We have one psalm which the title connects with the beginning of David's
stay at Adullam,--the thirty-fourth. The supposition that it dates from
that period throws great force into many parts of it, and gives a unity
to what is else apparently fragmentary and disconnected. Unlike those
already considered, which were pure soliloquies, this is full of
exhortation and counsel, as would naturally be the case if it were
written when friends and followers began to gather to his standard. It
reads like a long sigh of relief at escape from a danger just past; its
burden is to tell of God's deliverance, and to urge to trust in Him. How
perfectly this tone corresponds to the circumstances immediately after
his escape from Gath to Adullam need not be more than pointed out. The
dangers which he had dreaded and the cry to God which he had sent forth
are still present to his mind, and echo through his song, like a
subtly-touched chord of sadness, which appears for a moment, and is
drowned in the waves of some triumphant music.
"I sought the Lord, and He heard me,
And from all my alarms He delivered me.
* * * * *
This afflicted (man) cried, and Jehovah heard,
And from all his troubles He saved him."
And the "local colouring" of the psalm corresponds too with the
circumstances of Adullam. How appropriate, for instance, does the form
in which the Divine protection is proclaimed become, when we think of
the little band bivouacking among the cliffs, "The angel of the Lord
encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." Like his
great ancestor, he is met in his desert flight by heavenly guards, "and
he calls the name of that place Mahanaim" (that is, "two camps"), as
discerning gathered round his own feeble company the ethereal weapons of
an encircling host of the warriors of God, through whose impenetrable
ranks his foes must pierce before they can reach him. From Samson's time
we read of lions in this district (Judges xiv. 8, 9), and we may
recognise another image as suggested by their growls heard among the
ravines, and their gaunt forms prowling near the cave. "The young lions
do lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want
any good" (ver. 10).
And then he passes to earnest instructions and exhortations, which
derive appositeness from regarding them as a proclamation to his men of
the principles on which his camp is to be governed. "Come, ye children,
hearken unto me." He regards himself as charged with guiding them to
godliness: "I will teach you the fear of the Lord." With some
remembrance, perhaps, of his deception at Gath, he warns them to "keep"
their "tongues from evil" and their "lips from speaking guile." They are
not to be in love with warfare, but, even with their swords in their
hands, are to "seek peace, and pursue it." On these exhortations follow
joyous assurances of God's watchful eye fixed upon the righteous, and
His ear open to their cry; of deliverance for his suppliants, whatsoever
hardship and trouble they may have to wade through; of a guardianship
which "keepeth all the bones" of the righteous, so that neither the
blows of the foe nor the perils of the crags should break them,--all
crowned with the contrast ever present to David's mind, and having a
personal reference to his enemies and to himself:
"Evil shall slay the wicked,
And the haters of the righteous shall suffer penalty.
Jehovah redeems the life of His servants,
And no penalty shall any suffer who trust in Him."
Such were the counsels and teachings of the young leader to his little
band,--noble "general orders" from a commander at the beginning of a
campaign!
We venture to refer the twenty-seventh psalm also to this period. It is
generally supposed, indeed, by those commentators who admit its Davidic
authorship, to belong to the time of Absalom's rebellion. The main
reason for throwing it so late is the reference in ver. 4 to dwelling in
the house of the Lord and inquiring in His temple.[J] This is supposed
to require a date subsequent to David's bringing up of the ark to
Jerusalem, and placing it in a temporary sanctuary. But whilst longing
for the sanctuary is no doubt characteristic of the psalms of the later
wanderings, it is by no means necessary to suppose that in the present
case that desire, which David represents as the longing of his life, was
a desire for mere bodily presence in a material temple. Indeed, the very
language seems to forbid such an interpretation. Surely the desire for
an abode in the house of the Lord--which was his one wish, which he
longed to have continuous throughout all the days of his life, which was
to surround him with a privacy of protection in trouble, and to be as
the munitions of rocks about him--was something else than a morbid
desire for an impossible seclusion in the tabernacle,--a desire fitter
for some sickly mediæval monarch who buried his foolish head and faint
heart in a monastery than for God's Anointed. We have seen an earlier
germ of the same desire in the twenty-third psalm, the words of which
are referred to here; and the interpretation of the one is the
interpretation of the other. The psalmist breathes his longing for the
Divine fellowship, which shall be at once vision, and guidance, and
hidden life in distress, and stability, and victory, and shall break
into music of perpetual praise.
