The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel Part 16

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 n.o.blest of men stained by the meanness of a false insinuation; David, the anointed of the G.o.d 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 ma.s.sacre, put to death every man, woman, child of the Amalekites and other tribes whom he now attacked. Such ma.s.sacres were indeed quite common in Eastern warfare. The Bulgarian and other ma.s.sacres 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 circ.u.mstances 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 embarra.s.sment 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 embarra.s.sing. 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 att.i.tude. But this was a wretched consolation. David was entangled so that he could neither advance nor retreat. Before him was G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d." 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 s.h.i.+ning before men with a clear, unclouded l.u.s.tre. Even amid his spiritual backsliding and sad distrust of G.o.d, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d every difficulty and trial, with the honest, immovable determination to do simply and solely what might seem to be agreeable to G.o.d's will? Have we not all cause to mourn over conduct that has dishonoured G.o.d 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 G.o.d--good Lord, deliver us.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

_SAUL AT ENDOR._

1 SAMUEL xxviii. 3-25.

For a considerable time Saul had been drifting along like a crippled vessel at sea, a melancholy example of a man forsaken of G.o.d. But as his decisive encounter with the Philistines drew on, the state of helplessness to which he had been reduced became more apparent than ever. He had sagacity enough to perceive that the expedition which the Philistines were now leading against him was the most formidable that had ever taken place in his day. It was no ordinary battle that was to be fought; it was one that would decide the fate of the country. The magnitude of the expedition on his part is apparent from an expression in the fourth verse--"Saul gathered all Israel together." The place of encounter was not any of the old battle-fields with the Philistines.

Usually the engagements had taken place in some of the valleys that ran down from the territories of Dan, or Benjamin, or Judah into the Philistine plain, or on the heights above these. But such places were comparatively contracted, and did not afford scope for great bodies of troops. This time the Philistines chose a wider and more commanding battlefield. Advancing northwards along their own maritime plain, and beyond it along the plain of Sharon, they turned eastwards into the great plain of Esdraelon or Jezreel, and occupied the northern side of the plain. The troops of Saul were encamped on the southern side, occupying the northern slope of Mount Gilboa. There the two armies faced each other, the wide plain stretching between.

It was a painful moment for Saul when he got his first view of the Philistine host, for the sight of it filled him with consternation. It would appear to have surpa.s.sed that of Israel very greatly in numbers, in resources, as it certainly did in its confident spirit. Yet, if Saul had been a man of faith, none of these things would have moved him. Was it not in that very neighbourhood that Barak, with his hasty levies, had inflicted a signal defeat on the Canaanites? And was it not in that very plain that the hosts of Midian lay encamped in the days of Gideon, when the barley cake rolling into their camp overturned and terrified the host, and a complete discomfiture followed? Why should not the Lord work as great a deliverance now? If G.o.d was with them, He was more than all that could be against them. Might not this be another of the days foretold by Moses, when one should chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight?

Yes, _if_ G.o.d was with them. All turned upon that _if_. And Saul felt that G.o.d was not with them, and that they could not count on any such deliverance as, in better times, had been vouchsafed to their fathers.

And why, O Saul, when you felt thus, did you not humble yourself before G.o.d, confess all your sins, and implore Him to show you mercy? Why did you not cry, "Return, O Lord, how long? And let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants"? Would you have found G.o.d inexorable? Would His ear have been heavy that it could not hear? Don't you remember how Moses said that when Israel, in sore bondage, should cry humbly to G.o.d, the Lord would hear his cry, and have mercy on him? Why, O Saul, do you not fall in the dust before Him?

Somehow Saul felt that he could not. Among other effects of sin and rebellion, one of the worst is a stiffening of the soul, making it hard and rigid, so that it cannot bend, it cannot melt, it cannot change its course. The long career of wilfulness that Saul had followed had produced in him this stiffening effect; his spirit was hardened in its own ways, and incapable of all exercise of contrition or humiliation, or anything essentially different from the course he had been following.

