_SAUL'S JEALOUSY--DAVID'S MARRIAGE._
1 SAMUEL xviii.
The conqueror of Goliath had been promised, as his reward, the eldest
daughter of the king in marriage. The fulfilment of that promise, if not
utterly neglected, was at least delayed; but if David lost the hand of
the king's daughter, he gained, what could not have been promised--the
heart of the king's son. It was little wonder that "the soul of Jonathan
was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own
soul." Besides all else about David that was attractive to Jonathan as
it was attractive to every one, there was that strongest of all bonds,
the bond of a common, all-prevailing faith, faith in the covenant God of
Israel, that had now shown itself in David in overwhelming strength, as
it had shown itself in Jonathan some time before at Michmash.
To Jonathan David must indeed have appeared a man after his own heart.
The childlike simplicity of the trust he had reposed in God showed what
a profound hold his faith had of him, how entirely it ruled his life.
What depths of congeniality the two young men must have discovered in
one another; in what wonderful agreement they must have found themselves
respecting the duty and destiny of the Hebrew people! That Jonathan
should have been so fascinated at that particular moment shows what a
pure heart he must have had. If we judge aright, David's faith had
surpassed Jonathan's; David had dared where Jonathan had shrunk; and
David's higher faith had obtained the distinction that might naturally
have been expected to fall to Jonathan. Yet no shadow of jealousy
darkens Jonathan's brow. Never were hands more cordially grasped; never
were congratulations more warmly uttered. Is there anything so beautiful
as a beautiful heart? After well-nigh three thousand years, we are still
thrilled by the noble character of Jonathan, and well were it for every
young man that he shared in some degree his high nobility. Self-seekers
and self-pleasers, look at him--and be ashamed.
The friendship between David and Jonathan will fall to be adverted to
afterwards; meanwhile we follow the course of events as they are
detailed in this chapter.
One thing that strikes us very forcibly in this part of David's history
is the rapidity with which pain and peril followed the splendid
achievement which had raised him so high. The malignant jealousy of Saul
towards him appears to have sprung up almost immediately after the
slaughter of Goliath. "When David was returned from the slaughter of the
Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and
dancing, to meet King Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments
of music. And the women answered one another as they played, saying,
Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands. And Saul was
very wroth, and the saying displeased him; and he said, They have
ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but
thousands; and what can he have more but the kingdom? And Saul eyed
David from that day and forward." This statement seems (like so many
other statements in Scripture narratives) to be a condensed one,
embracing things that happened at different times; it appears to denote
that as soon as David returned from killing Goliath his name began to be
introduced by the women into their songs; and when he returned from the
expeditions to which Saul appointed him when he set him over the men of
war, and in which he was wonderfully successful, then the women
introduced the comparison, which so irritated Saul, between Saul's
thousands and David's ten thousands. The truth is, that David's
experience, while Saul continued to be his persecutor, was a striking
commentary on the vanity of human life,--on the singularly tantalizing
way in which the most splendid prizes are often snatched from men's
hands as soon as they have secured them, and when they might reasonably
have expected to enjoy their fruits. The case of a conqueror killed in
the very moment of victory--of a Wolfe falling on the Plains of Quebec,
just as his victory made Britain mistress of Canada; of a Nelson
expiring on the deck of his ship, just as the enemy's fleet was
helplessly defeated,--these are touching enough instances of the
deceitfulness of fortune in the highest moments of expected enjoyment.
But there is something more touching still in the early history of
David. Raised to an eminence which he never courted or dreamt of, just
because he had such trust in God and such regard for his country;
manifesting in his new position all that modesty and all that
dutifulness which had marked him while his name was still unknown;
taking his life in his hand and plunging into toils and risks
innumerable just because he desired to be of service to Saul and his
country,--surely, if any man deserved a comfortable home and a tranquil
mind David was that man. That David should have become the worst treated
and most persecuted man of his day; that for years and years he should
have been maligned and hunted down, with but a step between him and
death; that the very services that ought to have brought him honour
should have plunged him into disgrace, and the noble qualities that
ought to have made him the king's most trusty counsellor should have
made him a fugitive and an outlaw from his presence,--all that is very
strange. It would have been a great trial to any man; it was a peculiar
trial to a Hebrew. For under the Hebrew economy the principle of
temporal rewards and punishments had a prominence beyond the common. Why
was this principle reversed in the case of David? Why was one who had
been so exemplary doomed to such humiliation and trial,--doomed to a
mode of life which seemed more suitable for a miscreant than for the man
after God's own heart?
