STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 33
1 Samuel 24:1-22
December 3, 2000
Text Comment
Now begins a set of three separate episodes in which David has the opportunity to exact revenge. Here and in chapter 26 he has the opportunity to take his revenge on Saul, and in chapter 25 upon Nabal. It is very interesting that 24 and 26 are similar enough accounts - Saul at David's mercy and David not taking advantage - that in typical way liberal scholarship has assumed that they are different versions of one original story. But, a greater appreciation of the narrative artistry in Samuel indicates that, in fact, there is a significant development. These chapters are not simply the same situation described three times over. In the first David takes some small revenge and is conscience stricken over what he has done. In the second, which does not involve Saul, he is prepared to exact severe revenge on Nabal and must be persuaded not to do so by Abigail. There we find out what David would do apart from the grace and the Spirit of God. In the third episode David has learned his lesson. There is no thought whatever of taking revenge on Saul into his own hands, but David, in faith, leaves the matter to God, even though his men urge him to take advantage of the situation and kill Saul. These three stories together give an account of an important development in David's character.
A second point. 1 Sam. 24 is the point at which David's rise and Saul's collapse first actually intersect. The righteous anointed one, for the first time, has the upper hand militarily and the wicked, rejected king must acknowledge it. "The importance of 1 Sam. 24 is that it is precisely the point of intersection of the crossing." [Fokkelman, ii, 473]
Finally, let me add to these introductory comments one further item. There are two psalms, two beautiful psalms, that are identified in their titles as having their origin when David was in a cave. Psalm 57 says explicitly that it arises out of that incident when David fled from Saul into the cave. That reference could be to the cave of Adullam, of course, though it is here, in 1 Sam. 24, that David flees from Saul directly into the cave. In the case of Adullam he is simply in the wilderness, and so using that cave, because of Saul's efforts to kill him. Here, Saul is actually present in the area and David has taken refuge in the cave. The title to Psalm 142 says simply "When he was in the cave." Both psalms are prayers that the Lord would deliver David from his enemies and confident ascriptions of faith in the Lord.
v.1 "En", really "Ain" is Hebrew for "spring." In this case it was an oasis and still is today. There was water and fruit trees, etc. David, remember, had not only to feed and water his own family but 600 men! That need dictated where he could go in what was generally a barren wilderness.
v.2 Apparently Saul had successfully dealt with the Philistine incursion reported in the last chapter and was again free to pursue David. His force outnumbers David's 5 to 1 and, of course, his are picked troops. Wild goats can still be found in this region.
v.3 The cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea in the area of En-gedi are honeycombed with caves. (This isn't far from the caves were the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.)
v.4 There is nothing in the narrative of Samuel to suggest that the Lord ever said any such thing to David. His men are simply elaborating the general point that David was anointed by the Lord to replace Saul with this embellishment. People do this all the time! It makes a better argument and they assume that David's thought processes will be as their own. You notice that they carefully avoid using the word "kill."
v.5 Literally it reads, "David's heart smote him." David's wounded conscience is indication enough that his motives in cutting off the corner of Saul's robe were not as high-minded as we might have thought. His motives differed only in degree from those of David's men. [Gordon, 179] The cutting of the robe was, in the ANE, a highly symbolic act. The king's robe was the symbol of his reign. To cut it was an act of rebellion, virtually the denying of his right to be a king. It was therefore an act of rebellion on David's part. Clearly the reaction of David's conscience indicates that it was intended as a symbolic act on David's part.
v.7 The men sense that a golden opportunity is slipping away; they can't believe that David is going to allow Saul to slip through his fingers. After all, their safety is at stake as well. David had to restrain them from taking matters into their own hands.
v.9 It is perhaps David's wounded conscience that leads him to take this calculated risk.
v.13 It is a terse saying in Hebrew - just three words - and has been interpreted in various ways. Perhaps most likely is the notion that one's actions are a window into one's disposition. The idea then would be that David's act of sparing Saul proved that he harbored no ill-will toward the king. His motives were pure and his actions proved them so. The NEB, on the other hand, translates "one wrong begets another." In which case David would have been saying that even an act as seemingly just as his revenging himself on Saul could only be expected to produce further evil down the road. That is why he then says that he would not touch Saul. To do so, as he said would be wrong, and wrong always produces harm.
v.14 Literally, "one flea." David, in a typically Hebrew way, intensifies the first image with the second. He is not only as worthless as a dead dog, he is as worthless as a single flea on the dead dog's back. Saul shouldn't be spending all this time and energy coming after him. [Alter, Com., 150]
v.21 For a moment, and it is only momentary, David's words bring Saul back to sanity. Saul's manner of speaking enables us actually to visualize the slow awakening of understanding, the dawning of recognition in that morally confused mind. It won't last but for that moment he condemns himself by acknowledging the complete justice of David's cause, even to the extent of asking David not to harm Saul's family when he assumes the throne!
v.22 David knows better than to take Saul's words as evidence for a real change of heart, so he heads back to the strongholds.