[J] "The fourth verse in its present form _must_ have been written after
the temple was built."--"The Psalms chronologically arranged," p.
68--following Ewald, in whose imperious criticism that same naked "must
have been," works wonders.
If, then, we are not obliged by the words in question to adopt the
later date, there is much in the psalm which strikingly corresponds with
the earlier, and throws beautiful illustration on the psalmist's mood at
this period. One such allusion we venture to suppose in the words (ver.
2),
"When the wicked came against me to devour my flesh,
My enemies and my foes,--they stumbled and fell;"
which have been usually taken as a mere general expression, without any
allusion to a specific event. But there was one incident in David's life
which had been forced upon his remembrance by his recent peril at
Gath--his duel with Goliath, which exactly meets the very peculiar
language here. The psalm employs the same word as the narrative, which
tells how the Philistine "arose, and came, and drew near to David." The
braggart boast, "I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and the
beasts of the fields," is echoed in the singular phrase of the psalm;
and the emphatic, rapid picture, "they stumbled and fell," is at once a
reminiscence of the hour when the stone crashed through the thick
forehead, "and he fell upon his face to the earth;" and also a reference
to an earlier triumph in Israel's history, celebrated with fierce
exultation in the wild chant whom rolls the words like a sweet morsel
under the tongue, as it tells of Sisera--
"Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay;
Between her feet he bowed, he fell;
Where he bowed, there he fell down dead."
Another autobiographical reference in the psalm has been disputed on
insufficient grounds:
"For my father and my mother forsake me,
And Jehovah takes me up." (Ver. 10.)
It is, at all events, a remarkable coincidence that the only mention of
his parents after the earliest chapters of his life falls in precisely
with this period of the history, and is such as might have suggested
these words. We read (1 Sam. xxii. 3, 4) that he once ventured all the
way from Adullam to Moab to beg an asylum from Saul's indiscriminate
fury for his father and mother, who were no doubt too old to share his
perils, as the rest of his family did. Having prepared a kindly welcome
for them, perhaps on the strength of the blood of Ruth the Moabitess in
Jesse's veins, he returned to Bethlehem, brought the old couple away,
and guarded them safely to their refuge. It is surely most natural to
suppose that the psalm is the lyrical echo of that event, and most
pathetic to conceive of the psalmist as thinking of the happy home at
Bethlehem now deserted, his brothers lurking with him among the rocks,
and his parents exiles in heathen lands. Tears fill his eyes, but he
lifts them to a Father that is never parted from him, and feels that he
is no more orphaned nor homeless.
The psalm is remarkable for the abrupt transition of feeling which
cleaves it into two parts; one (vers. 1-6) full of jubilant hope and
enthusiastic faith, the other (vers. 7-14) a lowly cry for help. There
is no need to suppose, with some critics, that we have here two
independent hymns bound together in error. He must have little knowledge
of the fluctuations of the devout life who is surprised to find so swift
a passage from confidence to conscious weakness. Whilst the usual order
in the psalms, as the usual order in good men's experience, is that
prayer for deliverance precedes praise and triumph, true communion with
God is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on God,
and realizing the mysteries of beauty in His secret place, ere it drops
to earth. The lark sings as it descends from the "privacy of glorious
light" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more
plaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps a
nobler effect of faith to begin with God and hymn the victory as if
already won, than to begin with trouble and to call for deliverance. But
with whichever we commence, the prayer of earth must include both; and
so long as we are weak, and God our strength, its elements must be
"supplication and thanksgiving." The prayer of our psalm bends round
again to its beginning, and after the plaintive cry for help breaks once
more into confidence (vers. 13, 14). The psalmist shudders as he thinks
what ruin would have befallen him if he had not trusted in God, and
leaves the unfinished sentence,--as a man looking down into some fearful
gulf starts back and covers his eyes, before he has well seen the bottom
of the abyss.
"If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!"
Then rejoicing to remember how even by his feeble trust he has been
saved, he stirs up himself to a firmer faith, in words which are
themselves an exercise of faith, as well as an incitement to it:
"Wait on Jehovah!
Courage! and let thy heart be strong!
Yea! wait on Jehovah!"
Here is the true highest type of a troubled soul's fellowship with God,
when the black fear and consciousness of weakness is inclosed in a
golden ring of happy trust. Let the name of our God be first upon our
lips, and the call to our wayward hearts to wait on Him be last, and
then we may between think of our loneliness, and feebleness, and foes,
and fears, without losing our hold of our Father's hand.