The answer to this question cannot be mistaken now. But that answer was
not found so readily in David's time. David's early years bore a close
resemblance to that period of the career of Job when the hand of God was
heavy upon him, and thick darkness encompassed one on whose tabernacle
the candle of the Lord had previously shone very brightly. It pleased
God, in infinite love, to make David pass through a long period of hard
discipline and salutary training for the office to which he was to be
raised. The instances were innumerable in the East of young men of
promising character being ruined through sudden elevation to supreme
unchallenged power. The case of Saul himself was a sad instance of this
doleful effect. It pleased God to take steps to prevent it from
happening in the case of David. It is said that when Alcibiades, the
distinguished Athenian, was young, Socrates tried hard to withhold him
from public life, and to convince him that he needed a long course of
inward discipline before he could engage safely and usefully in the
conduct of public affairs. But Alcibiades had no patience for this; he
took his own way, became his own master, but with the result that he
lost at once true loftiness of aim and all the sincerity of an upright
soul. We do not need, however, to illustrate from mere human history the
benefits that arise from a man bearing the yoke in his youth. Even our
blessed Lord, David's antitype, "though He was a Son, yet learned He
obedience by the things which He suffered." And how often has the lesson
been repeated! What story is more constantly repeated than, on the one
hand, that of the young man succeeding to a fortune in early life,
learning every wretched habit of indolence and self-indulgence, becoming
the slave of his lusts, and after a miserable life sinking into a
dishonoured grave? And on the other, how often do we find, in the
biography of the men who have been an honour to their race, that their
early life was spent amid struggles and acts of self-denial that seem
hardly credible, but out of which came their resolute character and
grand conquering power? O adversity, thy features are hard, thy fingers
are of iron, thy look is stern and repulsive; but underneath thy hard
crust there lies a true heart, full of love and full of hope; if only we
had grace to believe this, in times when we are bound with affliction
and iron; if only we had faith to look forward a very little, when, like
the patriarch Job, we shall find that, after all, He who frames our lot
is "very pitiful and of tender mercy"!
In the case of David, God's purpose manifestly was to exercise and
strengthen such qualities as trust in God, prayerfulness, self-command,
serenity of temper, consideration for others, and the hope of a happy
issue out of all his troubles. His trials were indeed both numerous and
various. The cup of honour dashed from his lips when he had just begun
to taste it; promises the most solemn deliberately violated, and rewards
of perilous service coolly withheld from him; faithful services turned
into occasions of cruel persecution; enforced separation from beloved
friends; laceration of feelings from Saul's cruel and bloody treatment
of some who had befriended him; calumnious charges persisted in after
convincing and generous refutation; ungrateful treatment from those he
had benefited, like Nabal; treachery from those he had delivered, like
the men of Keilah; perfidy on the part of some he had trusted, like
Cush; assassination threatened by some of his own followers, as at
Ziklag,--these and many other trials were the hard and bitter discipline
which David had to undergo in the wilderness.
And not only was David thus prepared for the great work of his future
life, but as a type of the Messiah he foreshadowed the deep humiliation
through which He was to pass on His way to His throne. He gave the Old
Testament Church a glimpse of the manner in which "it became Him, by
whom are all things and for whom are all things, in bringing many sons
unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through
suffering."