There are times in the life of a deeply afflicted woman when the best thing she could do would be to weep, but that is just the thing she cannot do. There are times when the best thing an inveterate sinner could do would be to fling himself before G.o.d and sob for mercy, but fling himself before G.o.d and sob he cannot. Saul was incapable of that exercise of soul which would have saved him and his people. Most terrible effect of cherished sin! It dries up the fountains of contrition and they will not flow. It stiffens the knees and they will not bend. It paralyses the voice and it will not cry. It blinds the eyes and they see not the Saviour. It closes the ears and the voice of mercy is unheard. It drives the distressed one to wells without water, to refuges of lies, to trees twice dead, to physicians who have no medicines, to G.o.ds who have no salvation; all he feels is that his case is desperate, and yet somewhere or other he must have help!

Saul did not neglect the outward means by which in other days G.o.d had been accustomed to direct the nation. He tried every authorized way he could think of for getting guidance from above. He believed in a heavenly power, and he asked its guidance and its help. But G.o.d took no notice of him. He answered him neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. Men, though in heart rebellious against G.o.d's will, will go through a great deal of mechanical service in the hope of securing His favour. It is not their muscles that get stiffened, but their souls.

What a strange conception they must have of G.o.d when they fancy that mere external services will please Him! How little Saul knew of G.o.d when he supposed that, overlooking all the rebellion of his heart, G.o.d would respond to a mechanical effort or efforts to communicate with Him! Don't you know, O Saul, that your iniquities have separated between you and your G.o.d, and your sins have hid His face from you that He will not hear? Nothing will have the least effect on Him till you own your sin.

"I will go and return unto My place, until they acknowledge their offence and seek My face." And this is just what you will not, cannot do! How infinitely precious would one tear of genuine repentance have been in that dark hour! It would have saved thousands of the Israelites from a b.l.o.o.d.y death; it would have saved the nation from defeat and humiliation; it would have removed the obstacle to fellows.h.i.+p with the Hope of Israel, who would have stood true to His ancient character,--"the Saviour thereof in time of trouble."

But Saul's day of grace was over, and accordingly we find him driven to the most humbling expedient to which a man can stoop--seeking counsel from a quarter against which, in his more prosperous days, he had directed his special energies, as a superst.i.tious, demoralizing agency.

He had been most zealous in exterminating a cla.s.s of persons, abounding in Eastern countries, who pretend to know the secrets of the future, and to have access to the inhabitants of the unseen world. Little could he have dreamt in those days of fiery zeal that a time would come when he would rejoice to learn that one poor wretch had escaped the vigilance of his officers, and still carried on, or pretended to carry on, a nefarious traffic with the realms of the departed! It shows how little man is acquainted with the inner feelings of other men--how little he knows even himself. Doubtless he thought, in the days of exterminating zeal, that it was sheer folly and drivelling superst.i.tion that encouraged these sorcerers, and that by clearing them away he would be ridding the land of a ma.s.s of rubbish that could be of service to no one. He did not consider that there are times of wretchedness and despair when the soul that knows not G.o.d will seek counsel even of men with a familiar spirit--he little dreamt that such would be the case with himself. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" he would have asked with great indignation in those early days, if it had been insinuated that he would ever be tempted to resort to such counsellors. "What better could I ever be of anything they could tell me? Surely it would be wiser to meet any conceivable danger full in the face than to seek after such counsel as they could give!" He did not consider that when man's spirit is overwhelmed within him, and his craving for help is like the pa.s.sion of a madman, he will clutch like a drowning man at a straw, he will even resort to a woman with a familiar spirit, if, peradventure, some hint can be got to extricate him from his misery.

But to this complexion it came at last. With dreadful sacrifice of self-respect, Saul had to ask his advisers to seek out for him a woman of this description. They were able to tell him of such a woman residing at Endor, about ten miles from where they were. With two attendants he set out after nightfall, disguised, and found her. Naturally, she was afraid to do anything in the way of business in the face of such measures as the king had taken against all of her craft, nor would she stir until she had got a solemn promise that she would not be molested in any way. Then, when all was ready, she asked whom she should call up.

"Call up Samuel," said Saul. To the great astonishment of the woman herself, she sees Samuel rising up. A shriek from her indicates that she is as much astonished and for the moment frightened as anyone can be.

