When we last left off, Saul made it clear David was a dead man, no ambiguity about it, cause reasons. David was forced to run and keep running until he found somewhere he couldn't be hunted down like a dog.
His first stop was a temple of the Lord at a city called Nob. The head priest, Ahimelech, was understandably confused as to why a man of David's high ranking position was by himself, no escort, no warning of his arrival.
David explained he was on a secret mission, one where he had to leave incognito on orders from the King, and the reason he was stopping by was that he had no supplies due to the haste laid on by the mission and was hoping they had some bread and maybe a spare sword lying around.
Like some bizarre parody of an RPG game, David got both for his quest. The first was the bread that God commanded be put on the altar each day for the priests to snack on, and since they were about to chuck it for new bread, David could have it, but only if he hadn't made himself unclean or sexually impure.
David obviously was too busy trying not to get killed to have spent carnal time with his wife, so he got the bread. As for the sword, the very blade he had gypped from Goliath had wound up in Nob and hung in the temple as a novelty, basically a trophy of David pwning the giant. David got the blade and decided to use it as his own since it had already proven excellent at severing an enemy head from its neck.
As David left, some guy called Doeg the Edomite had seen this whole business. This will be important later.
Later, David decided he'd flee to the one place Saul obviously could not follow: Gath.
That's right, Goliath's hometown in what would be modern-day Syria.
Unfortunately, that reputation for being a legendary Israeli hero reared it's ugly head at the worst possible time, prompting King Achish of Gath to wonder if the new guy who showed up in town had really been the same one to have handed the Philistines so many of their backsides on platters.
David then hit upon a desperate plan to avoid exposure: He starting drooling all over himself and started making funny graffiti everywhere.
tl;dr: He decided to act utterly insane.
Achish took one look at the new guy being an obvious fruitcake missing a few strawberries and asked he kindly be shown the door, he didn't need to house any more lunatics than he already did.
And so he got booted back over the Israelite border with his neck still attached.
However, he did manage to find a decent hiding spot at the Cave of Adullam to lay low, and by this time most of his family tracked him down and decided to help him stay hidden because family looks out for each other. He wound up attracting a bunch of sympathizers to the point he had a sizable group of 400 or so groupies, which prompted him to pick up stakes before anyone noticed, this time to the neighboring territory of the Moabites. This was pretty logical since, if you read the book of Ruth, David was one of her descendants.
David asked the King of Moab to take his family in so they wouldn't get caught up in any crap Saul had planned for him, and his plan was to lie low there for a while too. A prophet of God named Gad tracked him down though and said God had a change of plans, he wanted David to head on over to the land of the tribe of Judah, where David decided to lay low in the forest of Hereth.
Now cut back over to Saul, who had been trying to track David down, finding that the tribe of Benjamin and knew nothing and most of David's family had already cleared out. As Saul was cursing them out for colluding with David, that Doeg guy showed up and decided to be the stool pigeon:
[9] But Doeg the Edomite, who had stationed himself with the servants of Saul, replied, "I saw this son of Jesse come to Ahimelech son of Ahitub at Nob. [10] He inquired of the LORD for him and gave him provisions. He also gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine."
(I Samuel 22:9-10 [NETfree])
To say Saul was a bit mad to find this out was an understatement. In fact, by the time he got to Nob with his troops in force (with Doeg the informant tagging along), he accused the priests at Nob of harboring his enemy and providing him aid and comfort.
Ahimelech, speaking on behalf of the other priests, honestly told Saul they had no idea David, whom they knew to be an honest, high ranking officer for Saul, had done anything wrong and again honestly protested utter innocence, they had no clue David had gotten on Saul's bad side.
Saul was not buying this, even though this was 100% true. In fact, what he ordered in response was so shocking every one of Saul's men was frozen in horror.
Saul wanted them to kill every last priest in Nob for colluding with a traitor.
Now, this is entirely understandable. Without the benefit of a trial to assess guilt or innocence, their King ordered them to kill a temple of priests to the Lord.
That's when that craven weasel Doeg stepped forward and offered to do the deed. Saul not only let him, but he basically sat back and watched as 85 priests of God were murdered before the altar and Doeg even killed their wives, livestock, and even children.
One priest did manage to get away, a guy by the name of Abiathar. He managed to track David down and explain what had happened. David's blood ran cold when he heard of Doeg, put two and two together, and realized an entire temple city of innocent people were killed just to get to him.
David then told Abiathar not only did he take responsibility for the dead, he asked Abiathar to stick with him because the price on David's head was now on Abiathar's as well.
I'll cover more later on, but let's stop for a moment here and discuss just how far Saul has fallen.
He went from being chosen by God and doing His Will, and now he's sunk so far as to murder God's own priests in contravention of all legal and moral reason, simply because of his jealous hatred of David.
David, by contrast, is horrified of who died as a result being seen with him, takes the lone survivor under his protection, and takes responsibility for the circumstances that led to Saul's murder by proxy.
Worse, it all started because of one man's jealous rage not only consuming him, it also became so monstrous it started getting other people hurt, just as the target of that rage feared.
This is the outcome of jealousy, contempt, and rage corroding Saul from a noble and decent man to a callow murderer, and it should serve as a lesson:
Don't let the same corrode your own soul, the results may not result in dead people, but it's quite likely that like Saul, what you wind up seeing in the mirror when that happens will forever shame you, and more importantly, the God who you will one day have to stand before in Judgment.
No comments:
Post a Comment