STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 25
1 Samuel 19:1-24
September 24, 2000

Text Comment

v.1 Having failed to eliminate David and the threat he saw that David posed to his throne, Saul is driven to take more desperate measures, including making public his intention to murder David. But such is David's attractive power that Saul cannot even get his own children to help him. Indeed, one scholar gives verses 1-17 of chapter 19 the title: "Saul's Children Save David." [Gordon, 162] You will notice that Jonathan is explicitly identified as Saul's son at the very moment he intervenes to help David against his own father.

As Bishop Hall puts it in his famous 17th century work, Contemplations, "Those that have the jaundice see all things yellow: those which are overgrown with malicious passions, think all men like themselves." [190-191] Saul still can't imagine that Jonathan is not as eaten up by envy as he is.

v.3 The idea, of course, is for David to be able to assess for himself the extent of the danger, but Jonathan would not be able to know, in advance, how much of the conversation David would actually overhear. So he promises to fill in the details afterward.

v.5 "The Lord won a great victory…" is a typical way of speaking in the Bible when the exploits of some great man are being recounted. Jonathan has been respectful to his father the king, but his argument left Saul no room: David was the Lord's man, had won Saul a great victory, there was no reason to kill him…"

v.6 Saul can still be reasoned with, but as we have already seen, he doesn't hold an idea in his head very long! Saul, in typical fashion, instead of simply ceasing and desisting, overdoes it and makes an oath that he will later break. He oscillates between violent intentions of harm to David and violent protestations of his unwillingness to harm him.

v.10 The sense of the connection between David's next dramatic victory over the Philistines and Saul's attempt to kill him seems to be that the evil spirit tormented Saul as a punishment for or, at least in connection with his feelings of jealousy. Remember, it had been Saul's hope that the Philistines would kill David (cf. 18:17), and all they seem to be able to do is provide him opportunities to enhance his reputation still further. David fled the danger, but did not yet imagine that Saul would attempt to murder him at home.

v.11 Saul can't count even on his own children to help him in his plot to kill David. He has lost his family as well as his mind.

v.12 From this point in the narrative, David will be on the run and have to hide from Saul. It is interesting, by the way, as we said last time, that we have words from Michal but none from David. We don't know what he thought about Michal's risking so much to save him.

By the way, we don't find much piety or devotion to God in Michal. Not only does she have household gods, but later, of course, she will mock David for his deep devotion.

v.14 Michal's ruse is designed to give David still more time to get away. This is the trick used, of course, by prisoners around the world to effect an escape.

v.15 Saul sends the men back with orders to carry the ill David back to him, bed and all. As Bishop Hall puts it, "The messengers return, and rushing into the house with their swords drawn…surprise a sick statue lying with a pillow under his head…" [191]

v.17 Whatever we may say about Michal's lie to her father, one certain point of the narrative is that Saul who had told so many lies and sought so much to deceive now is deceived himself. But it is possible to say, further, that the Bible seems to approve at least Michal's preference for her husband over her father. The bonds of marriage, in the Bible, remember, are stronger and to be stronger than the bonds of nature. I doubt it can be said that the Bible approves of Michal's lie, however, insofar as Jonathan is shown brave enough and bold enough to rebuke his father to his face. Michal should have been able to do the same and the assumption is that she would have survived as Jonathan did.

v.20 Samuel doesn't have his former, major role in the rule of Israel, but is here portrayed as the leader, perhaps the mentor of a group of prophets. Perhaps they would have thought of themselves as Samuel's disciples. It is to David's credit that he didn't fight Saul but instead took himself off to the Lord's prophet.

v.24 Here is the Lord intervening on David's behalf in the most significant way. Saul prophesied once before, at the very beginning of his reign, as a sign from God that he had been given the throne and that God would equip him for the work. Here he falls under the spell of that same miraculous power, but now to prevent him from harming the man God had chosen to replace him. Saul will not succeed in murdering David. God will see to that! Saul stripping off his robes is probably also symbolic. Saul no longer has the dignity or the authority of a king. Remember, in previous moments in the story we have seen Samuel explicitly associates Saul's robes with his kingship.

Now, to be sure, what we have in this paragraph is more of the same. We have Saul's continuing disintegration, we have David's continuing success, and we have God at work to frustrate Saul at every turn and pave the way for David to reach the throne of Israel in due time.

We, of course, from the vantage point of salvation history begin to notice the ways in which David will serve as a Christ figure and why the recounting of his own experience came so easily to the mind and the lips of the Lord Jesus as a way of expressing his own experience a thousand years later. S.G. De Graaf, for example, titles his chapter on these chapters of the Saul/David history, "No Place to lay his Head", an obvious allusion to the statement the Lord made about himself. And we can think of the many forms the plot to kill Jesus took and how in every case they were frustrated by the providence of God. We think, for example, of a recent text we considered in John's Gospel (7:32,46), and of the account of the men sent by the chief priests and the Pharisees to arrest Jesus who not only did not arrest him, but came back to their masters talking about the spell that the Lord Jesus cast over them by his teaching! Or, again in John 7, in regard to Michal taking action to frustrate her father's plan, think of Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, speaking up against the malevolence of his fellow elders. The Sanhedrin couldn't even get all of their own number on the same page.