Evidently she did not expect such an apparition. The effect was much too great for the cause. She sees that in this apparition a power is concerned much beyond what she can wield. Instinctively she apprehends that the only man of importance enough to receive such a supernatural visit must be the head of the nation. "Why did you deceive me?" she said, "for thou art Saul." "Never mind that," is virtually Saul's reply; "but tell me what you have seen." The Revised Version gives her answer better than the older one--"I saw a G.o.d arise out of the earth." "What is his appearance?" earnestly asks Saul. "He is an old man, and he is covered with a mantle." And Saul sees that it is really Samuel.

But what was it that really happened, and how did it come about? That the woman was able, even if she really had the aid of evil spirits, to bring Samuel into Saul's presence we cannot believe. Nor could she believe it herself. If Samuel really appeared--and the narrative a.s.sumes that he did--it must have been by a direct miracle, G.o.d supernaturally clothing his spirit in something like its old form, and bringing him back to earth to speak to Saul. In judgment it seemed good to G.o.d to let Saul have his desire, and to give him a real interview with Samuel. "He gave him his request, but sent leanness to his soul." So far from having his fears allayed and his burden removed, Saul was made to see from Samuel's communication that there was nothing but ruin before him; and he must have gone back to the painful duty of the morrow staggering under a load heavier than before.

Samuel begins the conversation; and he does so by reproaching Saul for having disquieted him, and brought him back from his peaceful home above to mingle again in the strife and turmoil of human things. Nothing can exceed the haggard and weird desolation of Saul's answer. "I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and G.o.d is departed from me and answereth me no more, neither by prophets nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do." Was ever a king in such a plight? Who would have thought, when Samuel and Saul first came together, and Saul listened so respectfully to the prophet counselling him concerning the kingdom, that their last meeting should be like this? In all Saul's statement there is no word that carries such a load of meaning and of despair as this--"G.o.d is departed from me." It is the token of universal confusion and calamity. And Saul felt it, and as no one understood these things like Samuel, he had sought Samuel to counsel his wayward son, to tell him what to do.

It is not every sinner that makes the discovery in this life what awful results follow when G.o.d is departed from him. But if the discovery does not dawn on one in this life, it will come on him with overwhelming force in the life to come. Men little think what they are preparing for themselves when they say to G.o.d, "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways." The service of G.o.d is irksome; the restraints of G.o.d's law are distressing; they like a free life, freedom to please themselves. And so they part company with G.o.d. The form of Divine service may be kept up or it may not: but G.o.d is not their G.o.d, and G.o.d's will is not their rule. They have left G.o.d's ways, they have followed their own. And when conscience has sometimes given them a twinge, when G.o.d has reminded them by the silent monitor of His claims, their answer has been, Let us alone, what have we to do with Thee?

Depart from us, leave us in peace. Ah! how little have you considered that the most awful thing that could happen to you is just for G.o.d to depart from you! If we could conceive the earth a sensitive being, and somehow to get a dislike for the sun, and to pray the sun to depart from her, how awful would be the fulfilment! Losing all the genial influences that brighten her surface, that cover her face with beauty and enrich her soil with abundance, all the foul and slimy creatures of darkness would creep out, all the noxious influences of dissolution and death would riot in their terrible freedom! And is not this but a poor faint picture of man forsaken by G.o.d! O sinner, if ever thy wish should be fulfilled, how wilt thou curse the day in which thou didst utter it!

When vile l.u.s.ts rise to uncontrollable authority--when those whom you love turn hopelessly wicked, when you find yourselves joyless, helpless, hopeless, when you try to repent and cannot repent, when you try to pray and cannot pray, when you try to be pure and cannot be pure--what a terrible calamity you will then feel it that G.o.d is departed from you!

Trifle not, O man, with thy relation to G.o.d; and let not thy history be such that it shall have to be written in the words of the prophet--"But they rebelled and vexed His Holy Spirit; therefore He was turned to be their enemy and He fought against them" (Isaiah lxiii. 10).

