Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Two things were happening simultaneously, the battle between the Philistines and the Israelites, which David supported the side of the Philistines even though they didn’t let him fight with them, and the other thing happening at the same time was David’s killing of the Amalekite raiders and the recovery of his people and their property. These two events coinciding was not an accident as surely the Amalekites waited until David had left his city so that they could attack it while it was undefended. During the Philistine/Israelite war, Saul, Jonathan and his entire household were killed. After David had been back home 3 days, a man came to him from Saul’s camp. It seems that this man sought David out purposefully whereas I initially thought he was just fleeing and was found by David’s men and captured. David asks where he’s coming from and the man answers that he has escaped from the camp of Israel, indicating that this man fought on the side of Israel, which is interesting considering h...

Going back to the war between the Philistines and the Israelites, the Philistines attack and beat the Israelite army where three of Saul’s sons were killed, Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchi-Shua. Interestingly, TB points out that Saul’s 4th son Ishbosheth and Abner’s names are missing from among the dead, meaning that they almost certainly weren’t there because we see their names come up later. The Philistine archers shoot and Saul is mortally wounded, meaning he knew he wasn’t going to survive, plus his sons are dead and his position is being overrun. He asks his armor bearer to kill him because he knows that if he’s captured alive, it’s going to be very bad for him, the armor bearer declines, TB suggests that it’s because, like David, he knows that Saul is God’s anointed and he won’t sin against God in that way. Saul takes matters into his own hands and falls on his own sword and dies. Interestingly, the armor bearer falls on his sword and dies as well. TB says that this is because anc...

It turns out to be quite fortunate that Achish sends David and his men home from the war because when they get back to Ziklagt hey find their city burned and all their women and children gone. Turns out while they were gone, the Amalekites had raided their city, taken what they wanted, burned the rest and took the women and children with them. Kind of a full circle moment for David because this is exactly what he’d been doing to them with the main difference being that David killed all their women and children, and the Amalekites didn’t kill any of David’s people. TB asked the question is this was because the Amalekites were just kinder, more gentle people. The answer was that no, they weren’t, but David had wreaked such havoc on their cities and killed so many of their people, that the Amalekites needed new people to repopulate with. I also wonder what the Amalekites long term strategy was here. Surely they attacked Ziglak now because they had been watching for them to go off to war...

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...

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...

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...

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...