What we have here is a conflict between two forms of guidance: one based on reading divine providence and the other based on God's law and one's conscience. And we learn, as often in the Bible, that providence is too ambiguous to make the basis for our decisions.
It is not difficult to follow the logic of David's men. David has been anointed by the Lord's prophet to be the next king of Israel. Saul has gone mad with hatred, envy, and fear, to the point of having attempted the murder of his son, the crown prince, and having actually exterminated an entire town of the Lord's priests. Now, in the most remarkable development, they ran into a cave to hide from Saul's men. If a group of Saul's soldiers had come into the cave with him, they would have been discovered and destroyed. But Saul came into the cave alone, to relieve himself. What could this be but the Lord handing the wicked king into the hands of the good man who is appointed to replace him. But David, perhaps after some struggle with his conscience, concluded that these circumstances, remarkable as they no doubt were, did not, in fact, amount to an invitation to kill the king. And, in effect, there were two arguments that weighed with him:
1. First, there is, what we could call today, the argument from Scripture. David knew that he had no right to take the law in to his own hands and certainly no right to execute the man the Lord himself had appointed to be the king of Israel. There was a divine law that spoke to his situation and it trumped the providence that put Saul at David's mercy. There is no doubt that David understood that he would be violating God's law if he killed Saul. He makes that point twice in remarks that are quoted in this chapter, first in v. 6 and then again in v. 10. When a biblical narrator repeats a thought he is usually emphasizing the importance of that thought and, as here, perhaps emphasizing the importance of its place in the reasoning of David. And here the plain implication is that if we know from the law of God that a certain thing is right or wrong, then no providence, however striking will make the doing of that thing less right or less wrong. We start with the law of God and if it speaks directly to the situation we are facing, then we end with the law of God as well.
You young people, take careful note here. You will find yourselves tempted many times to take comfort from the fact that God's providence has provided you with an opportunity, perhaps a golden opportunity, to do something. But that something is forbidden in the Word of God. You stay with the Word of God. If impurity in a relationship with a young man or woman - always great temptation in the life of young people today - is made easier by circumstances that place you together alone, your loyalty to God, your righteousness and your faith may be being tested, but you are most definitely not being given permission to sin, except by the devil himself. If a young man or young woman you find attractive shows himself or herself attracted to you - but that person is not a Christian - no encouragement may be found in those circumstances to cultivate that relationship. God has spoken! His Word is clear. End of discussion!
2. Second, there was his conscience to contend with. David was troubled at the thought to doing harm to Saul. He was conscience stricken that he had done even so much as cut off the corner of the hem of Saul's robe. The NIV's "conscience-stricken" is a translation of what literally reads "his heart smote him." It is a strong expression, paralleled in the OT only at 2 Sam. 24:10, where David is once again said to be "conscience-stricken" after his sin of numbering the people.
When your conscience is bothering you, you know how strong its influence can be! His heart smote him. And our consciences can do the same. We get red in the face for the shame of what our conscience has accused us of doing. We can't sleep because it forces into our minds the remembrance of our words and deeds. Our conscience, someone has said, is like the warning lights that you find on the dashboard of your car. You can ignore them, you can even take a hammer to your dashboard and smash them. But you do so to your peril. The oil pressure will not go back to normal or the engine temperature because you ignore the warning light. You can, of course, cauterize or seer a conscience by refusing to listen to it, by subduing it and silencing it by ignoring it and repeatedly going ahead in spite of its warnings. But, if you do, you are headed toward deep trouble in your life. We have seen that too many times - even in our church - to doubt that fact!
These are arguments that must always trump the message we may seem to read in the providence of God. Providence is simply too ambiguous, too unclear, too uncertain a guide to the will of God. How many times that has been proven in our experience and the experience of the saints through the ages.
1. A man concludes that God intends for him to leave his job because another job comes looking for him only to find, when he had made the change, that his new position does not last, or is very unhappy, or one for which he is very ill-suited. Ministers make this mistake all the time. They take opportunity - openings that providence has created for them - as some indication of divine intention. I have seen this mistake made far too many times. People leaving jobs because an opportunity was presented to them only to regret the choice they made and to see so clearly the foolishness of it soon after they made it.
2. Or a couple is amazed to find that the house of their dreams has just come up for sale at the very time they are looking to buy, perhaps the news of its availability dropped into their lap in some surprising way, and they are sure that this means that the Lord intends for them to have this house, when, the fact is, as anyone can see, it is too expensive for them. These are not illustrations I am making up out of thin air!