David in his rocky eyrie was joyful, because he began with God. It was a
man in real peril who said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom
shall I fear?" It was at a critical pause in his fortunes, when he knew
not yet whether Saul's malice was implacable, that he said, "Though war
should rise against me, in this will I be confident." It was in
thankfulness for the safe hiding-place among the dark caverns of the
hills that he celebrated the dwelling of the soul in God with words
coloured by his circumstances, "In the secret of His tabernacle shall
He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock." It was with Philistia at
his feet before and Saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphant
confidence was sure that "Now shall mine head be lifted up above mine
enemies round about me." It was in weakness, not expelled even by such
joyous faith, that he plaintively besought God's mercy, and laid before
His mercy-seat as the mightiest plea His own inviting words, "Seek ye My
face," and His servant's humble response, "Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
Together, these made it impossible that that Face, the beams of which
are light and salvation, should be averted. God's past comes to his lips
as a plea for a present consistent with it and with His own mighty name.
"Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my
salvation." His loneliness, his ignorance of his road, and the enemies
who watch him, and, like a later Saul, "breathe out cruelty" (see Acts
ix. 1), become to him in his believing petitions, not grounds of fear,
but arguments with God; and having thus mastered all that was
distressful in his lot, by making it all the basis of his cry for help,
he rises again to hope, and stirs up himself to lay hold on God, to be
strong and bold, because his expectation is from Him. A noble picture of
a steadfast soul; steadfast not because of absence of fears and reasons
for fear, but because of presence of God and faith in Him.
Having abandoned Adullam, by the advice of the prophet Gad, who from
this time appears to have been a companion till the end of his reign (2
Sam. xxiv. 11), and who subsequently became his biographer (1 Chron.
xxix. 29), he took refuge, as outlaws have ever been wont to do, in the
woods. In his forest retreat, somewhere among the now treeless hills of
Judah, he heard of a plundering raid made by the Philistines on one of
the unhappy border towns. The marauders had broken in upon the mirth of
the threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year's
harvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral
foes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as
he was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirred
to action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little band
bursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recaptures
the cattle which like moss troopers they were driving homewards from
the ruined farmsteads, and routs them with great slaughter. But the
cowardly townspeople of Keilah had less gratitude than fear; and the
king's banished son-in-law was too dangerous a guest, even though he was
of their own tribe, and had delivered them from the enemy. Saul, who had
not stirred from his moody seclusion to beat back invasion, summoned a
hasty muster, in the hope of catching David in the little city, like a
fox in his earth: and the cowardly citizens meditated saving their homes
by surrendering their champion. David and his six hundred saved
themselves by a rapid flight, and, as it would appear, by breaking up
into detachments. "They went whithersoever they could go" (1 Sam. xxiii.
13); whilst David, with some handful, made his way to the inhospitable
wilderness which stretches from the hills of Judah to the shores of the
Dead Sea, and skulked there in "lurking places" among the crags and
tangled underwood. With fierce perseverance "Saul sought him every day,
but God delivered him not into his hand." One breath of love, fragrant
and strength-giving, was wafted to his fainting heart, when Jonathan
found his way where Saul could not come, and the two friends met once
more. In the woodland solitudes they plighted their faith again, and the
beautiful unselfishness of Jonathan is wonderfully set forth in his
words, "Thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee;"
while an awful glimpse is given into that mystery of a godless will
consciously resisting the inevitable, when there is added, "and that
also Saul, my father, knoweth." In such resistance the king's son has no
part, for it is pointedly noticed that he returned to his house.
Treachery, and that from the men of his own tribe, again dogs David's
steps. The people of Ziph, a small place on the edge of the southern
desert, betray his haunt to Saul. The king receives the intelligence
with a burst of thanks, in which furious jealousy and perverted
religion, and a sense of utter loneliness and misery, and a strange
self-pity, are mingled most pathetically and terribly: "Blessed be ye of
the Lord, for ye have compassion on me!" He sends them away to mark down
his prey; and when they have tracked him to his lair, he follows with
his force and posts them round the hill where David and his handful
lurk. The little band try to escape, but they are surrounded and
apparently lost. At the very moment when the trap is just going to
close, a sudden messenger, "fiery red with haste," rushes into Saul's
army with news of a formidable invasion: "Haste thee and come; for the
Philistines have spread themselves upon the land!" So the eager hand,
ready to smite and crush, is plucked back; and the hour of deepest
distress is the hour of deliverance.
