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 the way he ran his government.” It’s unreasonable to think that Saul was a great king for every single other Israelite, except for this madness he had going on with David.

In this little cave in the desert, surely David couldn’t support all these hundreds of people so he goes to Moab and asks the king there to let his parents stay with him “till I know what God will do for me.” It’s assumed that David thinks his parents will be given sanctuary in Moab because his great-grandmother was from Moab, Ruth, and indeed his parents are allowed to stay safely there. TB notes that David’s explanation to the king that he’s waiting on instructions from God, “interestingly, whereas David’s usual reference to God is Yehoveh, here he uses Elohim, which is a general terms for any god. I suspect it was out of respect for the King of Moab who called Chemosh his god.”

The problem with reading accounts like this is that one verse says what happened, and then the next verse says what happened next but often there is no context as to how much time has passed between the two. Verse 4 says that David too his parents to Moab and they all stayed there, and verse 5 says that a prophet names Gad came to see David. The way that I read this is that it happened immediately afterward, but it might have been quite some time that David waited there in safety to see what God would do. This prophet Gad shows up to tell David not to stay in Moab but instead to get to the land of Judah, and David does this.

The question becomes, who is this prophet Gad and why does he give these instructions to David? TB suggests that this prophet probably came from Samuel’s school of the prophets, sent to David by Samuel with this instruction. I think it’s important to note that it still seems like the only person who knows that David is the anointed king of Israel is Samuel. There have been some hints to it between Jonathan and David in their conversations, but as far as Saul being stripped of God’s authority to rule over Israel and that David has replaced him, only Samuel knows this, that’s probably why Samuel sent Gad to David. TB says, “Prophets usually attached themselves to kings. David was no king and there is no hint that he envisioned himself as a king-in-waiting; but from a spiritual aspect he was already God’s anointed king and Samuel may have understood that and so felt compelled to provide David with a prophet so he could receive God’s oracle as needed.”

Now there is a switch of scenery, verse 6 goes to Saul and what he’s doing. He’s sitting back in his hometown, further spiraling into paranoia, holding his spear as always. His servants are around him, like I assume they always are, and he finds out that David has been seen and that he had men with him, and Saul would assume that meant David was amassing an army to come challenge Saul for the throne. His tactics are interesting, and maybe because I was raised by an incredibly abusive psychopath, I know exactly what he’s doing, he’s both promising all the rewards and threatening painful destruction to these men who have done absolutely nothing wrong. I know what they feel like when Saul accuses them of conspiring against him, knowing that the penalty for that is death, and knowing that they aren’t guilty of it at all. It is the most despairing feeling in the world because you are hoping that the truth will prevail and that you’ll be saved, but it never does and you never are.

Saul accuses his servants of conspiring against him, even to the point of not telling Saul that Jonathan his son had colluded with David. That’s when Doeg pipes in, he’s the Edomite that was at the sanctuary at Nob when David was there. Doeg says that he not only saw David there, but that the high priest gave him bread, the sword of Goliath, and “inquired of the Lord for him.” Saul is furious and calls for al the priests at Nob to be brought to him.