There was no comfort for Saul in Samuel's reply, but much the contrary.

Why should he have asked advice of the Lord's servant, when he owned that he was forsaken by the Lord Himself? What could the servant do for him if the Master was become his enemy? What can a priest or a minister do for any man if G.o.d has turned His face away from him? Can he make G.o.d deny Himself, and become favourable to one who has scorned or sinned away His Holy Spirit? Saul was experiencing no more than he had just reason to expect since that fatal day when he had first deliberately set up his own will above G.o.d's will in the affair of Amalek. In the course which he began then, he had persistently continued, and G.o.d was now just executing the threatenings which Saul had braved. And next day would witness the last of his sad history. The Lord would deliver Israel into the hands of the Philistines; in the collision of the armies he and his sons would be slain; disaster to his arms, death to himself, and destruction to his dynasty would all come together on that miserable day.

It is no wonder that Saul was utterly prostrated: "He fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night." He could not have expected that the interview with Samuel would be a pleasant one, but he never imagined that it would announce such awful calamities. Have you not known sometimes the terrible sensation when you had heard there was something wrong with some of your friends, and on going to inquire, discovered that the calamity was infinitely worse than you had ever dreamt of? A momentary paralysis comes over one; you are stunned and made helpless by the tidings. We may even be tempted to think that surely Samuel was too hard on Saul; might he not have tempered his awful message by some qualifying word of hope and mercy? The answer is, Samuel spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We are all p.r.o.ne to the thought that when evil men get their doom there will surely be something to modify or mitigate its rigour. Samuel's words to Saul indicate no such relaxation. Moral law will vindicate itself as natural law vindicates itself--"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

The last incident in the chapter is interesting and pleasing. We might have thought that such a calling as that followed by the witch of Endor would have destroyed all the humanities in her nature; that she would have looked on the king's distress with a cold, stoical eye, and that her only concern would be to obtain for herself a fee adapted to the occasion. But she shows much of the woman left in her after all. When she rehea.r.s.es her service, and the peril of her life at which it has been rendered, to prepare the way for her asking a favour, the favour which she does ask is not for herself at all,--it is on Saul's own behalf, that she might be permitted the honour of preparing for him a meal. Saul's mind is too much occupied and too much agitated to care for anything of the kind. Still prostrate on the ground he says, "I will not eat." Men overwhelmed by calamity hate to eat, they are too excited to experience hunger. It was only when his servants, thinking how much he had gone through already, how much more he had to go through on the morrow, and how utterly unfit his exhausted body was for the strain--it was then only that he yielded to the request of the woman. And the woman showed that, for all her sinister business, she was equal to the occasion of entertaining a king. The "fat calf in the house"

corresponded to the "fatted calf" in the parable of the prodigal son. It was not the custom even in families of the richer cla.s.s to eat meat at ordinary meals; it was reserved for feasts and extraordinary occasions; and in order to be ready for any emergency a calf was kept close to the house, whose flesh, from the delicate way in which it was reared and fed, was tender enough to be served even at so hasty a meal. With cakes of unleavened bread, this dish could be presented very rapidly, and, unlike the hasty meals which are common among us, was really a more substantial and nouris.h.i.+ng entertainment than ordinary. It is touching to mark these traces of womanly feeling in this unhappy being, reminding us of the redeeming features of Rahab the harlot. What effect the whole transaction had on the woman we are not told, and it would be vain to conjecture.

