STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 29
1 Sam. 22:1-5
November 5, 2000
Text Comment
We have now the next “scene” in the narrative of David’s flight from Saul and in this scene we see David getting his feet under him as it were and the foundation laid for the long struggle to follow.
v.1 Adullam is not very far from Bethlehem (some 12 miles). Indeed, apparently from what may be the very cave, one can see the hill near Bethlehem. Every serious reader of the Bible says the same thing: that things spring to life in the biblical narrative when one has been in the Holy Land and can visualize the appearance of things, the relationship between one place and another, etc. To be sure, much has changed, it was more wooded in those days, but still much is the same. So we can see that David is not far from home and he is operating in country that would have been very familiar to him.
Obviously, David’s family is now at risk as well. If Saul would attempt to kill members of his own family – as he did, remember when he threw the spear at Jonathan [22:3], how much more David’s family. Not only might they give aid and succor to the fugitive, but if he should succeed in killing David, his brothers might step into his place as a pretender to the throne. We can well imagine that there came a knock on Jesse’s door in the darkness of some night to tell him that his son was now at the cave of Adullam and wanted to see him.
v.3 Of course, it would be in Moab’s interest to encourage a movement that would de-stabilize the Israelite government and distract it with domestic worries. We read in 14:47 that Saul had conducted or was conducting warfare against the Moabites. What is more, remember that David’s great-grandmother was Ruth, the Moabitess, so there may have been a family link that accounted for the choice of Moab. There were, to be sure, other places he might have gone or taken his family.
Combining vv. 1 and 3 we get this picture: his brothers came and rallied around him and stayed with him as part of his fighting force. His parents, who were too old for that life, remained in Moab.
v.5 The reference of the term “stronghold” is a matter of debate. If this “stronghold” is the same place as the cave of Adullam it is not clear why Gad would have spoken as he did, as Adullam was in Judah, though at its western edge, so perhaps was not counted Judah then. Perhaps this is another “stronghold”, perhaps one in the craggy border country between Moab and Israel. David is leaving nothing to chance in protecting himself from Saul.
Gad will later be found as one of David’s court prophets (2 Sam. 24:11-14), so this is the introduction of one of the players in the unfolding story of David’s reign as king. In 2 Sam. 24 he is the one who appears to David after his sin of numbering the people and is there referred to as “David’s seer.”
The forest of Hereth cannot be identified. It is not mentioned anywhere else in the OT.
Now, what are we to make of this brief scene that completes the trio of brief scenes that we have been given since David made his escape from Saul: David at Nob, at Gath, and now at Adullam and in Moab?
Well, chiefly this. Remember, we have said that all through this material David is presented as the Lord’s anointed and so becomes for later readers of the Bible a figure of the Lord Christ himself, an enacted prophecy, a forecast in flesh and blood of the life and work of Jesus Christ. We saw that clearly, for example, in the Goliath episode and can see it at many other points as well.
Last time, for example, we treated the incident at Gath as a study in the relationship between faith and works or God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. In 1 Sam. 21:10-15 David escapes from the Philistines by means of an effective ruse, he feigns insanity so well that Achish orders him to be expelled from his territory. But in Psalm 34, which David wrote about his deliverance from Gath, all credit for his deliverance is given to God and to the angels of God and the power of God.
But, we could have treated David there as well as a Christ figure, who in his life and work, in his obedience and in the heroic struggle he maintains against the powers of darkness for three long years accomplishes our salvation – it is all entirely the achievement of the Lord Jesus – and yet who, at the same time and in the very same life, is, as Luke would put it in acts, is accomplishing precisely what God long before had determined to bring to pass. All through the gospel story we encounter the interplay between the divine plan and purpose and the faithful and wise performance of his duty on the part of the Lord Jesus.
