The King and the Fugitive, Part 1
After defeating the Giant, the warrior-shepherd quickly found his place in Saul's army, but all was not well in Saul's Israel.
Covered in blood and sweat, holding the head of the defeated giant, the shepherd-warrior stood before king.
“Whose son are you?” Saul asked.
“I am the son of your servant Jesse, from Bethlehem.”
“Very well,” replied the king. “I’ll send a messenger to tell your father that you’re now a part of the royal household. Jonathan, my son, will show you to your tent.”
As soon as David met Jonathan, they both knew that they would become the best of friends1. 1 Samuel 18:3 says, “Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” Modern degenerates progressives like to pretend that there was something homosexual about this relationship, but this just shows that they don’t understand the nature of masculine friendship. To have a true friend, even a few times during a lifetime, is a great blessing from God, and we should encourage our sons to seek out godly friendships.
Jonathan showed David his tent. He looked David up and down, noting that he was dressed in simple shepherd’s clothes. Looking around the tent, he saw that the only armor David had was the huge armor that he had taken from Goliath. Instantly, Jonathan grasped at the opportunity to show David the kind of friend he would be2.
“You’re going to be a warrior in my father’s army,” he said, “and you need to look the part and have the right tools.” Then he proceeded to give David his own robe, armor, sword, bow, and belt. It fit much better than Saul’s armor that David had tested before the battle.
Once David was all kitted up, Jonathan stepped back and took a good look at him. “Now you look the part. Tomorrow, we start the work.”
Warlord
And that’s exactly what happened. David went to war, and God blessed all his efforts. The author of Samuel says, “David went out, and was successful wherever Saul sent him” (1 Sam. 18:5). As a result, David quickly rose through the ranks. Before long, he was a general in Saul’s army. Not only was this pleasing to Saul because of all the battles being won, but both the common people and Saul’s court all loved it. God gave David favor wherever he went.
But with success comes danger.
This danger did not come to David on the battlefield, but from Saul himself. After a particularly spectacular raid, Saul was leading his army back to their base camp, which may have at that point been in the vicinity of Jerusalem3, and as they passed through the towns along the way, women came out to cheer them on and celebrate the victory. As the procession would pass by, the women started to sing and dance and play the tambourine. Here’s the chant that they sang as Saul and David led Saul’s army through the towns:
Saul has struck down his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.1 Samuel 18:7
Saul heard these songs and had a choice to make. He could have recognized that as the supreme commander of Saul’s army, the man who did his dirty work for him, of course David would have killed more enemies than he had and be glad that he had such a formidable warrior on his side, or he could take the cheer as an insult. The more he thought about it, the more frustrated and angrier he became until he finally convinced himself that by winning Saul’s wars for him, David had become a threat.
“They give David credit for tens of thousands,” he grumbled to himself, “and I only get praised for thousands. What’s the next thing that will happen? What more can David have than the kingdom itself?” (1 Sam. 18:8).
A Flashback
Saul’s response to the women’s song of triumph seems unreasonable from the outside. But think about your own behavior. When you see someone being praised for a task you have also worked on, are you happy for them? How often do you feel that spark of jealousy enter your heart? Saul’s jealousy is a typical response that most of us struggle with. But to understand the severity of what must have been going on in Saul’s head, we need to understand that there were other factors at play. Saul already felt like he needed to watch his back.
Some years earlier, God had used the judge, Samuel—the same Samuel who had anointed Saul as king—to give Saul an order regarding a neighboring nation called the Amalekites. The Amalekites were one of the nations between Egypt and Canaan, and as Israel was fleeing from Egypt, instead of letting them pass by in peace, the Amalekites had met them along the way and attacked them.
Israel had another warlord at that time, a man named Joshua. Joshua would eventually lead the armies of Israel into Canaan to claim their inheritance, but that was many years later. When the Amalekites attacked, Joshua led the army out to fight them. Moses stood on the top of a nearby hill during the battle, raising his staff over the battle as a standard.
This staff represented God’s presence, fighting for and with Israel. As long as Moses held the staff over his head, Joshua’s army had the advantage, but eventually Moses began to grow tired. Finally, he could not hold the staff up anymore, and his arms began to sag. As Moses lowered his arms to rest, the Amalekites rallied and began to take the advantage in the battle. Moses’ brother, Aaron, and a man named Hur saw what was happening and grabbed his hands to hold them up while Moses sat on a rock and rested4.
When Aaron and Hur grabbed Moses hands the thrust them back into the sky the Israelite warriors saw this and knew that God was still with them. Their fighting spirit was restored, and Joshua once again regained the advantage, leading Israel to defeat the Amalekite army. After the battle, God spoke to Moses and told him to write a prophecy into the book of the law and to tell it to Joshua, so he would know it. God said, “I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”
It doesn’t pay to mess with God’s people.
