness, and very nearly exposes himself to the curse of Jeremiah 17:5. Let us look at the circumstances.
“And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep. And David sent out ten young men; and David said unto the young men, Get you up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name. And thus shall ye say to him, Long life [to thee]! and peace be to thee, and peace be to thine house, and peace be unto all that thou hast! And now I have heard that thou hast shearers; thy shepherds have now been with us, and we hurt them not, neither was there aught missing unto them, all the while they were in Carmel. Ask thy young men, and they will tell thee; wherefore let the young men find favor in thine eyes: for we come in a good day: give, I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand unto thy servants, and to thy son David. And when David's young men came, they spake to Nabal according to all those words in the name of David, and ceased. And Nabal answered David's servants and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? there be many servants nowadays that break away every man from his master. Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be? So David's young men turned on their way and went back, and came and told him all those sayings” (1 Samuel 25:4-12).
A degenerate descendant of a man remarkable for faith in his day, Caleb, he offers an entirely unprovoked insult to David, who, in his resentment, at once prepares to avenge himself upon the churl. The flesh in David would meet the flesh in Nabal! Had such a conflict been allowed, who can tell how it would have ended? But God dealt graciously with David, softening his heart, and turning him from his purpose by an instrumentality prepared in secret but now fittingly brought forth. So David himself, too, had been beforehand prepared for the conflict with Goliath—not by the unproved accoutrements of Saul, but—by the pledges of God's mercy in his deliverances from the lion and the bear. That this is the divine way of using experience is manifest. The great apostle of the Gentiles thus exercised himself. “For we would not have you ignorant brethren concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we ourselves have had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver, on whom we have set our hope that he will also still deliver us” (2 Corinthians 1:8-10).
[G. S. B.]
(To be continued)