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Constant Pursuit - 1st Samuel 23:9-29

After defeating the Philistines to save Keilah, it might be assumed that David and his men would feel safe and have some time to recover before moving on, but that assumption would be wrong because Saul hears about David’s victory in Keilah and instead of celebrating his bravery and the goodness of God, Saul sets out to besiege the city and kill David. David tells Abiathar, the only surviving priest of his father Ahimelech’s line, to bring the him the ephod which has the Urim and Thummim in it, and asks God if Saul will come to the city to try to kill him, and God answers that Saul will come. David then asks if the men of Keilah would hand David over to Saul when he shows up, and again God answers that they will hand David over to Saul. The people in Keilah must find themselves in quite the predicament. They were just being attacked by the Philistines, then David comes and saves them, so that’s great, but then Saul heads over to besiege the city and presumably kill everyone inside be...
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Keilah - 1st Samuel 22:1-8

Surely by now the news that Saul had executed almost all the priests and destroyed the city of Nob had spread to the surrounding towns. This was probably the first time that the ordinary citizenry knew there was a rift between Saul and David, and now the consequences of even interacting with David was knowns to the people. That was probably terrifying to the people, because death could come to anyone for just being near David, but also the nonsensical nature of it. The people probably heard that Ahimelech did not conspire with David against Saul but Saul had him and his family executed anyway. So not only did David’s presence mean death, there was no way out of it regardless of what you did, which was a big part of the problem. This knowledge that David brings Saul’s wrath to entire cities plays into what happens next. Another concept that is introduced to this chapter by the last chapter was that Ahimelech’s son, the only remaining priest of that line that escaped and joined David’s ...
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Murdering Priests - 1st Samuel 22:12-23

The priest Abimelech has been called to stand before Saul and I’m sure that he was very nervous while traveling there. He probably knew about Saul’s fits of madness and knew that this could get unpredictable really fast. When he gets there Saul accuses him of conspiring against him with David by giving him bread, the sword of Goliath, and “hasth inquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait?” Abimelech has no idea what Saul is talking about and answers, basically, that David is Saul’s faithful servant and does everything that Saul asks of him, that he did not inquire of God for David, and that he has no idea what Saul is talking about. There’s an important point about this conversation when it starts because Saul addresses Abimelech not by his own name but as “thou son of Ahitub.” Additionally, he doesn’t call David by his name either when referring to him in this conversation, but instead calls him “the son of Jesse.” TB notes that this is because he wants ...
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Caves - 1st Samuel 22:1-11

Leaving Saul and going to Nob got David some bread and the sword of Goliath, but going to the king of Gath turned out to be a disaster because the king wasn’t interested in taking David in at all. David is allowed to flee Gath because he pretends to be insane and nobody wants that around, and there was probably some divine intervention there as well. He makes it to a cave, Adullam, I don’t know if that’s the name of the cave specifically or just of the area, but he’s hiding in this cave and apparently people know about it, I don’t know how, but they do. His family hears that David is hiding in this cave and they go to be with him there, and a lot of other disgruntled people do to. Verse 2 says that people who were in distress, debt, or discontented gathered to David’s cave, and it ended up being about 400 men. TB notes that this wasn’t about people trying to start a rebellion or trying to start a counter army, but “they were people whose lives were in ruin due to Saul’s policies and th...
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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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