The growth of the malignant passion of jealousy in Saul is portrayed in
the history in a way painfully graphic. First, it is simply a feeling
that steals occasionally into his bosom. It needs some outward occasion
to excite it. Its first great effort to establish itself was when Saul
heard the Hebrew women ascribing to David ten times as great a slaughter
as they ascribed to Saul. We cannot but be struck with the ruggedness of
the women's compliment. To honour David as more ready to incur risk and
sacrifice for his country, even in encounters involving terrible
bloodshed, would have been worthy of women, and worthy of good women;
but to make the standard of compliment the number of lives destroyed,
the amount of blood shed, indicated surely a coarseness of feeling,
characteristic of a somewhat barbarous age. But the compliment was quite
significant to Saul, who saw in it a proof of the preference entertained
for David, and began to look on him as his rival in the kingdom. The
next step in the history of Saul's jealousy is its forming itself into
an evil habit, that needed no outward occasion to excite it, but kept
itself alive and active by the vitality it had acquired. "And Saul eyed
David from that day and forward" (ver. 9). If Saul had been a good man,
he would have been horrified at the appearance of this evil passion in
his heart; he would have said, "Get thee behind me, Satan;" he would
have striven to the utmost to strangle it in the womb. Oh! what untold
mountains of guilt would this not have saved him in after life! And what
mountains of guilt, darkening their whole life, would the policy of
resistance and stamping out, when an evil lust or passion betrays its
presence in their heart, save to every young man and young woman who
find for the first time evidence of its vitality! But instead of
stamping it out, Saul nourished it; instead of extinguishing the spark,
he heaped fuel on the flame. And his lust, having been allowed to
conceive, was not long of bringing forth. Under a fit of his malady,
even as David was playing to him with his harp, he launched a javelin
at him, no doubt in some degree an act of insanity, but yet betraying a
very horrible spirit. Then, perhaps afraid of himself, he removes David
from his presence, and sends him out to battle as a captain of a
thousand. But David only gives fresh proofs of his wisdom and his
trustworthiness, and establishes his hold more and more on the
affections of the people. The very fact of his wisdom, the evidence
which his steady, wise, and faithful conduct affords of God's presence
with him, creates a new restlessness in Saul, who, with a kind of
devilish feeling, hates him the more because "the Lord is with him, and
is departed from Saul."
The next stage in the career of jealousy is to ally itself with cunning,
under the pretence of great generosity. "Saul said to David, Behold my
elder daughter Merab, her will I give thee to wife; only be thou valiant
for me, and fight the Lord's battles. For Saul said, Let not mine hand
be upon him, but let the hand of the Philistines be upon him." But
cunning and treachery are close connections, and when this promise ought
to have been fulfilled, Merab was given to Adriel the Meholathite to
wife. There remained his younger daughter Michal, who was personally
attached to David. "And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be
a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against
him." The question of dowry was a difficult one to David; but on that
point the king bade his servants set his mind at rest. "The king
desireth not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to
be avenged of the king's enemies. And Saul thought to make David fall by
the hand of the Philistines."
Alas! the history of Saul's malignant passion is by no means exhausted
even by these sad illustrations of its rise and progress. It swells and
grows, like a horrid tumour, becoming uglier and uglier continually. And
the notices are very significant and instructive which we find as to the
spiritual condition of Saul, in connection with the development of his
passion. We are told that the Lord was departed from him. When Saul was
reproved by Samuel for his transgression, he showed no signs of real
repentance, he continued consciously in a state of enmity with God, and
took no steps to get the quarrel healed. He preferred the kind of life
in which he might please himself, though he offended God, to the kind of
life in which he would have pleased God, while he denied himself. And
Saul had to bear the awful penalty of his choice. Living apart from God,
all the evil that was in his nature came boldly out, asserting itself
without let or hindrance, and going to the terrible length of the most
murderous and at the same time the meanest projects. Don't let any one
imagine that religion has no connection with morality! Sham religion, as
we have already seen, may exist side by side with the greatest
wickedness; but that religion, the beginning of which is the true fear
of God, a genuine reverential regard for God, a true sense of His claims
on us, alike as our Creator and our Redeemer,--_that_ religion lays its
hand firmly on our moral nature, and scares and scatters the devices of
the evil that still remains in the heart. Let us take warning at the
picture presented to us in this chapter of the terrible results, even in
the ordinary affairs of life, of the evil heart of unbelief that departs
from the living God. The other side of the case, the effect of a true
relation to God in purifying and guiding the life, is seen in the case
of David. God being with him in all that he does, he is not only kept
from retaliating on Saul, not only kept from all devices for getting rid
of one who was so unjust and unkind to himself, but he is remarkably
obedient, remarkably faithful, and by God's grace remarkably successful
in the work given him to do. It is indeed a beautiful period of David's
life--the most blameless and beautiful of any. The object of unmerited
hatred, the victim of atrocious plots, the helpless object of a despot's
mad and ungoverned fury, yet cherishing no trace of bitter feeling,
dreaming of no violent project of relief, but going out and in with
perfect loyalty, and straining every nerve to prove himself a laborious,
faithful, and useful servant of the master who loathed him.
