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Go Home - 1st Samuel 29

The Philistines are preparing to battle the Israelites, and chapter 29 is kind of snapshot of what the Philistines are doing while Saul was busy consulting the witch. Apparently there are 5 kings of the Philistines and one of them is Achish, the king in charge where David is living and the one he’s been paying tribute to when he raids and destroys all the surrounding cities. The other 4 kings have gathered with their men when Achish shows up with David is his 600 soldiers bringing up the rear. This makes the other 4 princes very uncomfortable and they tell Achish that David can’t fight with them. This makes sense from their perspective because it’s very likely that, in their mind, that this substantial number of defected enemy soldiers could just as easily turned on them in the heat of battle and killed their Philistine soldiers. We have native fighters with us a lot of the times, the Iraqi army and the Afghan national army most recently, but there were instances of those “allies” betr...
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The Witch - 1st Samuel 28

We know that David was living among the Philistines for about 16 months, and that at some point, the Philistines started to prepare for war against Israel. The king of Gath came to David and asked is David and his men would fight with him against Israel. This is a tough spot for David because Israel is his home and his people, but he was living with the Philistines to stay alive. David’s answer is, “Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do.” I have no idea what that means, but TB says that it’s the ultimate politician answer because it means exactly what anyone wants it to mean. The king was so moved that he made David his personal body guard “forever.” On the other hand, Saul knows that he’s in trouble because the Philistines gathered against Israel and Israel gathered against the Philistines. He desperately wants comfort and an assurance that Israel will prevail here, but he’s so spiritual dead that he can’t get an answer from God “neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by proph...
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King of Gath - 1st Samuel 27

Even though Saul said that David could come home and be safe, he didn’t believe him, plus he had an army of 600 men to take care of and if he’d shown back up at home with that army, Saul would have had a problem with that. Deciding that he can’t be safe anywhere in Israel’s territory, David takes his army and heads to Gath, which is the same place that he was at before when he went alone and had to pretend to be crazy to escape with his life, the difference this time though is that he now has an army with him. Whether or not this army was big enough to conquer the city of Gath, I’m not sure, but it was big enough to either pose a major threat or be a great asset. David is hoping that the king of Gath will see it as an asset, which he does but with some apprehension. Having a huge army in the main city would have not only been a problem for the resources of that city, but that army wasn’t loyal to that king, they were loyal to David so it probably made the king nervous to have them arou...
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Spear & Jug - 1st Samuel 26

The whole incident with Nabal might have been widely known to the general public because we again see the people who live in Ziph going to Saul and telling him that they know where David is hiding. Even though Saul said he’s stop pursuing David because David spared his life, that was a lie and Saul is grateful to the Ziphites and take off with this 3,000 men to find David. Let’s note the size difference in parties, Saul’s 3,000 warriors against David’s 600 randoms. David hears that Saul is looking for him again and sends out spies to find out what’s going on. The spies find Saul and David takes his men and goes to where Saul is. I think it’s an interesting strategy that he went to Saul instead of retreating to somewhere safe. It makes sense if you know where your enemy is but they don’t know exactly where you are, definitely have the upper hand in that instance. They see Saul and his men laid out, it says “in the trench” and “trench” is cross-referenced to say barricade, I thought it w...
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Abigail - 1st Samuel 25

It just so happens that Abigail took the exact route to run into David before he gets to her house with his 400 men and the kill everyone, and when she gets to him, she gets off her donkey and falls on to her face on the ground and tells him that this whole misunderstanding is her fault. We all know that this is not true, this is Nabal’s fault and everyone knows this, but she says put the blame on her. This is a Christlike action because he also wasn’t guilty but took our blame. It’s interesting to consider that at some point, we are all Nabal, stubborn, mean, prideful, at least I know that I have been and still am in a lot of ways. We are Nabal, and Abigail is Christ, who takes the blame on herself to save us from ourselves. David is surprised by he actions because like we talked about yesterday, this is a wealthy, aristocratic woman who is now face down in the dirt, humiliating herself, begging him to reconsider. That’s probably why he listened, because she was addressing him, which ...
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On the Road - 1st Samuel 25

Because David feels highly disrespected, he takes 2/3 of his men, 400 men, and heads towards Nabal’s house to kill every male. David is talking to himself the whole way, essentially justifying what he’s about to do. TB comments on it, and when I heard it I was stopped because it spoke to me clearly because I do this and it’s very self-destructive to me. TB says, “David essentially muttering to himself as he is traveling, complaining about how he and his men guarded this man’s property, and did such a good job, and still this man repays their efforts with an insult! And truly that is the mental picture we need to get; a very upset David who feels that he has been cheated; a man who is roiling this over in his mind, replaying his anger again and again. A modern psychologist might say he is playing those negative tapes in his head and he won’t turn them off. And truly, just as for us in our time, this was David sort of enjoying being mad and not particularly anxious to let it go and move ...
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Nabal - 1st Samuel 25

Here we start to see the first cracks in David’s spiritual armor. First thing in chapter 25 is that Samuel dies, but David doesn’t go to the burial. TB notes that with Samuel’s death, the rift between David and Saul became permanent, saying, “Samuel was a transformational character who also bridged the divide of loyalties among the various tribal coalitions. There was no other single man since Joshua’s death who help the respect of all 12 tribes and whose authority was honored by all Israel. Even Saul feared him.” One thought I had when I heard TB say this was that Samuel was the “transformational character” that took the entirety of Hebrew society, with all their tribes and clans and divided loyalties, and united them under a single king, Saul and then started with David. Even though we read about it in hindsight 3,000 years later, that task must have been enormous, and I think about Samuel’s life and his relationship with his mother and how sad that must have been for them to not be ...
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