Finally, the time had come, and Samuel delivered the Lord’s message to Saul.
“Thus says the Lord of hosts,” said Samuel, “I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote all that they have to destruction. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey5” (1 Sam. 15:1-3).
And Saul dutifully went out and obeyed God’s commandment—just as far as it was convenient for him to do so.
The day after the battle, Samuel went to meet with Saul. He found him standing beside a monument he erected to commemorate his own greatness. As he approached, Samuel could hear the sound of cattle bleating and mooing. Saul approached Samuel, arms spread wide in all his kingly pride and said, “God bless you Samuel. I have performed the commandment of the Lord” (1 Sam. 15:13).
But God had told Samuel the night before that this was not true, and even if he hadn’t, Samuels own ears would have told him the truth.
“Oh you did, did you? Then what is all this noise I hear?”
“Oh that,” said Saul. “That’s nothing. We saved some of the best animals from the Amalekites to offer as sacrifices to the Lord your God, but we destroyed everything else.”
“Stop!” Samuel shouted in Saul’s face. “I’m going to tell you what God told me last night while I was trying to sleep.”
“Tell me.”
“God said, that even though you were little in your own eyes, he raised you up and made you king of Israel. And now he has given you a task. That task was to go and fight and completely destroy the evil Amalekites, leaving nothing alive. But you didn’t obey the voice of God. Instead in your greed you pounced on the spoils and instead of obeying God, you just did what seemed right to you.”
“No,” Saul said. “I did what God commanded me to do. I captured the king of the Amalekites and destroyed them completely. The people just saved a little bit of the spoil for offering sacrifices.”
“Do you think God cares about sacrifices?” Samuel raged. “God doesn’t care about sacrifices nearly as much as he does about obedience! It is better to obey than to offer a sacrifice. Rebelling against God is just as bad as witchcraft, and to presume against his good will is just as bad as offering your sacrifices to idols.”
Then Samuel said the words that would have Saul looking over his back for the rest of his life.
“Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king” (1 Sam. 22-23).
The Spirit of Jealousy
That conversation with Samuel was still ringing in Saul’s ears all these years later, and that night, as he was trying to sleep, God sent a spirit to torment him in his memory. Over and over he heard the words, “Saul has struck down thousands, but David tens of thousands,” and “because you have rejected the Lord, he has rejected you as king.” As these words pounded in his head he began to shout at the walls and rave, pulling at his own hair, stumbling about hit tent, and crying in pain.
If you think back to our earlier story about the life of David, you will remember that for a time, David had served as Saul’s personal therapy musician for times then when Saul was oppressed by the spirits that God used to punish him.
“Saul is being tormented by demons,” one of his orderlies said to a servant. “Quick, go get David, and tell him to bring his harp. Maybe he can calm the spirits that are oppressing our king.”
David came running as soon as he heard and sat leaning against one of the tent poles where he had been accustomed to play for the king in the past. But this time, as soon as he heard the music start, the king clutched his head and fell to his knees.
“There he is” he raved, “the man who would be king. Do you think you can steal my kingdom here in my own tent, with my own servants?”
Shouting incoherently, Saul jumped to his feet, snatched his spear from the servant held it for him, and launched it straight at David’s heart.
This is part of why my middle name is Jonathan. My dad thought it would be a great joke. He also didn’t much appreciate everyone yelling, “Atta boy Leroy,” every time he hit a home run playing softball, so he thought he would spare me the indignity of being a true junior.
Jonathan is a great example of the principle that while we are certainly formed by our environment, we are not automatically doomed to repeat our parents’ mistakes. Jonathan would never be king because of his father’s actions, but the Bible literally never has a single bad word to say about him. He was a mighty warrior, and a great friend to David.
It would not have been in Jerusalem, because at that time the city was under the control of the Jebusites.
If getting tired from holding a stick over your head for a while seems far-fetched to you, ask me about cherry-pickers in basic training sometime.
This response seems overly harsh to modern ears, but it really isn’t. For one thing, God is God, and he gets to righteously make decisions that would be reprehensible if a person or country made the same decision on its own. But there’s also another factor to consider, one that plays directly into the historical aspects of the story. God is patient, but he is also just. Genesis 14 seems to indicate that at least part of the reason God sent Israel to Egypt for over 400 years might have been that there were still people in Canaan who feared God, and he was removing his people to protect them from warring with Israel until such a time as there were no righteous people left in Canaan at all.
God told Abraham, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years…and they shall come back in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:13&16). If my understanding of this passage is correct, then by the time that Samuel gave this command to Saul, there was not a single righteous person left to be saved in all of Amalek.