At some period in this lowest ebb of David's fortunes, we have one short
psalm, very simple and sad (liv.) It bears the title, "When the Ziphims
came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?" and may
probably be referred to the former of the two betrayals by the men of
Ziph. The very extremity of peril has made the psalmist still and quiet.
The sore need has shortened his prayer. He is too sure that God hears to
use many words; for it is distrust, not faith, which makes us besiege
His throne with much speaking. He is confident as ever; but one feels
that there is a certain self-restraint and air of depression over the
brief petitions, which indicate the depth of his distress and the
uneasiness of protracted anxiety. Two notes only sound from his harp:
one a plaintive cry for help; the other, thanksgiving for deliverance as
already achieved. The two are bound together by the recurrence in each
of "the name" of GOD, which is at once the source of his salvation and
the theme of his praise. We have only to read the lowly petitions to
feel that they speak of a spirit somewhat weighed down by danger, and
relaxed from the loftier mood of triumphant trust.
(1) O God, by Thy name save me,
And in Thy strength do judgment for me
(2) O God, hear my prayer,
Give ear to the words of my mouth.
(3) For strangers are risen against me,
And tyrants seek my life.
They set not God before them.
The enemies are called "strangers;" but, as we have seen in the first of
these songs of the exile, it is not necessary, therefore, to suppose
that they were not Israelites. The Ziphites were men of Judah like
himself; and there is bitter emphasis as well as a gleam of insight into
the spiritual character of the true Israel in calling them foreigners.
The other name, oppressors, or violent men, or, as we have rendered it,
tyrants, corresponds too accurately with the character of Saul in his
later years, to leave much doubt that it is pointed at him. If so, the
softening of the harsh description by the use of the plural is in
beautiful accordance with the forgiving leniency which runs through all
David's conduct to him. Hard words about Saul himself do not occur in
the psalms. His counsellors, his spies, the liars who calumniated David
to him, and for their own ends played upon his suspicious nature,--the
tools who took care that the cruel designs suggested by themselves
should be carried out, kindle David's wrath, but it scarcely ever lights
on the unhappy monarch whom he loved with all-enduring charity while he
lived, and mourned with magnificent eulogy when he died. The allusion is
made all the more probable, because of the verbal correspondence with
the narrative which records that "Saul was come out to seek his life" (1
Sam. xxiii. 15.)
A chord or two from the harp permits the mind to dwell on the thought of
the foes, and prepares for the second part of this psalm. In it
thanksgiving and confidence flow from the petitions of the former
portion. But the praise is not so jubilant, nor the trust so
victorious, as we have seen them. "The peace of God" has come in answer
to prayer, but it is somewhat subdued:
"Behold, God is my helper;
The Lord is the supporter of my life."
The foes sought his life, but, as the historical book gives the
antithesis, "Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into
his hand." The rendering of the English version, "The Lord is with them
that uphold my soul," is literally accurate, but does not convey the
meaning of the Hebrew idiom. God is not regarded as one among many
helpers, but as alone the supporter or upholder of his life. Believing
that, the psalmist, of course, believes as a consequence that his
enemies will be smitten with evil for their evil. The prophetic lip of
faith calls things that are not as though they were. In the midst of his
dangers he looks forward to songs of deliverance and glad sacrifices of
praise; and the psalm closes with words that approach the more fervid
utterances we have already heard, as if his song had raised his own
spirit above its fears:
(6) With willinghood will I sacrifice unto Thee.
I will praise Thy name for it is good.
(7) For from all distress it has delivered me.
And on my enemies will mine eye see (my desire)
The name--the revealed character of God--was the storehouse of all the
saving energies to which he appealed in verse 1. It is the theme of his
praise when the deliverance shall have come. It is almost regarded here
as equivalent to the Divine personality--it is good, _it_ has delivered
him. Thus, we may say that this brief psalm gives us as the single
thought of a devout soul in trouble, the name of the Lord, and teaches
by its simple pathos how the contemplation of God as He has made Himself
known, should underlie every cry for help and crown every thanksgiving;
whilst it may assure us that whosoever seeks for the salvation of that
mighty name may, even in the midst of trouble, rejoice as in an
accomplished deliverance. And all such thoughts should be held with a
faith at least as firm as the ancient psalmist's, by us to whom the
"name" of the Lord is "declared" by Him who is the full revelation of
God, and the storehouse of all blessings and help to his "brethren."
(Heb. ii. 12.)
