Cutting a Coat - 1st Samuel 24

On the way back home from fighting the Philistines, Saul stops back in the caves that David was hiding in and takes 3,000 of Israel’s best warriors to find David. Maybe he thought the problem before was that his hunters weren’t good enough. While passing through some of the caves, Saul stop in one “to cover his feet” which doesn’t make any sense until the other translations say that it means he ducked in to one of the caves to go to the bathroom in privacy. Coincidentally enough, it just so happens that the cave he chooses has David and some of his men hiding in the back of it. David’s man see this happy accident the same way that I do, this has to be the hand of God, and I think that it is, however, the men think it’s God delivering Saul into David’s hands, and maybe it is, but David doesn’t see it that way. The men want David to kill Saul, and for good reason, then they could finally stop running, hopefully, go home, and David might even take the throne for himself, and they would be given power and status. To the men, it's a no brainer, but David doesn’t see it that way. David still sees Saul as God’s anointed, chosen king over Israel, it’s doubtful that Samuel publicized that God revoked his favor of Saul, so the people probably all still assumed that.

It's interesting to me that David’s main argument to his men against killing Saul was that doing so would be a move against God, I wonder if David had known for sure that God had already rejected Saul, if that would have changed his mind at all. David successfully talked his men out of killing Saul, but he did cut off a corner of Saul’s coat, which TB says would have been ornately decorated. Saul finishes going to the bathroom and heads back out on his merry way. The way David handles this is masterful because I assumed the whole conversation between him and Saul would have been done in private, but he does it in public and it was so smart. David waits a minute for Saul to get some distance then follows him out of the cave and calls to him really loud so everyone hears. Then when Saul turns around and sees him, David bows to the ground in reverence to him. This man who is trying to kill him, David bows down to him, I don’t think it would even occur to me to do that, maybe because we don’t have a bowing culture, but still, I would have assumed defiance or something.

David tells Saul, basically, “who told you that I was trying to hurt you? Don’t you see that God delivered you into my hands and I could have killed you but I didn’t. I will not try to hurt you because you’re God’s anointed. Look, I have a piece of your coat that proves I was close enough to kill you, but I haven’t done anything wrong to you but you are trying to kill me.” These are all excellent points, and he’s doing it all in public so all the people who have only heard Saul say this whole time that David is conspiring against him, can see that that’s not the case because he didn’t kill him when he had the chance. So all these people who thought that David was a traitor, even if they doubted it, they now have definitive proof that David is not, in fact, a traitor. This is why it was so genius to do this whole thing publicly.

Then David does something else interesting, he doesn’t say “I forgive you” or anything like that, he says ‘the Lord judge between me and thee, and the Lord avenge me of thee: but mint hand shall not be upon thee.” He doesn’t put himself above Saul socially or spiritually, he says that God will be the judge. He acknowledges that he has the right to seek revenge on Saul but he refuses to do it, and says that he’s less than a flea on a dog, he’s worthless, why is someone so great as Saul expending effort on someone as insignificant as David.

Saul’s reaction to this is probably what was expected, I’ve seen a hundred times before, there’s some social interaction where the psychopath is cornered and in order to save face socially, they do the appropriate behavior, but doesn’t really mean it. We can tell that Saul doesn’t really mean it because after this is over, he’s right back to hunting David again. Saul does what makes him look best socially, which is calls David his son, which is a term of endearment but also probably an acknowledgement that David is in fact his son-in-law. Then he says that David has been more righteous than he was, asks God to bless David for sparing his life, and says that he knows David will be king and asks the same thing that Jonathan did, that his descendants be spared when David ascends to the throne. David makes the same covenant with Saul as he made with Jonathan, to allow his descendants to live once he took over the throne, and Saul went home, but David stayed in the caves, he must have known that Saul wasn’t going to change his mind. It just goes to show how prevalent exterminating the entire family was when someone new came into leadership that both Jonathan and Saul asked for this same thing. I guess it makes more sense why legacy and posterity keeping the same positions throughout generations was so important, it meant that they weren’t all just executed. Interesting to think about.