"So David fled, and escaped and came to Samuel to Ramah, and told him
all that Saul had done unto him. And he and Samuel went and dwelt in
Naioth" (1 Sam. xix. 18)--or, as the word probably means, in the
collection of students' dwellings, inhabited by the sons of the
prophets, where possibly there may have been some kind of right of
sanctuary. Driven thence by Saul's following him, and having had one
last sorrowful hour of Jonathan's companionship--the last but one on
earth--he fled to Nob, whither the ark had been carried after the
destruction of Shiloh. The story of his flight had not reached the
solitary little town among the hills, and he is received with the honour
due to the king's son-in-law. He pleads urgent secret business for Saul
as a reason for his appearance with a slender retinue, and unarmed; and
the priest, after some feeble scruples, supplies the handful of hungry
fugitives with the shewbread. But David's quick eye caught a swarthy
face peering at him from some enclosure of the simple forest sanctuary,
and as he recognised Doeg the Edomite, Saul's savage herdsman, a cold
foreboding of evil crept over his heart, and made him demand arms from
the peaceful priest. The lonely tabernacle was guarded by its own
sanctity, and no weapons were there, except one trophy which was of good
omen to David--Goliath's sword. He eagerly accepts the matchless weapon
which his hand had clutched on that day of danger and deliverance, and
thus armed, lest Doeg should try to bar his flight, he hurries from the
pursuit which he knew that the Edomite's malignant tongue would soon
bring after him. The tragical end of the unsuspecting priest's kindness
brings out the furious irrational suspicion and cruelty of Saul. He
rages at his servants as leagued with David in words which have a most
dreary sound of utter loneliness sighing through all their fierce folly:
"All of you have conspired against me; there is none of you that is
sorry for me" (1 Sam. xxii. 8.) Doeg is forward to curry favour by
telling his tale, and so tells it as to suppress the priest's ignorance
of David's flight, and to represent him as aiding and comforting the
rebel knowingly. Then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit,
and the whole priestly population of Nob are summoned before him, loaded
with bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, and
his guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiers
shrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild blood
of Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doeg
crowns his baseness by slaying--with the help of his herdsmen, no
doubt--"on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear an ephod,"
and utterly extirpating every living thing from the defenceless little
city.
One psalm, the fifty-second, is referred by its inscription to this
period, but the correspondence between the history and the tone of the
psalm is doubtful. It is a vehement rebuke and a prophecy of destruction
directed against an enemy, whose hostility was expressed in "devouring
words." The portrait does not apply very accurately to the Doeg of the
historical books, inasmuch as it describes the psalmist's enemy as "a
mighty man,"--or rather as "a hero," and as trusting "in the abundance
of his riches,"--and makes the point of the reproach against him that
he is a confirmed liar. But the dastardly deed of blood may be covertly
alluded to in the bitterly sarcastic "hero"--as if he had said, "O brave
warrior, who dost display thy prowess in murdering unarmed priests and
women?" And Doeg's story to Saul was a lie in so far as it gave the
impression of the priests' complicity with David, and thereby caused
their deaths on a false charge. The other features of the description
are not contrary to the narrative, and most of them are in obvious
harmony with it. The psalm, then, may be taken as showing how deeply
David's soul was stirred by the tragedy. He pours out broken words of
hot and righteous indignation:
"Destructions doth thy tongue devise,
Like a razor whetted--O thou worker of deceit."
* * * * *
"Thou lovest all words that devour:[F] O thou deceitful tongue!"
[F] Literally, "words of swallowing up."
He prophesies the destruction of the cruel liar, and the exultation of
the righteous when he falls, in words which do indeed belong to the old
covenant of retribution, and yet convey an eternal truth which modern
sentimentalism finds very shocking, but which is witnessed over and
over again in the relief that fills the heart of nations and of
individuals when evil men fade: "When the wicked perish, there is
shouting"--
"Also God shall smite thee down for ever,
Will draw thee out,[G] and carry thee away from the tent,
And root thee out of the land of the living;
And the righteous shall see and fear,
And over him shall they laugh."
In confident security he opposes his own happy fellowship with God to
this dark tragedy of retribution:
"But I--(I am) like a green olive tree in the house of God."
[G] The full force of the word is, "will pluck out as a glowing ember
from a hearth" (Delitzsch).
The enemy was to be "rooted out;" the psalmist is to flourish by
derivation of life and vigour from God. If Robinson's conjecture that
Nob was on the Mount of Olives were correct (which is very doubtful),
the allusion here would gain appropriateness. As the olives grew all
round the humble forest sanctuary, and were in some sort hallowed by the
shrine which they encompassed, so the soul grows and is safe in loving
fellowship with God. Be that as it may, the words express the outlaw's
serene confidence that he is safe beneath the sheltering mercy of God,
and re-echo the hopes of his earlier psalm, "I will dwell in the house
of the Lord for ever." The stormy indignation of the earlier verses
passes away into calm peace and patient waiting in praise and trust:
"I will praise Thee for ever, for Thou hast done (it),
And wait on Thy name in the presence of Thy beloved, for it is good."
