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The Runaround - 1st Samuel 21

After figuring out that Saul was in fact still trying to kill him, David leaves and goes to Nob to the priest Abimelech. David was alone when he showed up and as far as anyone knew, he held a very high position in Saul’s government so traveling alone would have been very unusual for a man of his station, so it tipped Abimelech off that something was wrong and he was afraid of David, or probably afraid to get caught up in the drama that would come with David showing up alone. So he asks David why he’s alone and David lies and says that he’s on a super secret mission and that his men are with him they are just hiding. David also asks for 5 loaves of bread “or what there is present.” Abimelech answers that there is no regular bread, only the shewbread, which was the specially consecrated bread that sat on the altar for 7 days, then was replaced with a new batch and the priest was allowed to eat it. Abimelech gave that shewbread to David to eat, and it’s just a few verses but apparently wa...
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Fields & Festivals - 1st Samuel 20:24-42

The festival is upcoming and David and Jonathan have made their plan to find out if David is safe in Saul’s presence because presumably they both want things to go back to the way they were and David wants to go home. David is going to wait in a field while Jonathan goes to the festival and sees how Saul reacts to David not being there and maybe have a conversation with him about it. On the first night of the festival, David’s seat is empty and Saul doesn’t say anything about it because he thinks, “something hath befallen him, he is not clean, surely he is not clean.” This refers to the ritual purity that one has to undergo before participating in a religious festival. I also wonder how anyone knows this who is recording this because it seems like someone would have had to ask Saul his thoughts on the matter and to me, it seems like this might have been difficult information to come by, maybe someone was guessing, it doesn’t really matter ultimately, I just thought it was interesting. ...
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The Plan - 1st Samuel 20:1-23

It seems that David can’t hide out with Samuel the whole time, and probably because he wanted to go home to his wife and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that if Saul still hated him, so he sneaks in to see Jonathan and ask what he had done wrong to make Saul hate him. Jonathan does a little bit of gaslighting here because in response to David’s “what is my sin before thy father, that he seeketh my life?” Jonathan responds, “God forbid; thou shalt not die.” This isn’t really an accurate statement because Saul has tried to kill David repeatedly and has also sent multiple groups of armed men to kill him as well. It is probably difficult for Jonathan to see his father as a murderous monster so his reaction is understandable, plus he thought that he was able to reason with Saul earlier, maybe he counted on being able to do that again. He also knows that Saul consults him on all matters and all his plans, “he will shew it me: and why should my father hide this thing from me?” But again, th...
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The Runaround - 1st Samuel 19

Even though Saul had just had David marry his second daughter Michal, he STILL told Jonathan and all his servants, “that they should kill David.” What’s interesting to me is that David was doing lots of good things for Saul, he soothed him with music when he was upset, he could not be defeated in battle against Saul’s enemies, he was loyal, and all that and Saul STILL wanted him dead because he was jealous. Human psychology is so interesting because why would you want to kill someone who could not be defeated in battle, and what makes someone think that they even could. Like if David could kill 200 Philistine men and not die, what makes Saul think that HE could kill him. Either David is so skilled in fighting that he could defeat that many professional soldiers, so Saul stood no chance at killing him, OR David was protected by God and then Saul not only couldn’t kill David but risked pissing off that God that protected him supernaturally. I personally wouldn’t play with that fire, but ...
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Philistine Foreskins - 1st Samuel 18:22-30

This whole time the marriage that Saul is trying to arrange for David to marry one of his two daughters, everyone else can look at it from the outside and think that Saul is just fulfilling the obligation to David that was promised when he defeated Goliath but the reality is that Saul is hoping to set David up to be killed because Saul is threatened by his success and popularity. Saul sends his servants to David with a very specific script, he wants David to think that he’s very pleased with him and all the people love him and that David will marry Saul’s daughter soon. I don’t know if David has caught on to Saul’s alternative plan here, but it seems like it, possibly because Saul tried to kill him by throwing spears at his twice, maybe that was the giveaway that this might be a precarious situation for him. Saul’s servants come around saying what Saul told them to and David responds, “Seemth it to you a light thing to be a king’s son in law, seeing that I am a poor man, and lightly es...
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Marriage - 1st Samuel 18:10-21

Saul knows that he’s lost God’s favor and that God has promised to replace him as king with someone else who is righteous. Saul probably didn’t really believe that God would do that or he didn’t believe that God could do that or he just didn’t care and was determined to not go down without a fight. David is not only clearly being favored by God militarily with all his victories, but he’s very popular among the people, even his own son Jonathan. At this point Saul is very wary of David as a rival and a threat to his own power and starts to plot his downfall. He’s having this mood swings and David is able to soothe him with music like was his role before but now Saul is carrying a “javelin” in his hand while at court. TB notes that always carrying a weapon “this was not usual for a king; normally a king held a royal scepter as the symbol of his power. But for Saul his spear had become his scepter. This weapon of death was Saul’s emblem.” Twice Saul used that spear that he was carrying a...
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After Action Review - 1st Samuel 18:1-9

The unfortunate part about the sectioning of scripture into chapters and verses is that it was done… not as precisely as we would have hoped, at least in English. TB says that chapter 18 should really start in chapter 17 verse 55 which is where Saul, Abner, and David discuss who David’s father is so that he can be given the rewards of not having to pay taxes or have his family serve in the military because of David’s victory over Goliath. Apparently, Jonathan must have been in the room for that conversation because during this discussion “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his won soul.” I always took this to mean that Jonathan fell in love with David, whether or not it was mutual, I couldn’t say. TB vehemently disagrees and disparages that belief for sone time, yeah maybe. He also says that the Hebrew word for love used here was “ahab” which he says, “carries a sort of political or even mystical context to it, or even better it denotes a se...
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