Well, here too. Think of David as a precursor of the Lord Jesus, indeed, as the precursor of the Lord Jesus, as he definitely is in the Bible. Remember, there are prophecies of Jesus Christ in the OT prophets, written long after the life of King David, when the coming Messiah is referred to not as the son of David or the descendant of David or the promised heir to David’s throne, but simply as David. That is how much David is a Christ figure, a prophecy of Christ, in the Bible. Now, then, simply take the points in order as they appear in this brief narrative scene.
I. First, there is David honoring his parents.
His folks are older by now. David is the youngest of eight sons and no doubt there were sisters scattered throughout the family as well. What is more, some time has passed since Samuel anointed David, though we don’t know how much time. In any case, it is not difficult to see Jesse as an old man, too old, in any case, to be a fighter anymore. And so David takes care to take his aging parents to safety. Here is a man keeping the fifth commandment and honoring his parents as God’s law said he must. Here is an obedient man and obedient even in crisis, even when returning to the environs of Bethlehem exposed him to further danger.
You remember, of course, the Lord Jesus doing a similar thing, honoring his mother when under terrible pressure himself. While hanging on the cross in that excruciating pain, he made provision for his mother’s care by indicating to the apostle John that he should take her into his home – she was clearly a widow by this time – and to her that she should go to live with John, which she did.
Already we see that it will be a mark of the Messiah that he will be a man who is himself scrupulously obedient to the law of God and will honor all his relationships in that manner most appropriate, and will do so no matter the cost, no matter the danger to himself.
We could notice as well that, as it happens, there was friction in the family over the anointing of David as the king – remember the scorn and the resentment we heard from David’s older brother during the Goliath episode [“Who do you think you are…?”] – but eventually they realized his divine calling and joined in his band. In the same way, the Lord’s brothers and sisters did not at first recognize him as the Messiah or believe in him, but, after the resurrection, became important members of the church, two of them contributing books of the New Testament and James becoming the pillar of the church in Jerusalem.
It is surely no accident the way in which David’s own life anticipates the life of our Lord Jesus!
II. Second, we find David gathering to himself a scruffy sort of band.
We said, last time, that faith and effort go together and so they do in David’s life and that of the Lord. He expects that the Lord God will deliver the throne of Israel into his hand in due time, but that does not mean that he won’t have to fight for it. There will, in fact, be war for some time between the house of Saul and the house of David. But Saul has an army as the story begins – he is king of a nation. David has his slingshot and now a captured sword. He has no army, no followers. There were, to be sure, a few men with him, as we learned when he went to Nob, in the previous chapter (21:2,5), though they disappear from the narrative in the scene at Gath. There David seems to be very much alone.
But, now, men begin to appear and gather around him. Like Robin Hood and a great many other figures in human history, his own personal difficulties serve, by reason of his charisma and leadership, as a rallying point for many others. He starts with some 400, including, of course, some of his own brothers, who, no doubt had the higher positions in this small force. In 1 Samuel 25:13, a short while later, we learn that he had now 600 men. He appeared to be taking all comers. But what an army. A collection of misfits more like it. Folk who had themselves made a mess of their lives or had been the victim of the injustice of others [the Hebrew words translated “in distress” suggests that they were oppressed]. These would have been debtors who couldn’t repay, folk who had lost their property, people who, in one way or another, had fallen afoul of Saul’s rogue government – remember Samuel had warned the people ahead of time that a king was going to rule despotically – and, no doubt, folk who were disaffected with the powers at be for reasons that had nothing to do with justice or fair play. No doubt there were among David’s 400 men who were petty crooks, chronic malcontents, and the like. One of the problem with guerilla movements from time immemorial in human history is that they attract so many disreputable types to them and the leadership is so hard pressed that they must take them and use them even if they have to hold their noses while doing so.
But, now think of David in his role as a Christ figure and think of the people, the rag-tag group that the Lord Jesus gathered around himself at the outset of his ministry. They presented a pretty sorry prospect for the movement’s long-term health! There were some fishermen of no particular reputation, there was a tax-collector (about as despised an occupation as existed in Palestine in those days), there was a zealot (a political radical whose movement later would bring Rome’s fury down upon the heads of everyone in Judea). And in the larger group surrounding the twelve there were some women – not an asset to a movement’s reputation in the 1st century – and some disreputable types, “sinners” as the religious leadership would have called them: adulterers, prostitutes, and the like. As the movement grew another tax collector in Jericho would be added, a number of former beggars, and so on. And, too, there was a traitor, a malcontent who wanted other things than the leader was after.