Hunted from Nob, David with a small company struck across the country in
a southwesterly direction, keeping to the safety of the tangled
mountains, till, from the western side of the hills of Judah, he looked
down upon the broad green plain of Philistia. Behind him was a mad
tyrant, in front the uncircumcised enemies of his country and his God.
His condition was desperate, and he had recourse to desperate measures.
That nearest Philistine city, some ten miles off, on which he looked
down from his height, was Gath; the glen where he had killed its
champion was close beside him,--every foot of ground was familiar by
many a foray and many a fight. It was a dangerous resource to trust
himself in Gath, with Goliath's sword dangling in his belt. But he may
have hoped that he was not known by person, or may have thought that
Saul's famous commander would be a welcome guest, as a banished man, at
the Philistine court. So he made the plunge, and took refuge in
Goliath's city. Discovery soon came, and in the most ominous form. It
was an ugly sign that the servants of Achish should be quoting the words
of the chant of victory which extolled him as the slayer of their
countryman. Vengeance for his death was but too likely to come next. The
doubts of his identity seem to have lasted for some little time, and to
have been at first privately communicated to the king. They somehow
reached David, and awoke his watchful attention, as well as his fear.
The depth of his alarm and his ready resource are shown by his degrading
trick of assumed madness--certainly the least heroic action of his life.
What a picture of a furious madman is the description of his conduct
when Achish's servants came to arrest him. He "twisted himself about in
their hands" in the feigned contortions of possession; he drummed on the
leaves of the gate,[H] and "let his spittle run down into his beard."
(1 Sam. xxi. 13.) Israelitish quickness gets the better of Philistine
stupidity, as it had been used to do from Sampson's time onwards, and
the dull-witted king falls into the trap, and laughs away the suspicions
with a clumsy joke at his servants' expense about more madmen being the
last thing he was short of. A hasty flight from Philistine territory
ended this episode.
[H] The Septuagint appears to have followed a different reading here
from that of our present Hebrew text, and the change adds a very
picturesque clause to the description. A madman would be more likely to
hammer than to "scrabble" on the great double-leaved gate.
The fifty-sixth psalm, which is referred by its title to this period,
seems at first sight to be in strange contrast with the impressions
drawn from the narrative, but on a closer examination is found to
confirm the correctness of the reference by its contents. The terrified
fugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot in
the hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enough
to hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. The
psalm is far in advance of the conduct--is it so unusual a circumstance
as to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith and
submission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? Instead of taking
the contrast between the words and the acts as a proof that this psalm
is wrongly ascribed to the period in question, let us rather be thankful
for another instance that imperfect faith may be genuine, and that if we
cannot rise to the height of unwavering fortitude, God accepts a
tremulous trust fighting against mortal terror, and grasping with a
feeble hand the word of God, and the memory of all his past
deliverances. It is precisely this conflict of faith and fear which the
psalm sets before us. It falls into three portions, the first and second
of which are closed by a kind of refrain (vers. 4, 10, 11)--a structure
which is characteristic of several of these Sauline persecution psalms
(_e.g._, lvii. 5, 11; lix. 9, 17). The first part of each of these two
portions is a vivid description of his danger, from which he rises to
the faith expressed in the closing words. The repetition of the same
thoughts in both is not to be regarded as a cold artifice of
composition, but as the true expression of the current of his thoughts.
He sees his enemies about him, ready to swallow him up--"there be many
fighting against me disdainfully"[I] (ver. 2). Whilst the terror creeps
round his heart ("he was sore afraid," 1 Sam. xxi. 12), he rouses
himself to trust, as he says, in words which express most emphatically
the co-existence of the two, and carry a precious lesson of the reality
of even an interrupted faith, streaked with many a black line of doubt
and dread.
[I] Literally, "loftily." Can there be any allusion to the giant stature
of Goliath's relations in Gath? We hear of four men "born to the giant
in Gath," who were killed in David's wars. (2 Sam. xxi. 22.)
"(In) the day (that) I am afraid--I trust on Thee."
And then he breaks into the utterance of praise and confidence--to which
he has climbed by the ladder of prayer.
"In God I praise His word,
In God I trust, I do not fear:--
What shall flesh do to me?"
How profoundly these words set forth the object of his trust, as being
not merely the promise of God--which in David's case may be the specific
promise conveyed by his designation to the throne--but the God who
promises, the inmost nature of that confidence as being a living union
with God, the power of it as grappling with his dread, and enabling him
now to say, "I do _not_ fear."