A little plain of some mile or so in breadth slopes gently down towards
the Dead Sea about the centre of its western shore. It is girdled round
by savage cliffs, which, on the northern side, jut out in a bold
headland to the water's edge. At either extremity is a stream flowing
down a deep glen choked with luxurious vegetation; great fig-trees,
canes, and maiden-hair ferns covering the rocks. High up on the hills
forming its western boundary a fountain sparkles into light, and falls
to the flat below in long slender threads. Some grey weathered stones
mark the site of a city that was old when Abraham wandered in the land.
Traces of the palm forests which, as its name indicates, were cleared
for its site (Hazezon Tamar, The palm-tree clearing) have been found,
encrusted with limestone, in the warm, damp gullies, and ruined terraces
for vineyards can be traced on the bare hill-sides. But the fertility of
David's time is gone, and the precious streams nourish only a jungle
haunted by leopard and ibex. This is the fountain and plain of Engedi
(the fount of the wild goat), a spot which wants but industry and care
to make it a little paradise. Here David fled from the neighbouring
wilderness, attracted no doubt by the safety of the deep gorges and
rugged hills, as well as by the abundance of water in the fountain and
the streams. The picturesque and touching episode of his meeting with
Saul has made the place for ever memorable. There are many excavations
in the rocks about the fountain, which may have been the cave--black as
night to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare of
sunlight upon limestone, but holding a glimmering twilight to one
looking outwards with eyes accustomed to the gloom--in the innermost
recesses of which David lay hid while Saul tarried in its mouth. The
narrative gives a graphic picture of the hurried colloquy among the
little band, when summary revenge was thus unexpectedly put within their
grasp. The fierce retainers whispered their suggestion that it would be
"tempting providence" to let such an opportunity escape; but the nobler
nature of David knows no personal animosity, and in these earliest days
is flecked by no cruelty nor lust of blood. He cannot, however, resist
the temptation of showing his power and almost parading his forbearance
by stealing through the darkness and cutting away the end of Saul's long
robe. It was little compared with what he could as easily have
done--smite him to the heart as he crouched there defenceless. But it
was a coarse practical jest, conveying a rude insult, and the quickly
returning nobleness of his nature made him ashamed of it, as soon as he
had clambered back with his trophy. He felt that the sanctity of Saul's
office as the anointed of the Lord should have saved him from the gibe.
The king goes his way all unawares, and, as it would seem, had not
regained his men, when David, leaving his band (very much out of temper
no doubt at his foolish nicety), yields to a gush of ancient friendship
and calls loudly after him, risking discovery and capture in his
generous emotion. The pathetic conversation which ensued is eminently
characteristic of both men, so tragically connected and born to work woe
to one another. David's remonstrance (1 Sam. xxiv. 9-15) is full of
nobleness, of wounded affection surviving still, of conscious rectitude,
of solemn devout appeal to the judgment of God. He has no words of
reproach for Saul, no weak upbraidings, no sullen anger, no repaying
hate with hate. He almost pleads with the unhappy king, and yet there is
nothing undignified or feeble in his tone. The whole is full of
correspondences, often of verbal identity, with the psalms which we
assign to this period. The calumnies which he so often complains of in
these are the subject of his first words to Saul, whom he regards as
having had his heart poisoned by lies: "Wherefore hearest thou men's
words, saying, Behold! David seeketh thy hurt." He asserts absolute
innocence of anything that warranted the king's hostility, just as he
does so decisively in the psalms. "There is neither evil nor
transgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee." As in
them he so often compares himself to some wild creature pursued like the
goats in the cliffs of Engedi, so he tells Saul, "Thou huntest my life
to take it." And his appeal from earth's slanders, and misconceptions,
and cruelties, to the perfect tribunal of God, is couched in language,
every clause of which may be found in his psalms. "The Lord, therefore,
be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause,
and deliver me out of thy hand."
The unhappy Saul again breaks into a passion of tears. With that sudden
flashing out into vehement emotion so characteristic of him, and so
significant of his enfeebled self-control, he recognises David's
generous forbearance and its contrast to his own conduct. For a moment,
at all events, he sees, as by a lightning flash, the mad hopelessness of
the black road he is treading in resisting the decree that has made his
rival king--and he binds him by an oath to spare his house when he sits
on the throne. The picture moves awful thoughts and gentle pity for the
poor scathed soul writhing in its hopelessness and dwelling in a great
solitude of fear, but out of which stray gleams of ancient nobleness
still break;--and so the doomed man goes back to his gloomy seclusion at
Gibeah, and David to the free life of the mountains and the wilderness.