And as the movement spread after Pentecost, with some notable exceptions, the movement continued to attract larger numbers of lower class and unexceptional folk to it. And everywhere some hangers-on who would quit when the going got tough. So much was this the case that Paul could later state it as an uncontroversial observation that in the church of Christ one found “not many wise by human standards, not many influential, not many of noble birth.” “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak things to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” [1 Cor. 1:26-29]
And so it has continued. Look around this room. We are not a collection of powerful people as the world measures such things. There are few who could be described as “movers and shakers.” We don’t have great wealth in this church or political muscle. And in that we are entirely typical as a Christian congregation. But we will carry the future with us because the Lord is for us and against those who trust in themselves.
III. Then, third and finally, we find David here picking up a prophet, a seer, who will provide for him an open line of communication with God.
Saul, of course, had that communication and lost it because of his faithlessness. But now David has obtained what Saul lost, surely another important sign of God’s favor and of his inevitable triumph over the house of Saul. God would be giving him the information he needed in order to preserve himself from Saul’s plots and in order eventually to overcome Saul to take the throne that is now rightfully his.
It is not hard to see the same in the case of the Lord Jesus. He too had a seer, John the Baptist, who played an instrumental role in getting the Lord Jesus started on his course to the cross. And he had an open line of communication to heaven. As a man, of course, he had to pray as we do and his answers came in the same way ours did, some immediately and some not at all, some clearly and unmistakably and some that would only much later, upon reflection, be recognized as God’s response. But, at several key moments, this King yet to be crowned, received essential intelligence, as David did when Gad told him to go to the forest of Hereth. Think particularly of his baptism and of the transfiguration two years later when Moses and Elijah gave him instructions about his coming “exodus.”
In all of these ways David’s progress to the throne set a pattern that would be followed centuries later by the Lord Jesus. We will, of course, find that David is not a perfect paradigm of the Lord Christ, not by any means. We will learn and be reminded that no mere sinful man can exemplify for us the Lord Jesus in anything like entirety. We will not be left in any confusion as to whether a man like David could be our Savior. Or no, he must be a much better man, a much greater man, even than Israel’s great and godly king. But, in so many ways, David anticipates the Lord Jesus and his life and work, he prepares the church, in so many ways, to recognize the Lord Jesus as the King that he is and to understand and appreciate his work. David’s history teaches us the patterns, the principles that we will need to appreciate the Messiah’s history.
And, one thing more, one very important thing. At the time of this scene at Adullam and in Moab, David, as we said, is doing what the Lord Christ would do after him. He was a very long way from assuming the throne of Israel, just as Jesus Christ, when he honored his parents and when he gathered his motley crew and when he heard God’s Word through John the Baptist was a very long way from being extolled as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But David would successfully mount that throne that God had promised him. What the anointed man was doing here would bring eventually all that God had promised. And, in the same way, what the Lord Christ did, in fulfillment of the prophesy we find in David’s life will bring all that the Father promised his Son. The Father promised the Son that he would given him all the nations of the world as his inheritance. It is not yet the case that all nations are bowing before the Lord Christ. But, what the Lord has already done will inexorably lead to his triumph in due time.
That too is the lesson of Adullam: the fact that something God has promised is a long time in fulfillment does not at all mean that it will not be fulfilled, especially when the steps that are taken toward that fulfillment are precisely the ones that must be taken. Christians are to read these few verses in 1 Sam. 22 and think to themselves, It was some years and much hard labor before David was enthroned publicly as the King of Israel. But, the Messiah traveled this same road, even more magnificently than David did. The Messiah’s public enthronement, what the church has been so eagerly waiting for all these years, cannot be much longer in coming!