But again he falls from this height; another surge of fear breaks over
him, and almost washes him from his rock. His foes, with ceaseless
malice, arrest his words; they skulk in ambush, they dog his heels, they
long for his life. The crowded clauses portray the extremity of the
peril and the singer's agitation. His soul is still heaving with the
ground swell of the storm, though the blasts come more fitfully, and are
dying into calm. He is not so afraid but that he can turn to God; he
turns to Him because he is afraid, like the disciples in later days, who
had so much of terror that they must awake their Master, but so much of
trust that His awaking was enough. He pleads with God, as in former
psalms, against his enemies, in words which go far beyond the occasion,
and connect his own deliverance with the judgments of God over the whole
earth. He plaintively recalls his homelessness and his sorrows in words
which exhibit the characteristic blending of hope and pain, and which
are beautifully in accordance with the date assigned to the psalm. "My
wanderings dost Thou, even Thou, number." He is not alone in these
weary flights from Gibeah to Ramah, from Ramah to Nob, from Nob to Gath,
from Gath he knows not whither. One friend goes with him through them
all. And as the water-skin was a necessary part of a traveller's
equipment, the mention of his wanderings suggests the bold and tender
metaphor of the next clause, "Put my tears in Thy bottle,"--a prayer for
that very remembrance of his sorrows, in the existence of which he
immediately declares his confidence--"Are they not in Thy book?" The
true office of faithful communion with God is to ask for, and to
appropriate, the blessings which in the very act become ours. He knows
that his cry will scatter his foes, for God is for him. And thus once
again he has risen to the height of confidence where for a moment his
feet have been already planted, and again--but this time with even
fuller emphasis, expressed by an amplification which introduces for the
only time in the psalm the mighty covenant name--he breaks into his
triumphant strain--
"In God I praise the Word;
In JEHOVAH I praise the Word:
In God I trust, I do not fear:--
What shall man do to me?"
And from this mood of trustful expectation he does not again decline.
Prayer has brought its chiefest blessing--the peace that passeth
understanding. The foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusively
by faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praise
for deliverance, as if it had been already achieved--
"Thou hast delivered my life from death,
(Hast Thou) not (delivered) my feet from falling,
That I may walk before God in the light of the living?"
He already reckons himself safe; his question is not an expression of
doubt, but of assurance; and he sees the purpose of all God's dealings
with him to be that the activities of life may all be conducted in the
happy consciousness of _His_ eye who is at once Guardian and Judge of
His children. How far above his fears and lies has this hero and saint
risen by the power of supplication and the music of his psalm!
David naturally fled into Israelitish territory from Gath. The exact
locality of the cave Adullam, where we next find him, is doubtful; but
several strong reasons occur for rejecting the monkish tradition which
places it away to the east, in one of the wild wadies which run down
from Bethlehem to the Dead Sea. We should expect it to be much more
accessible by a hasty march from Gath. Obviously it would be convenient
for him to hang about the frontier of Philistia and Israel, that he
might quickly cross the line from one to the other, as dangers appeared.
Further, the city of Adullam is frequently mentioned, and always in
connections which fix its site as on the margin of the great plain of
Philistia, and not far from Gath. (2 Chron. xi. 7, etc.) There is no
reason to suppose that the cave of Adullam was in a totally different
district from the city. The hills of Dan and Judah, which break sharply
down into the plain within a few miles of Gath, are full of "extensive
excavations," and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold,
where he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look down
over the vast sweep of the rich Philistine country. Gath lay at his
feet, close by was the valley where he had killed Goliath, the scenes of
Samson's exploits were all about him. Thither fled to him his whole
family, from fear, no doubt, of Saul's revenge falling on them; and
there he gathers his band of four hundred desperate men, whom poverty
and misery, and probably the king's growing tyranny, drove to flight.
They were wild, rough soldiers, according to the picturesque
description, "whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as
swift as the roes upon the mountains." They were not freebooters, but
seem to have acted as a kind of frontier-guard against southern Bedouins
and western Philistines for the sheep-farmers of the border whom Saul's
government was too weak to protect. In this desultory warfare, and in
eluding the pursuit of Saul, against whom it is to be observed David
never employed any weapon but flight, several years were passed. The
effect of such life on his spiritual nature was to deepen his
unconditional dependence on God; by the alternations of heat and cold,
fear and hope, danger and safety, to temper his soul and make it
flexible, tough and bright as steel. It evolved the qualities of a
leader of men; teaching him command and forbearance, promptitude and
patience, valour and gentleness. It won for him a name as the defender
of the nation, as Nabal's servant said of him and his men, "They were a
wall unto us, both by night and by day" (1 Sam. xxv. 16). And it
gathered round him a force of men devoted to him by the enthusiastic
attachment bred from long years of common dangers, and the hearty
friendships of many a march by day, and nightly encampment round the
glimmering watchfires, beneath the lucid stars.