But, let me give you one from church history. Remember that extraordinarily sad and difficult time in British history, in the middle of the 17th century, when the Presbyterian Scots fell out with the Congregationalist English under Cromwell. Here were people who had almost everything important in common, but their unity - the very unity that had led to the creation of the Westminster Confession of Faith - dissolved over certain political issues. The story is too complicated to tell in full, but Samuel Rutherford and others felt that God had clearly come to Scotland's aid in 1648-1649 when the less spiritually committed men had been cast out of the leadership of the country and the army. Rutherford read the providence of God and drew the conclusion that the Lord was reducing Scotland's army in the same way he reduced Gideon's, leaving only the men of faith to wage war. He was certain that all of this meant that Scotland would triumph in battle with Cromwell's army and that a pure and true Presbyterianism would be established throughout Great Britain.
But his hopes were cruelly dashed. Scotland's godly army was thoroughly routed by Cromwell's at Dunbar in September, 1650, 3,000 killed and 10,000 wounded - an immense number of casualties for warfare in that day. Samuel Rutherford was devastated. It threw into confusion all his firm convictions about God's providential purpose. "Oh, how little of God do we see, and how mysterious is He!" he wrote to a friend in the army. He wrote to his minister friend, William Guthrie,
"I have suffered much, but this is the thickest darkness, and the straitest step of the way I have yet trodden... Alas, alas! poor I am utterly lost, my share of heaven is gone, and my hope is poor; I am perished, and I am cut off from the Lord... I profess that I am almost broken and a little sleepy, and would fain put off this body."
Cromwell, on the other hand, read the providence of Dunbar as the clearest evidence of the Lord's approval of his government and program. However, a few years later his naval expedition to the Caribbean was mauled. When he heard the news he retired to his room for the entire day. According to one close observer, he "never fully recovered" from the demoralization of that experience. Providence, which he had taken to be favoring his plans, had turned on him, deserted him. And, of course, a few years later still, the entire Cromwellian program was in ruins and a Stuart king was once again on the British throne. [All the above from John Coffey, Politics, Religion, and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford, 249-250]
But, of course, the fact is that neither man could know what the providences they observed really meant or what they portended. In the confident assurance that they could read the signs, they were as completely mistaken as David's men were in the cave who were sure that Saul's entering by himself was indication enough that God intended David or his men to kill the king. And I tell you the same thing. You cannot read the providences of God, not with any certainty. And, if you base your decisions on what you take those providences to suggest, you are more likely to be wrong than right.
As we conclude, let us take note of what David's approach to determining the will of God - reliance on the Word of God and then his conscience - led him to do in particular. It led him to forsake revenge. The Bible does not leave vengeance in our hands. It requires us to leave it in God's hands. And this is what David does as we read in v. 12.
So many times we want to take revenge and so many times the opportunity is presented to us to do so: to do some harm to someone whom we feel has harmed or belittled or ignored us. The opportunity is given to us to say something to that person's discredit, to drop a tidbit of information that reflects badly on him or her into a conversation, to refuse to correct some slander that is making the rounds. But God's Word forbids the spirit and the practice of revenge. "'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord." And all Christians are to do what David did, in faith. Leave the matter to God. As David himself put it in the 37th Psalm [vv. 7-9]:
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him;
do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
Do not fret - it leads only to evil.
For evil men will be cut off,
But those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.
Or take David's famous 8th Psalm.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise
Because of your enemies,
To silence the foe and the avenger.
Which is to say, the weakest child who trusts in God, can silence the avenger, can conquer the hatred and violence of man. It is better to trust the Lord than to seek to exact revenge in your own human way. God will exact justice in the right time and place. Your efforts to do so beforehand are bound either to fail or to make matters worse. God exercises his judgments in the world through his children who praise and pray, who are weak and powerless as the world measures such things, but far more powerful than those who have harmed them.
How differently everything looks from the vantage point of faith. Someone has done us harm, as Saul did David. Then the opportunity is provided for us to get back. But God forbids that. He holds judgment in his hands. And his judgment, while perhaps not as swift as ours would be, is far more effective, is pure and clean, and does no harm.
Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
David was right in refusing to take judgment into his hands. He was right in basing his decision on the Word of God and not on the circumstances. He was right to trust the Lord to put him on the throne at the right time and in the right way. And in that way he remained unsoiled and pure and God finally placed him on the throne in that way that was best for all concerned.
We are to learn a lesson here, you and I. You and I who always think we can read the providences of God and who always are so ready to take revenge, even if only in our own minds. We are rather to live by the Word of God and trust our fortune to the Lord. If we did that more and more, we would find that we had more of the kind of success in life that God gave David.