The question of David's marriage is a somewhat difficult one, appearing
to involve some contradictions. First of all we read that a daughter of
Saul, along with great riches, had been promised to the man who should
kill Goliath. But after David kills him, there is no word of this
promise being fulfilled, and even afterwards, when the idea of his being
the king's son-in-law is brought forward, there is no hint that he ought
to have been so before. Are we to understand that it was an unauthorized
rumour that was told to David (ch. xvii. 25-27) when it was said that
the victor was to get these rewards? Was it that the people recalled
what had been said by Caleb about Kirjath-sepher, a town in that very
neighbourhood, and inferred that surely Saul would give his daughter to
the conqueror, as Caleb had given his? This is perhaps the most
reasonable explanation, because when David came into Saul's presence
nothing of the kind was said to him by the king; and also because, if
Saul had really promised it, there was no reason at the time why he
should not have kept his promise; nay, the impulsive nature of the
king, and the great love of Jonathan toward David, and the love with
which David inspired women, would rather have led Saul to be forward in
fulfilling it, and in constituting a connection which would then have
been pleasant to all. If it be said that this would have been a natural
thing for Saul to do, even had there been no promise, the answer is that
David was such a stripling, and even in his father's household occupied
so humble a place, as to make it reasonable that he should wait, and
gain a higher position, before any such thing should be thought of.
Accordingly, when David became older, and acquired distinction as a
warrior, his being the king's son-in-law had become quite feasible.
First, Saul proposes to give him his elder daughter Merab. The murderous
desire dictates the proposal, for Saul already desires David's death,
though he has not courage himself to strike the blow. But when the time
came, for some reason that we do not know of Merab was given to Adriel
the Meholathite. David's action at an after period showed that he
regarded this as a cruel wrong (2 Sam. iii. 13). Saul, however, still
desired to have that hold on David which his being his son-in-law would
have involved, and now proposed that Michal his younger daughter should
be his wife. The proposal was accepted, but David could bring no dowry
for his wife. The only dowry the king sought was a hundred foreskins of
the Philistines. And the hundred foreskins David paid down in full tale.
What a distressing view these transactions give us of the malignity of
Saul's heart! When parents have sacrificed the true happiness of their
daughters by pressing on them a marriage of splendid misery, the motive,
however selfish and heartless, has not usually been malignant. The
marriage which Saul urged between David and Michal was indeed a marriage
of affection, but as far as he was concerned his sin in desiring it, as
affording facilities for getting rid of him, was on that account all the
greater. For nothing shows a wickeder heart than being willing to
involve another, and especially one's own child, in a lifelong sorrow in
order to gratify some feeling of one's own. Saul was not merely trifling
with the heart and happiness of his child, but he was deliberately
sacrificing both to his vile passion. The longer he lives, Saul becomes
blacker and blacker. For such are they from whom the Spirit of the Lord
has departed.
We may well contrast David and Saul at this period of their lives; but
what a strange thing it is that further on in life David should have
taken this leaf from Saul's book, and acted in this very spirit towards
Uriah the Hittite? Not that Uriah was, or was to be, son-in-law to the
king; alas! there was an element of blackness in the case of David which
did not exist in that of Saul; but it was in the very spirit now
manifested by Saul towards himself that David availed himself of Uriah's
bravery, of Uriah's faithfulness, of Uriah's chivalrous readiness to
undertake the most perilous expeditions--availed himself of these to
compass his death. What do we learn from this? The same seeds of evil
were in David's heart as in Saul's. But at the earlier period of David's
life he walked humbly with God, and God's Spirit poured out on him not
only restrained the evil seed, but created a pure, holy, devoted life,
as if there were nothing in David but good. Afterwards, grieving the
Holy Spirit, David was left for a time to himself, and then the very
evil that had been so offensive in Saul came creeping forth drew itself
up and claimed that it should prevail. It was a blessed thing for David
that he was not beyond being arrested by God's voice, and humbled by His
reproof. He saw whither he had been going; he saw the emptiness and
wickedness of his heart; he saw that his salvation depended on God in
infinite mercy forgiving his sin and restoring His Spirit, and for these
blessings he pled and wrestled as Jacob had wrestled with the angel at
Peniel. So we may well see that for any one to trust in his heart is to
play the fool; our only trust must be in Him who is able to keep us from
falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy. "_He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same
bringeth forth much fruit, for without Me ye can do nothing. If a man
abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a root and withered, and men take
them and cast them into the fire and they are burned._"