_DAVID AT ADULLAM, MIZPEH, AND HARETH._
1 SAMUEL xxii.
The cave of Adullam, to which David fled on leaving Gath, has been
placed in various localities even in modern times; but as the Palestine
Exploration authorities have placed the town in the valley of Elah, we
may regard it as settled that the cave lay there, not far indeed from
the place where David had had his encounter with Goliath. It was a
humble dwelling for a king's son-in-law, nor could David have thought of
needing it on the memorable day when he did such wonders with his sling
and stone. These "dens and caves of the earth"--effects of great
convulsions in some remote period of its history--what service have they
often rendered to the hunted and oppressed! How many a devout saint, of
whom the world was not worthy, has blessed God for their shelter! With
how much purer devotion and loftier fellowship, with how much more
sublime and noble exercises of the human spirit have many of them been
associated, than some of the proudest and costliest temples that have
been reared in name--often little more--to the service of God!
If David at first was somewhat an object of jealousy to his own family,
in this the day of his trials they showed a different spirit. "When his
brethren and all his father's house heard of it, they went down thither
to him." As the proverb says, "Blood is thicker than water," and often
adversity draws families together between whom prosperity has been like
a wedge. If our relations are prospering while we are poor, we think of
them as if they had moved away from us; but when their fortunes are
broken, and the world turns its back on them, we get closer, our
sympathy revives. We think all the better of David's family that when
they heard of his outlaw condition they all went down to him. Besides
these, "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt,
and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and
he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four
hundred men." The account here given of the circumstances of this band
is not very flattering, but there are two things connected with it to be
borne in mind: in the first place, that the kind of men who usually
choose the soldier's calling are not your men of plodding industry, but
men who shrink from monotonous labour; and, in the second place, that
under the absolute rule of Saul there might be many very worthy persons
in debt and discontented and in distress, men who had come into that
condition because they were not so ready to cringe to despotism as their
ruler desired. Mixed and motley therefore though David's troop may have
been, it was far from contemptible; and their adherence was fitted
greatly to encourage him, because it showed that public feeling was with
him, that his cause was not looked on as desperate, that his standard
was one to which it was deemed safe and hopeful to resort.
But if, at the first glance, the troop appeared somewhat disreputable,
it was soon joined by two men, the one a prophet, the other a priest,
whose adherence must have brought to it a great accession of moral
weight. The prophet was Gad (ver. 5), who next to Samuel seems to have
stood highest in the nation as a man of God, a man of holy counsel, and
elevated, heavenly character. His open adherence to David (which seems
to be implied in ver. 5) must have had the best effects both on David
himself and on the people at large. It must have been a great blessing
to David to have such a man as Gad beside him; for, with all his
personal piety, he seems to have required a godly minister at his side.
No man derived more benefit from the communion of saints, or was more
apt to suffer for want of it; for, as we have seen, he had begun to
decline in spirituality when he left Samuel at Naioth, and still more
when he was parted from Jonathan. When Gad joined him, David must have
felt that he was sent to him from the Lord, and could not but be full of
gratitude for so conspicuous an answer to his prayers. It would seem
that Gad remained in close relation to David to the close of his life.
It was he that came from the Lord to offer him his choice between three
forms of chastisement after his offence in numbering the people; and
from the fact of his being called "David's seer" (2 Sam. xxiv. 11) we
conclude that he and David were intimately associated. It was he also
that instructed David to buy the threshing-floor of Araunah the
Jebusite, and thus to consecrate to God a spot with which, to the very
end of time, the most hallowed thoughts must always be connected.
The other eminent person that joined David about this time was Abiathar
the priest. But before adverting to this, we must follow the thread of
the narrative and especially note the tragedy that occurred at Nob, the
city of the priests.
From the mode of life which David had to follow and the difficulty of
obtaining subsistence for his troop at one place for any length of time,
he was obliged to make frequent changes. On leaving the cave of Adullam,
which was near the western border of the tribe of Judah, he traversed
the whole breadth of that tribe, and crossing the Jordan, came to the
territories of Moab. He was concerned for the safety of his father and
mother, knowing too well the temper of Eastern kings, and how they
thirsted for the blood, not only of their rivals, but of all their
relations. He feared that they would not be let alone at Bethlehem or in
any other part of Saul's kingdom. But what led him to think of the king
of Moab? Perhaps a tender remembrance of his ancestress Ruth, the damsel
from Moab, who had been so eminent for her devotion to her
mother-in-law. Might there not be found in the king of Moab somewhat of
a like disposition, that would look with pity on an old man and woman
driven from their home, not indeed, like Naomi, by famine, but by what
was even worse, the shameful ingratitude and murderous fury of a wicked
king? If such was David's hope, it was not without success; his father
and his mother dwelt with the king of Moab all the time that David was
in the hold.
But it was not God's purpose that David should lurk in a foreign land.
The prophet Gad directed him to return to the land of Judah. It was
within the boundaries of that tribe, accordingly, that the rest of
David's exile was spent, with the exception of the time at the very end
when he again resorted to Philistine territory. His first hiding-place
was the forest of Hareth.
While David was here, Saul, encamped in military state at Gibeah,
delivered an extraordinary speech to the men of his own tribe. "Hear
now, ye Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields
and vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands, and captains of
hundreds; that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none
that showeth me that my son hath made a league with the son of Jesse,
and there is none of you that is sorry for me, or that showeth me that
my son hath stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this
day?" It would have been difficult for any other man to condense so much
that was vile in spirit into the dimensions of a little speech like
this. It begins with a base appeal to the cupidity of his countrymen,
the Benjamites, among whom he was probably in the habit of distributing
the possessions of his enemies, as, for instance, the Gibeonites, who
dwelt near him, and whom he slew, contrary to the covenant made with
them by Joshua (2 Sam. xxi. 2). It accuses his people of having
conspired against him, because they had not spoken to him of the
friendship of his son with David, although that fact must have been
notorious. It accuses the noble Jonathan of having stirred up David
against Saul, while neither Jonathan nor David had ever lifted a little
finger against him, and both the one and the other might have been
trusted to serve him with unflinching fidelity if he had only given them
a fair chance. It indicates that nothing would be more agreeable to Saul
than any information about David or those connected with him that would
give him an excuse for some deed of overwhelming vengeance. Did ever man
draw his own portrait in viler colours than Saul in this speech?
There was one bosom--let us hope only one--in which it awoke a response.
It was that of Doeg the Edomite. He told the story of what he had seen
at Nob, adding thereto the unfounded statement that Ahimelech had
inquired of the Lord for David. Ahimelech and the whole college of
priests were accordingly sent for, and they came. The charge brought
against him was a very offensive one; in so far, it was a statement of
facts, but of facts placed in an odious light, of facts coloured with a
design which Ahimelech never entertained. Oh, how many an innocent man
has suffered in this way! Even in courts of justice, by pleaders whose
interest is on the other side, and sometimes by judges (like Jeffreys)
steeped in hatred and prejudice, how often have acts that were quite
innocent been put to the account of treason, or put to the account of
malice, or cunningly forged into a chain, indicating a deliberate design
to injure another! It can never be too earnestly insisted on that to be
just to a man you must not merely ascertain the real facts of his case,
but you must put the facts in their true light, and not colour them with
prejudices of your own or with suppositions which the man repudiates.
The conduct of Ahimelech was manly and straightforward, but indiscreet.
He admitted the facts, with the exception of the statement that he had
inquired of the Lord for David. He vindicated right manfully the
faithful, noble services of David, services that ought to have excluded
the very idea of treason or conspiracy. He protested that he knew
nothing of any ground the king had against David, or of any cause that
could have led him to believe that in helping him he was offending Saul.
But just because Ahimelech's defence was so true and so complete, it was
most offensive to Saul. What is there a despot likes worse to hear than
that he is entirely in the wrong? What words irritate him so much as
those which prove the entire innocence of some one with whom he is
angry? Saul was angry both with David and with Ahimelech. Ahimelech had
the great misfortune to prove to him that in both cases there was no
shadow of ground for his anger. In proportion as Saul's reason should
have been satisfied, his temper was excited. What an uncontrollable
condition that temper must have been in when the death of Ahimelech was
decreed, and all his father's house! We do not wonder that no one could
be found in his bodyguard to execute the order. Did this not stagger and
sober the king? Far from it. His fit of rage was so hot and imperious
that he would not be baulked. Turning to Doeg, he commanded him to fall
on the priests. And this vile man had the brutality to execute the
order, and to plunge his sword into the heart of fourscore and five
unarmed persons that wore the garments which even in heathen nations
usually secured protection and safety. And as if it were not enough to
kill the men, their city, Nob, was utterly destroyed. Men and women,
children and sucklings, oxen and asses and sheep--a thorough massacre
was made of them all. Had Nob been a city of warriors that had resisted
the king's armies with haughty insolence, harassed them by sorties,
entrapped them by stratagems, and exasperated them by hideous cruelty to
their prisoners, but at last been overpowered, it could not have had a
more terrible doom. And had Saul never committed any other crime, this
would have been enough to separate him from the Lord for ever, and to
bring down on him the horrors of the night at Endor and of the day that
followed on Mount Gilboa.
This cruel and sacrilegious murder must have told against Saul and his
cause with prodigious effect. There could not have been a single priest
or Levite throughout the kingdom whose blood would not boil at the news
of the massacre, and whose sympathies would not be enlisted, more or
less, on behalf of David, now openly proclaimed by Saul as his rival,
and probably known to have been anointed by Samuel as his successor. Not
only the priests and Levites, but every rightminded man throughout the
land would share in this feeling, and many a prayer would be offered for
David that God would protect him, and spare him to be a blessing to his
country. The very presence in his camp of Abiathar, the son of
Ahimelech, who escaped the massacre, with his ephod,--an official means
of consulting God in all cases of difficulty,--would be a visible proof
to his followers and to the community at large, that God was on his
side. And when the solemn rites of the national worship were performed
in his camp, and when, at each turn of public affairs, the high priest
was seen in communication with Jehovah, the feeling could not fail to
gain strength that David's cause was the cause of God, and the cause of
the country, and that, in due time, his patient sufferings and his noble
services would be crowned with the due reward.
But if the news of the massacre would tend on the whole to improve
David's position with the people, it must have occasioned a terrible
pang to David himself. There was, indeed, one point of view in which
something of the kind was to be looked for. Long ago, it had been
foretold to Eli, when he tolerated so calmly the scandalous wickedness
of his sons, "Behold, the days come that I will cut off thine arm, and
the arm of thy father's house, but there shall not be an old man in
thine house. And thou shalt see an enemy in My habitation, in all the
wealth which God shall give Israel: and there shall not be an old man in
thy house for ever." Ahimelech was a grandson of Eli, and the other
massacred priests were probably of Eli's blood. Here, then, at last, was
the fulfilment of the sentence announced to Eli; doomed as his house had
been, their subsistence for years back was of the nature of a respite;
and here, at length, was the catastrophe that had been so distinctly
foretold.
That consideration, however, would not be much, if any, consolation to
David. If the falsehood which he had told to Ahimelech was really
dictated by a desire to save the high priest from conscious implication
with his affairs--with the condition of one who was now an outlaw and a
fugitive, it had failed most terribly of the desired effect. The issue
of the lie only served to place David's duplicity in a more odious
light. There is one thing in David, when he received the information,
that we cannot but admire--his readiness to take to himself his full
share of blame. "I have occasioned the death of all thy father's house."
And more than that, he did not even protest that it was impossible to
have foreseen what was going to happen. For at the very time when he was
practising the falsehood on Ahimelech, he owns that he had a
presentiment of mischief to follow, "I knew it that day, when Doeg the
Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul." Nor did he excuse
himself on the ground that the massacre was the fulfilment of the
longstanding sentence on Eli's house. He knew well that that
circumstance in no degree lessened his own guilt, or the guilt of Doeg
and Saul. Though God may use men's wicked passions to bring about His
purposes, that in no degree lessens the guilt of these passions. It
seems as if David never could have forgiven himself his share in this
dreadful business. And what a warning this conveys to us! Are you not
sometimes tempted to think that sin to you is not a very serious matter,
because you will get forgiveness for it, the atoning work of the Saviour
will cleanse you from its guilt? Be it so; but what if your sin has
involved others, and if no atoning blood has been sprinkled on them?
What of the youth whom your careless example first led to drink, and who
died a miserable drunkard? What of the clerk whom you instructed to tell
a lie? What of the companion of your sensuality whom you drove nearer to
hell? Alas, alas! sin is like a network, the ramifications of which go
out on the right hand and on the left, and when we break God's law, we
cannot tell what the consequences to others may be! And how can we be
ever comforted if we have been the occasion of ruin to any? It seems as
if the burden of that feeling could never be borne; as if the only way
of escape were, to be put out of existence altogether!
The superscription of the fifty-second Psalm bears--"Maschil of David;
when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, David is come to the house of
Ahimelech." There is not much in this title to recommend it, as the
information that was given by Doeg to Saul is not stated accurately. We
might have expected, too, that if Doeg was alone in the Psalmist's eye,
the atrocious slaughter of the priests would have had a share of
reprobation, as well as the sharp, calumnious, mischievous tongue which
is the chief object of denunciation. And though Doeg, as the chief of
Saul's bondmen, might be a rich man, that position would hardly have
entitled him to be called a mighty man, nor to assume the swaggering
tone of independence here ascribed to him. Whoever was really the object
of denunciation in this psalm, seems however to have belonged to the
same class with Doeg, in respect of his wicked tongue and love of
mischief. It is indeed a wretched character that is delineated: the
Psalmist's enemy is at once mischievous and mighty; and not only is he
mischievous, but he boasts himself in it. He is shameless and without
conscience, bent on doing all the evil that he can. Let him only have a
chance of bringing a railing accusation against God's servants, and he
does it with delight. But his conduct is senseless as it is wicked. God
is unchangeably good, and His goodness is a sure defence to His servants
against all the calumnious devices of the greatest and strongest of men.
It is the tongue of this evil man that is his instrument of mischief. It
is utterly unscrupulous, sharp as a razor, cunning, devouring. A liar is
a serious enemy, one who is utterly unprincipled, clever withal, and who
trains himself with great skill to do mischief with his tongue. It is
painful to be at the mercy of a calumniator who does not launch against
you a clumsy and incredible calumny, but one that has an element of
probability in it, only fearfully distorted. Especially when the
calumniator is one that _deviseth_ mischief, who loves evil more than
good, to whom truth is too tame to be cared for, who delights in
falsehood because it is more piquant, more exciting. To those who have
learned to regard it as the great business of life to spread light,
order, peace, and joy, such men appear to be monsters, and indeed they
are; but it is a painful experience to lie at their mercy.
To this class belonged Doeg, a monster in human form, to whom it was no
distress, but apparently a congenial employment, to murder in cold blood
a very hecatomb of men consecrated to the service of God. No doubt it
would appal David to think that such a man was now leagued with Saul as
his bitter and implacable enemy. But his faith saw him in the same
prostrate position in which his faith had seen Goliath. Men cannot defy
God in vain. Men dare not defy that truth and that mercy which are
attributes of God. "God shall likewise destroy thee for ever: He shall
take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling-place, and root thee
out of the land of the living. The righteous also shall see, and fear,
and shall laugh at him."
What became of Doeg we do not know. The historian does not introduce his
name again. Before David came to power, he had probably received his
doom. Had he still survived, we should have been likely again to fall in
with his name. The Jews have a tradition that he was Saul's
armour-bearer at the battle of Gilboa, and that the sword by which he
and his master fell, was no other than that which had slain the priests
of the Lord. As for the truth of this we cannot say. But even supposing
that no special judgment befell him, we cannot fancy him as other than a
most miserable man. With such a heart and such a tongue, with the load
of a guilty life lying heavy on his soul, and that life crowned by such
an infamous proceeding as the massacre of the priests, we cannot think
of him as one who enjoyed life, but as a man of surly and gloomy nature,
to whom life grew darker and darker, till it was extinguished in some
miserable ending. In contrast with such a career, how bright and how
much to be desired was David's anticipated future:--"I am like a green
olive-tree in the house of my God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever
and ever. I will praise Thy name for ever, because Thou hast done it:
and I will wait on Thy name, for it is good before Thy saints."
"Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; but he that trusteth in the Lord,
mercy shall compass him about."