The Musings Of The Consensus

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 for...

When we last left Saul, he was watching as priests of God were getting killed on his orders and David was horrified to find that out sometime later. Sometime after this incident, David heard the Philistines were assaulting a place called Keliah, and after God told him "you'll cave in their skulls left and right", David told his groupies to stow their fears and Keliah was saved by David's men. Unfortunately, gratitude was in short supply with the Keliahites, so David had to move to a place called Horesh to avoid getting caught by Saul. David soon had to haul tail again, cause Saul was that autistically persistent, but Johnathan and David managed a brief secret meeting where the former promised the latter that he knew David would one day take his dad's throne, and on that day, he'd be happy to step back and support him. Tragically, he never got the chance to do that, but hey, thought that counts. Eventually, Saul very nearly had David pinned down in th...

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 ...

Recently, Joshua "Null" Moon, he of "Kiwi Farms" fame/infamy, decided to launch 9chan, which runs using his own custom designed chan board software. Barely three days after it hits the public internet, and it's already been targeted by the following: 1. Epik, the domain registrar, decided to weasel out of providing Moon service on utterly spurious grounds that basically amounted to "because I want to and I'll seize any cheap excuse to justify screwing you over without notice". This obstacle was overcome, but it's still galling such bad faith has gone unpunished. 2. The usual SJW types have fired up the propaganda machines at Wikipedia and various tabloid rags on the internet conflating 9chan with all the evils possible and trying to shame anyone possible into getting it choked off the internet. The owner of Epik fell for this because Wikipedia published such blatant attack articles on him Joseph Goebbels would blink in amazement at and th...

When last we left Saul, he was lying naked in the street giving praise to God as opposed to committing cold-blooded murder of an innocent man , while said innocent man David was asking his friend Johnathan if he had any idea why his dad Saul wanted to have his head mounted on a wall plaque. Johnathan was in kinda-sorta denial mode in response, which is kinda fair, we are talking about a friend being forced to choose his friend over his father here. David asked Johnathan to cover for him while he found a better place to hide, basically telling his dad "David went back to his hometown of Bethlehem for an annual feast, wanted me to pass the word along.", and depending on whether Saul shrugged his shoulders or went ballistic, that would give David a good idea whether he needed to find a really good rock and stay under it or if whatever drove Saul nuts would eventually blow over. Johnathan was a tad reluctant to straight-up lie to his own father, so he proposed David hide near...

During our last installment, King Saul's paranoia was reaching critical mass , and it got so bad his son Johnathan had to call his own dad out and basically say this. "Dad, relax. David is no threat to you. Guy clearly prefers to serve rather than lead, has done everything you ask without fail, and I've been friends with him long enough to know he has no overweening ambition to take your job, so you can quit looking for the number for Assassins R Us concerning the guy." Saul's response, was, and I quote: [6] Saul accepted Jonathan's advice and took an oath, "As surely as the LORD lives, he will not be put to death."  [7] Then Jonathan called David and told him all these things. Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he served him as he had done formerly.  (I Samuel 19:6-7 [NETfree]) However, if you thought it was over, then I have a bridge to sell you in a desert. One day, while David was playing music for Saul, he found himself having to dod...

While we left Saul as God had rejected him as King , God told Samuel he already had a replacement in mind. So Samuel went to Jesse of Bethlehem, and after weeding out everyone but some unassuming sheepherder named David, he anointed the boy. Unlike with Saul, there was no mention of why, and it was assumed at the time it was for something important by all present. At the very least, Saul never heard of it. Now, around this time, Saul was being tormented by what the Bible calls "an evil spirit sent by the Lord". The description makes it tad vague in some translations whether this was literal or Saul was suffering depression, but either way,  his advisers realized having an emo king was bad and advised someone should get a good musician to cheer the king up from time to time. One of them heard of a sheepherder who did some part-time music and wasn't bad at it, so they hired him. Yep, David was now working for Saul as a result. By all accounts, he did a good job allevi...