When we last left Saul, he had twice been snuck up on Metal Gear Solid style by David, just so the latter could prove he could've killed Saul at any moment and chose not to. Both times, Saul backed off for awhile.
However, David knew his luck could not be infinite. In fact, so long as he remained for any considerable length of time in Israel's borders, he was in Saul's dead sights and one day, Saul was going to have his head on a spike.
So he once again tried to set up shop in the land of the Philistines.
Now, he had tried this before and it failed, and he was even doing so before Achish, the same guy he once had to play madman in front of to keep his head attached to his neck. This time, though, it was common knowledge David had a price on his head Saul would pay for and whatever military reputation David had as an Israeli hero was chicken feed at his point, so when David asked Achish for room and board in return for his groupies serving as a Philistine mercenary force, they gave Dave and his friends a city called Ziklag to call their own.
Of course, this came with a price: They wanted David to turn his blade on his own people, and David found an ingenious way to cheat on this deal while still appearing to follow it:
[8] Then David and his men went up and raided the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites. (They had been living in that land for a long time, from the approach to Shur as far as the land of Egypt.) [9] When David would attack a district, he would leave neither man nor woman alive. He would take sheep, cattle, donkeys, camels, and clothing and would then go back to Achish. [10] When Achish would ask, "Where did you raid today?" David would say, "The Negev of Judah" or "The Negev of Jeharmeel" or "The Negev of the Kenites." [11] Neither man nor woman would David leave alive so as to bring them back to Gath. He was thinking, "This way they can't tell on us, saying, 'This is what David did.'" Such was his practice the entire time that he lived in the country of the Philistines. [12] So Achish trusted David, thinking to himself, "He is really hated among his own people in Israel! From now on he will be my servant."
(I Samuel 27:8-12 [NETfree])
Now, one might wonder why Achish fell for this ruse, but it was pretty easy to explain:
1. In terms of plunder, practically every force was pretty similar to the Israelites that he attacked in terms of material goods, so David had little reason to worry he might have his ruse uncovered by the Philistines rifling through the loot he brought back and finding non-Israeli specific goods.
2. The term "Negev" means "desert", so as long as David killed non-Israeli forces relatively near the locations he mentioned, no one would look too deeply into seeing if he was lying, since traversing deserts was arduous work and if the goods he brought back were a bit sandy, no one would find that odd.
3. David accurately believed "dead men tell no tales", and it was a commonly known practice of Israelite forces to kill everyone to the last man anyway, so his not bringing back prisoners was not seen as unusual.
4. All the people David went after were basically desert raiders, the kind of scum that was headaches to Israeli and Philistine alike. No one was likely to care if they died either way.
Unfortunately, the ruse was nearly broken when Achish tried to sign up David's forces for regular military service with the Phlistine army. David was likely happy he did this, he could backstab them behind their own lines. However, the other Philistine commanders weren't stupid, and they gave Achish a hard no, saying he could use them to do proxy raids, but they weren't fighting shoulder to shoulder with Philistine regulars.
Dave put on a good show of acting disappointed out of apparent loyalty for Achish's benefit, and he basically got the best of both worlds: he could keep the ruse going and he got removed from any situation where it might get discovered.
We now cut back to Saul, who, since Samuel died, was getting a bit desperate. The Philistines were gearing up for another major offensive against the Israelites, God made a point to ignore Saul's calls, and Saul had no way of getting a heads up from anyone affiliated with God on whether his forces would win.
So Saul, in his desperation, did the unthinkable.
Early in Saul's career, he had made a point to put to the sword mediums, sorcerers, and anyone else who might worship idols or commune with the dead, generally out of loyalty to God. Despite later getting on God's bad side, he still kept up this practice. Now, though, God had left Saul so starved for news he was about to turn to those very people he once slew to stay on God's good side.
There was a witch a place called Endor who was reputed to be good at getting dead people on the horn, and Saul figured he'd have her call up Samuel because while Samuel had been the one to break Saul ego over his knee, he was still providing primo intel to the Israelites on God's intentions until his death, and Saul decided he'd, in some literal sense, dig up Samuel's corpse for another heads up session.
However, this time it was Saul whose reputation preceded him in a bad way. The witch of Endor quickly realized who Saul was and was about to cut and run, figuring she was the target of a sting to flush her out and get her killed, but after Saul convinced her he was going to let her live because God was stiff-arming him that badly and Saul really needed some divine update on what to do, the witch did her thing.
Now, an important note before I go on. I've read numerous bible translations, and they all leave vague if the witch of Endor actually did anything for real, God let it happen, or if Saul got an evil demonic parody of what he asked for, it's one of those parts of the Bible where they leave it up in the air what happened, so I'm just going to cite how it's described in the text below as opposed to giving pithy commentary and let the reader be the judge:
[13] The king said to her, "Don't be afraid! What have you seen?" The woman replied to Saul, "I have seen one like a god coming up from the ground!" [14] He said to her, "What about his appearance?" She said, "An old man is coming up! He is wrapped in a robe!"Then Saul realized it was Samuel, and he bowed his face toward the ground and kneeled down. [15] Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" Saul replied, "I am terribly troubled! The Philistines are fighting against me and God has turned away from me. He does not answer me - not by the prophets nor by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what I should do." [16] Samuel said, "Why are you asking me, now that the LORD has turned away from you and has become your enemy? [17] The LORD has done exactly as I prophesied! The LORD has torn the kingdom from your hand and has given it to your neighbor David! [18] Since you did not obey the LORD and did not carry out his fierce anger against the Amalekites, the LORD has done this thing to you today. [19] The LORD will hand you and Israel over to the Philistines! Tomorrow both you and your sons will be with me. The LORD will also hand the army of Israel over to the Philistines!" [20] Saul quickly fell full length on the ground and was very afraid because of Samuel's words. He was completely drained of energy, not having eaten anything all that day and night.
(I Samuel 28:13-20 [NETfree])
Regardless of whether this was real or if Saul had been duped by smoke and mirrors or a demonic parody of the real deal, it doesn't really matter, Saul was left even more terrified than he was before.
I'll cover the finale of Saul's fall and disgrace unto death in the last part, but this contains a few important lessons on why Saul fell so hard.
First off, he had been anointed by God to do as GOD wanted, and he lost God's favor by cheating on that, so why he thought doubling and tripling down on defying God's will was a good idea boggles the imagination. Second, he had sunk to the point of doing the very things he had slain others for doing as crimes before the Lord out of fear and desperation.
Granted, God had already rejected Saul and left him in the lurch as King, but Saul, being too proud to legally abdicate his throne and too arrogant to accept this, kept trying to do the job without his key backer, and he declined into a paranoid shell of himself who had resorted to becoming little better than what he was anointed to oppose evil had corroded him like acid and ate away at his integrity and decency.
It will only get worse from here, and this story will end on a sad note for Saul, but the lesson here as to how it was getting to that point I won't belabor, except to say the mistakes Saul made are ones no one should ever repeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment