_DAVID'S SECOND FLIGHT TO GATH._
1 SAMUEL xxvii.; xxviii. 1, 2; xxix.
We are not prepared for the sad decline in the spirit of trust which is
recorded in the beginning of the twenty-seventh chapter. The victory
gained by David over the carnal spirit of revenge, shown so signally in
his sparing the life of Saul a second time, would have led us to expect
that he would never again fall under the influence of carnal fear. But
there are strange ebbs and flows in the spiritual life, and sometimes a
victory brings its dangers, as well as its glory. Perhaps this very
conquest excited in David the spirit of self-confidence; he may have had
less sense of his need of daily strength from above; and he may have
fallen into the state of mind against which the Apostle warns us, "Let
him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."
In his collision with Nabal we saw him fail in what seemed one of his
strong points--the very spirit of self-control which he had exercised so
remarkably toward Saul; and now we see him fail in another of his strong
points--the spirit of trust toward God. Could anything show more clearly
that even the most eminent graces of the saints spring from no native
fountain of goodness within them, but depend on the continuance of their
vital fellowship with Him of whom the Psalmist said, "All my springs
are in Thee"? (Psalm lxxxvii. 7). Carelessness and prayerlessness
interrupt that fellowship; the supply of daily strength ceases to come;
temptation arises, and they become weak like other men. "_Abide_ in Me,"
said our Lord, with special emphasis on the need of permanence in the
relation; and the prophet says, "They that wait on the Lord," as a
habitual exercise, "shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with
wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk
and not faint."
The most strange thing about David's new decline is, that it led him to
try a device which he had tried before, and which had proved a great
failure. We see him retreating before an enemy he had often conquered;
retreating, too, by a path every foot of which he had traversed, and
with whose bitter ending he was already familiar. Just as before, his
declension begins with distrust; and just as before, dissimulation is
the product of the distrustful spirit. He is brought into the most
painful dilemma, and into experience of the most grievous disaster; but
God, in His infinite mercy, extricates him from the one and enables him
to retrieve the other. It is affliction that brings him to his senses
and drives him to God; it is the returning spirit of prayer and trust
that sustains him in his difficulties, and at last brings to him, from
the hand of God, a merciful deliverance from them all.
Our first point of interest is the growth and manifestation of the
spirit of distrust. "David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day
by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me than that I should
speedily escape into the land of the Philistines." We find it difficult
to account for the sudden triumph of this very despondent feeling. It
is hardly enough to say that David could have had no confidence in
Saul's expressions of regret and declared purposes of amendment. That
was no new feature of the case. Perhaps one element of the explanation
may be, that Saul, with his three thousand men, had not only become
familiar with all David's hiding-places, but had stationed troops in
various parts of the district that would so hamper his movements as to
hem him in as in a prison. Then also there may have been some new
outbreak of the malignant fury of Cush the Benjamite, and other enemies
who were about Saul, rousing the king to even more earnest efforts than
ever to apprehend him. There is yet another circumstance in David's
situation, that has not, we think, obtained the notice it deserves, but
which may have had a very material influence on his decision. David had
now two wives with him, Abigail the widow of Nabal, and Ahinoam the
Jezreelitess. He would naturally be desirous to provide them with the
comforts of a settled home. A band of young men might put up with the
risks and discomforts of a roaming life, which it would not be possible
for women to bear. The rougher sex might think nothing of midnight
removals, and attacks in the dark, and scampers over wild passes and
rugged mountains at all hours of the day and night, and snatches of food
at irregular times, and all the other experiences which David and his
men had borne patiently and cheerfully in the earlier stages of their
outlaw history. But for women this was unsuitable. It is true that this
alone would not have led David to say, "I shall one day perish by the
hand of Saul." But it would increase his sense of difficulty; it would
make him feel more keenly the embarrassments of his situation; it would
help to overwhelm him. And when he was thus at his wit's end, the sense
of danger from Saul would become more and more serious. The tension of a
mind thus pressed on every side is something terrible. Pressed and
tortured by invincible difficulties, David gives way to despair--"I
shall one day perish by the hand of Saul."
Let us observe the manner in which this feeling grew to such strength as
to give rise to a new line of conduct. It got entrance into _his heart_.
It hovered about him in a somewhat loose form, before he took hold of
it, and resolved to act upon it. It approached him in the same manner in
which temptation approaches many a one, first presenting itself to the
imagination and the feelings, trying to get hold of them, and then
getting possession of the will, and turning the whole man in the desired
direction. Like a skilful adversary who first attacks an outpost,
apparently of little value, but when he has got it erects on it a
battery by which he is able to conquer a nearer position, and thus
gradually approaches, till at last the very citadel is in his hands,--so
sin at first hovers about the outposts of the soul. Often it seems at
first just to play with the imagination; one fancies this thing and the
other, this sensual indulgence or that act of dishonesty; and then,
having become familiar with it there, one admits it to the inner
chambers of the soul, and ere long the lust bringeth forth sin. The
lesson not to let sin play even with the imagination, but drive it
thence the moment one becomes conscious of its presence, cannot be
pressed too strongly. Have you ever studied the language of the Lord's
Prayer?--"Lead us not _into_ temptation." You are being led into
temptation whenever you are led to think, with interest and half
longing, of any sinful indulgence. Wisdom demands of you that the
moment you are conscious of such a feeling you resolutely exclaim, "Get
thee behind me, Satan!" It is the tempter trying to establish a foothold
in the outworks, meaning, when he has done so, to advance nearer and
nearer to the citadel, till at last you shall find him in strong
possession, and your soul entangled in the meshes of perdition.
The conclusion to which David came, under the influence of distrust, as
to the best course for him to follow shows what opposite decisions may
be arrived at, according to the point of view at which men take their
stand. "There is nothing better for me than that I should escape
speedily into the land of the Philistines." From a more correct point of
view, nothing could have been worse. Had Moses thought of his prospects
from the same position, he would have said, "There is nothing better for
me than to remain the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and enjoy all the good
things to which Providence has so remarkably called me;" but standing on
the ground of faith, his conclusion was precisely the opposite. Looking
abroad over the world with the eye of sense, the young man may say,
"There is nothing better for me than that I should rejoice in my youth,
and that my heart should cheer me in the days of my youth, and that I
should walk in the ways of mine heart and in the sight of mine eyes."
But the eye of faith sees ominous clouds and gathering storms in the
distance, which show that there could be nothing worse.
As usual, David's error was connected with the omission of prayer. We
find no clause in this chapter, "Bring hither the ephod." He asked no
counsel of God; he did not even sit down to deliberate calmly on the
matter. The impulse to which he yielded required him to decide at once.
The word "speedily" indicates the presence of panic, the action of a
tumultuous force on his mind, inducing him to act as promptly as one
does in raising one's arm to ward off a threatened blow. Possibly he had
the feeling that, if God's mind were consulted, it would be contrary to
his desire, and on that ground, like too many persons, he may have
shrunk from honest prayer. How different from the spirit of the
psalm--"Show me Thy ways, O Lord, teach me Thy paths; lead me in Thy
truth and teach me, for Thou art the God of my salvation; on Thee do I
wait all the day." Dost thou imagine, David, that the Lord's arm is
shortened that it cannot save, and His ear heavy that it cannot hear?
Would not He who delivered you in six troubles cause that in seven no
evil should touch thee? Has He not promised that thou shalt be hid from
the scourge of the tongue, neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction
when it cometh? Dost thou not know that thy seed shall be great and
thine offspring as the grass of the earth? Thou shalt come to thy grave
in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.
So "David arose, and he passed over with the six hundred men that were
with him, unto Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath." It is thought by
some that this was a different king from the former, the name Achish
like the name Pharaoh being used by all the kings. At first the
arrangement seemed to succeed. Achish appears to have received him
kindly. "David dwelt with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with
his household, even David with his two wives." The emphasis laid on the
household and the wives shows how difficult it had been to provide for
them before. And Saul, at last, gave up the chase, and sought for him no
more. Of course, in giving him a friendly reception, Achish must have
had a view to his own interest. He would calculate on making use of him
in his battles with Saul, and very probably give an incredulous smile if
he heard anything of the scruples he had shown to lift up his hand
against the Lord's anointed.
Availing himself of the favourable impression made on Achish, David now
begs to have a country town allotted to him as his residence, so as to
avoid what appeared the unseemliness of his dwelling in the royal city
with him. There was much common sense in the demand, and Achish could
not but feel it. Gath was but a little place, and Achish, if he was but
lord of Gath, was not a very powerful king. The presence in such a place
of a foreign prince, with a retinue of soldiers six hundred strong, was
hardly becoming. Possibly Achish's own body guard did not come up in
number and in prowess to the troop of David. The request for a separate
residence was therefore granted readily, and Ziklag was assigned to
David. It lay near the southern border of the Philistines, close to the
southern desert. At Ziklag he was away from the eye of the lords of the
Philistines that had always viewed him with such jealousy; he was far
away from the still greater jealousy of Saul; and with Geshurites, and
Gezrites, and Amalekites in his neighbourhood, the natural enemies of
his country, he had opportunities of using his troop so as at once to
improve their discipline and promote the welfare of his native land.
There was another favourable occurrence in David's experience at this
time. From a parallel passage (1 Chron. xii.) we learn that during his
residence among the Philistines he was constantly receiving important
accessions to his troop. One set of men who came to him, Benjamites, of
the tribe of Saul, were remarkably skilful in the use of the bow and the
sling, able to use either right hand or left with equal ease. The men
that came to him were not from one tribe only, but from many. A very
important section were from Benjamin and Judah. At first David seemed to
have some suspicion of their sincerity. Going out to meet them he said
to them, "If ye be come peaceably to me to help me, my heart shall be
knit unto you; but if ye be come to betray me to my enemies, seeing
there is no wrong in my hands, the God of our fathers look thereon and
rebuke it." The answer was given by Amasai, in the spirit and rhythmical
language of prophecy: "Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of
Jesse; peace, peace be unto thee, and peace be to thine helpers; for thy
God helpeth thee." Thus he was continually receiving evidence of the
favour in which he was held by his people, and his band was continually
increasing, "until it was a great host, like the host of God." It
seemed, up to this point, as if Providence had favoured his removal to
the land of the Philistines, and brought to him the security and the
prosperity which he could not find in the land of Judah. But it was
ill-gained security and only mock-prosperity; the day of his troubles
drew on.
The use which, as we have seen, he made of his troop was to invade the
Geshurites, the Gezrites, and the Amalekites. In taking this step David
had a sinister purpose. It would not have been so agreeable to the
Philistines to learn that the arms of David had been turned against
these tribes as against his own countrymen. When therefore he was asked
by Achish where he had gone that day, he returned an answer fitted, and
indeed intended, to deceive. Without saying in words, "I have been
fighting against my own people in the south of Judah," he led Achish to
believe that he had, and he was pleased when his words were taken in
that sense. Achish, we are told, believed David, believed that he had
been in arms against his countrymen. "He hath made his people Israel
utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant for ever." Could
there have been a more lamentable spectacle? one of the noblest of men
stained by the meanness of a false insinuation; David, the anointed of
the God of Israel, ranged with the common herd of liars!
Nor was this the only error into which his crooked policy now led him.
To cover his deceitful course he had recourse to an act of terrible
carnage. It was deemed by him important that no one should be able to
carry to Achish a faithful report of what he had been doing. To prevent
this he made a complete massacre, put to death every man, woman, child
of the Amalekites and other tribes whom he now attacked. Such massacres
were indeed quite common in Eastern warfare. The Bulgarian and other
massacres of which we have heard in our own day show that even yet,
after an interval of nearly three thousand years, they are not foreign
to the practice of Eastern nations. In point of fact, they were not
thought more of, or worse of, than any of the other incidents of war.
War was held to bind up into one bundle the whole lives and property of
the enemy, and give to the conqueror supreme control over it. To destroy
the whole was just the same in principle as to destroy a part. If the
destruction of the whole was necessary in order to carry out the objects
of the campaign, it was not more wicked to perpetrate such destruction
than to destroy a part.
True, according to our modern view, there is something mean in falling
on helpless, defenceless women and children, and slaughtering them in
cold blood. And yet our modern ideas allow the bombardment or the
besieging of great cities, and the bringing of the more slow but
terrible process of starvation to bear against women and children and
all, in order to compel a surrender. Much though modern civilisation has
done to lessen the horrors of war, if we approve of all its methods we
cannot afford to hold up our hands in horror at those which were judged
allowable in the days of David. Yet surely, you may say, we might have
expected better things of David. We might have expected him to break
away from the common sentiment, and to show more humanity. But this
would not have been reasonable. For it is very seldom that the
individual conscience, even in the case of the best men, becomes
sensible at once of the vices of its age. How many good men in this
country, in the early part of this century, were zealous defenders of
slavery, and in America down to a much later time! There is nothing more
needful for us in studying history, even Old Testament history, than to
remember that very remarkable individual excellence may be found in
connection with a great amount of the vices of the age. We cannot
attempt to show that David was not guilty of a horrible carnage in his
treatment of the Amalekites. All we can say is, he shared in the belief
of the time that such carnage was a lawful incident of war. We cannot
but feel that in the whole circumstances it left a stain upon his
character; and yet he may have engaged in it without any consciousness
of barbarity, without any idea that the day would come when his friends
would blush for the deed.
The Philistines were now preparing a new campaign under Achish against
Saul and his kingdom, and Achish determined that David should go with
him; further, that he should go in the capacity of "keeper of his head,"
or captain of his body guard, and that this should not be a temporary
arrangement, but permanent--"for ever." It is difficult for us to
conceive the depth of the embarrassment into which this intimation must
have plunged David. We must bear in mind how scrupulous and sensitive
his conscience was as to raising his hand against the Lord's anointed;
and we must take into account the horror he must have felt at the
thought of rushing in deadly array against his own dear countrymen, with
most of whom he had had no quarrel, and who had never done him any harm.
When Achish made him head of his body guard he paid a great compliment
to his fidelity and bravery; but in proportion as the post was
honourable it was disagreeable and embarrassing. For David and his men
would have to fight close to Achish, under his very eye; and any
symptoms of holding back from the fray--any inclination to be off, or to
spare the foe, which natural feeling might have dictated in the hour of
battle, must be resisted in presence of the king. Perhaps David reckoned
that if the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines he might be able
to make better terms for them--might even be of use to Saul himself, and
thus render such services as would atone for his hostile attitude. But
this was a wretched consolation. David was entangled so that he could
neither advance nor retreat. Before him was GOD, closing His path in
front; behind him was MAN, closing it in rear; and we may well believe
he would have willingly given all he possessed if only his feet could
have been clear and his conscience upright as before.
Still, he does not appear to have returned to a candid frame of mind,
but rather to have continued the dissimulation. He had gone with Achish
as far as the battlefield, when it pleased God, in great mercy, to
extricate him from his difficulty by using the jealousy of the lords of
the Philistines as the means of his dismissal from the active service of
King Achish. But instead of gladly retiring when he received intimation
that his services were dispensed with, we find him (chap. xxix. 8)
remonstrating with Achish, speaking as if it were a disappointment not
to be allowed to go with him, and as if he thirsted for an opportunity
of chastising his countrymen. It is sad to find him continuing in this
strain. We are told that the time during which he abode in the country
of the Philistines was a full year and four months. It was to all
appearance a time of spiritual declension; and as distrust ruled his
heart, so dissimulation ruled his conduct. It could hardly have been
other than a time of merely formal prayers and comfortless spiritual
experience. If he would but have allowed himself to believe it, he was
far happier in the cave of Adullam or the wilderness of Engedi, when the
candle of the Lord shone upon his head, than he was afterwards amid the
splendour of the palace of Achish, or the princely independence of
Ziklag.
The only bright spot in this transaction was the very cordial testimony
borne by Achish to the faultless way in which David had uniformly served
him. It is seldom indeed that such language as Achish employed can be
used of any servant--"I know that thou art good in my sight, as an angel
of God." Achish must have been struck with the utter absence of
treachery and of all self-seeking in David. David had shown that
singular, unblemished trustworthiness that earned such golden opinions
for Joseph in the house of Potiphar and from the keeper of the prison.
In this respect he had kept his light shining before men with a clear,
unclouded lustre. Even amid his spiritual backsliding and sad distrust
of God, he had never stained his hands with greed or theft, he had in
all these respects kept himself unspotted of the world.
The chapter of David's history which we have now been pursuing is a very
painful one, but the circumstances in which he was placed were extremely
difficult and trying. It is impossible to justify the course he took.
By-and-bye we shall see how God chastised him for it, and by chastising
him brought him to Himself. But to those who are disposed to be very
severe on him we might well say, He that is without sin among you, let
him first cast a stone at him. Who among you have not been induced at
times to try carnal and unworthy expedients for extricating yourselves
from difficulty? Who, in days of boyhood or girlhood, never told a
falsehood to cover a fault? Who of you have been uniformly accustomed to
carry to God every difficulty and trial, with the honest, immovable
determination to do simply and solely what might seem to be agreeable to
God's will? Have we not all cause to mourn over conduct that has
dishonoured God and distressed our consciences? May He give all of us
light to see wherein we have come short in the past, or wherein we are
coming short in the present. And from the bottom of our hearts may we be
taught to raise our prayer, From all the craft and cunning of Satan;
from all the devices of the carnal mind; from all that blinds us to the
pure and perfect will of God--good Lord, deliver us.