Then, at another level, for this text instructs on many levels, we have another illustration of the darkness of God's providence, of the Lord's inscrutable ways. David had thought, no doubt, that he had weathered Saul's bitter envy, for as the last chapter had ended, Saul had not only given him Michal for a wife, making him the king's son-in-law, but Saul had publicly professed his fondness for the young military hero. But, now in the next scene, Saul is trying again to have David killed, even seeking to enlist his children in the plot. A long period of David's life is about to begin in which he will be constantly on the move, living in remote places, keeping as far from Saul as possible. That must have seemed to David a strange way to ascend to the throne of Israel! How little we know of what God is doing in our lives or where he is taking us. How little we can predict the outcome of the choices we make or weigh the likely results of the things that happen to us! And then there is Michal's lie, like Rachel's centuries before who also took some household gods and then deceived her father about them. And this the means of God protecting David from Saul! All of this, of course, we have considered time and time again in this history to this point.

All of this we see again here and are to take notice of it until we gain a biblical mind about the history of salvation and the providence of God.

But in the time remaining, let me draw your attention to one other facet of this magnificent history, viz. the illustration given at the end of the chapter of the power of God's spirit over the hearts of men. They came to get David so as to kill him and they prophesied instead. That is, they fell under the Spirit's power, were sent into a spiritual state, perhaps like a trance, and they praised God and gave him glory, they repeated the Word of God, and perhaps they sang spiritual songs. That isn't what they intended to do, but that is what they did because God sent his Spirit down upon them.

In a day when we do not see this phenomenon per se it is all the more important that we remember that the same Holy Spirit and his same power over the hearts of men are present in our world and in our day. We see it from time to time. Christians always have. Bishop Hall comments, "Many a one hath come into God's house to carp, or scoff, or sleep, or gaze, that hath returned a convert." [Hall, 192] The Apostle Paul was only the first to rail against the Lord Jesus and end up his faithful servant and disciple. Like these men he went to arrest a believer and ended up on the ground talking to the living God!

Or think of William Hone, once an influential, public opponent of the gospel who, nevertheless became a Christian, much to his own shock. He wrote a poem to commemorate his conversion which opened with this verse:

The proudest heart that ever beat
Has been subdued in me:
The wildest will that ever rose
To scorn Thy cause or aid Thy foes,
Is quelled, my God, by Thee.

That is the idea. His rebel heart was "quelled," subdued. He went to kill David's son and Lord and ended up his devoted servant! I wonder if any of the men Saul sent got up from their prophesying and remained ever thereafter faithful, devout servants of the Lord. I wonder if any of them became David's own servants in due time and told him, at some point, that they had been among those sent to get him by King Saul and had come, that day, to Naioth and had been overcome by the Spirit of God.

That power over our hearts and the hearts of all men lies in God's hand. The Spirit can strike us down or lift us up whenever and however he pleases. That is true for Christians as well, of course.

Think of the famous day at Kirk O'Shotts, in the 17th century, on the road between Glasgow and Edinburgh. There had been a communion season there and in those days those communion times, rare as they were, lasted some days and involved preaching by several visiting ministers. On that occasion there was a feeling, growing among the people, that the Lord was astir, that something was to happen. But nothing much did and so the ministers who were there decided to add another preaching service on Monday, the day after the meeting was supposed to have ended. They appointed a man named John Livingstone to preach. Livingstone was a humble man and a godly man and was fearful of the responsibility that had been given to him. He spent most of that night in prayer to God, but it was not until early Monday morning that Livingstone felt that he had been given a message for the day and the power to proclaim it in God's name. He preached with a tremendous power. As a result of that single sermon, more than 500 people soon joined area churches. The experience was so overwhelming to the people who were present that the account of it soon made its way to all parts of the land and left its impression on the entire church.

Interestingly, John Livingstone lived many years after that day at Kirk O'Shotts and preached the rest of his life. But he never had such an experience again. He always looked back to it, always longed for it to be repeated, but it never was. [Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, 317] Well this scene of the men on the ground under the power of the Holy Spirit isn't going to be repeated in David's life either!

Experiences such as this dot the landscape of church history. But they only dot that landscape. They are not the norm by any means. Only from time to time is the veil drawn back to enable us to see the angels of the Lord surrounding us and defending us from our enemies. Only from time to time are the enemies of the Lord laid out on the ground and made to declare the praises of the living God they are in open rebellion against.

It is enough, it ought to be enough, for us all to know that God has this power and can use it at will. If he does not that too is his will and so must be good and right. And, remember, David will get much more credit, and we will come to love him more and more, not when God protects him so overtly by the power of the Spirit of God overwhelming David's enemies, but when David has Saul in his own hands and could kill him himself and does not out of reverence for God.

Saul prophesies, in large part, to demonstrate to David and to us that God could lay our enemies in the dust any time he chose. If he does not it is because he wants us to overcome those enemies, in whatever way is most appropriate, by suffering or by resisting, by trusting in him and by counting on his power to be made perfect in our weakness.

For most of the rest of his life, David would have to deal with his enemies in the same way you and I must deal with ours - the world, the flesh, and the Devil: by faith in God and obedience to him. But here, early on, is the proof, the reminder, that God's power is not wanting. When the going becomes hard and painful and difficult, we are to remember that God could make it silky smooth if he thought it right and best for you and for his kingdom in the world.