And now Saul retraces his dark and dreary way southward to the heights of Gilboa. We can hardly exaggerate his miserable condition. He had much to think of, and he would have needed a clear, unclouded mind. We can think of him only as miserably distracted, and unable to let his mind settle on anything. It would have needed his utmost resources to arrange for the battle of to-morrow, a battle in which he knew that defeat was coming, but which he might endeavour, nevertheless, to make as little disastrous as possible. Moreover, he knew it was to be the last day of his life, and troubled thoughts could not but steal in on him as to what should happen when he stood before G.o.d. No doubt, too, there were many sad thoughts about his sons, who were to be involved in the same fate as himself. Was there no way of saving any of them? The arrangement of his temporal effects, too, would claim attention, for, restless and excitable as he had been, it was not likely that his private affairs would be in very good order. Anon his thoughts might wander back to his first interview with Samuel, and bitter remorse would send its pang through him as he thought how differently he might have left the kingdom if he had faithfully followed the counsels of the prophet. Possibly amid all these gloomy thoughts one thought of a brighter order might steal into his mind--how thoroughly David, who would come to the throne after him, would retrieve his errors and restore prosperity, and make the kingdom what it had never been under him, a model kingdom, worthy to shadow forth the glories of Messiah's coming reign. Poor distracted man, he was little fitted either to fight a battle with the Philistines or to encounter the last enemy on his own account. What a lesson to be prepared beforehand! On a deathbed, especially a sudden one, distractions can hardly fail to visit us--this thing and the other thing needing to be arranged and thought of. Happy they who at such a moment can say, "I am now ready to depart." "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord G.o.d of truth."

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

_DAVID AT ZIKLAG._

1 SAMUEL x.x.x.

After David had received from King Achish the appointment of captain of his body guard, he had with his troops accompanied the Philistine army, pa.s.sing along the maritime plain to the very end of their journey--to the spot selected for battle, close to "the fountain which is in Jezreel." It seems to have been only after the whole Philistine host were ranged in battle array that the presence of David and his men, who remained in the rear to protect the king, arrested the attention of the lords of the Philistines, and on their remonstrance they were sent away.

It is probable that David's return to Ziklag, and the expedition in which he had to engage to recover his wives and his property, took place at or about the very time when Saul made his journey to Endor, and when the fatal battle of Gilboa was raging. We have seen that though David never, like Saul, threw off the authority of G.o.d, he had been following ways of his own, ways of deceit and unfaithfulness. He too had been exposing himself to the displeasure of G.o.d, and on him, as on Saul, some retribution behoved to fall. But in the two cases we see the difference between judgment and chastis.e.m.e.nt. In the case of Saul it was judgment that came down; his life and his career were terminated avowedly as the punishment of his offence. In the case of David the rod was lifted to correct, not to destroy; to bring him back, not to drive him for ever away; to fit him for service, not to cut him asunder, or appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There is every reason to believe that the awful disaster that befell David on his return to Ziklag was the means of restoring him to a trustful and truthful frame.

It appears from the chapter now before us that, in the absence of David and his troop, severe reprisals had been taken by the Amalekites for the defeat and utter destruction which they had lately inflicted on a portion of their tribe. We must remember that the Amalekites were a widely dispersed people, consisting of many tribes, each living separately from the rest, but so related that in any emergency they would readily come to one another's help. News of the extermination of the tribes whom David had attacked, and whom he had utterly destroyed lest any of them should bring word to Achish of his real employment, had been brought to their neighbours; and these neighbours determined to take revenge for the slaughter of their kinsmen. The opportunity of David's absence was taken for invading Ziklag, for which purpose a large and well-equipped expedition had been got together; and as they met with no opposition, they carried everything before them. Happily, however, as they found no enemies they did not draw the sword; they counted it better policy to carry off all that could be transported, so as to make use of the goods, and sell the women and children into slavery, and as they had a great mult.i.tude of beasts of burden with them (ver. 17) there could be no difficulty in carrying out this plan. It seems very strange that David should have left Ziklag apparently without the protection of a single soldier; but what seems to us folly had all the effect of consummate wisdom in the end; the pa.s.sions of the Amalekites were not excited by opposition or by bloodshed; their destructive propensities were satisfied with destroying the town of Ziklag, and every person and thing that could be removed was carried away unhurt. But for days to come David could not know that their expedition had been conducted in this unusually peaceful way; his imagination and his fears would picture far darker scenes.

It must have been an awful moment to David--hardly less so than to Saul when he saw the host of the Philistines near Jezreel--to reach what had been recently so peaceful a home and find it a ma.s.s of smoking ruins. If he had been disposed to congratulate himself on the success of the policy which had dictated his escape from the land of Judah, and his settling at Ziklag under protection of King Achish, how in one moment must the rottenness of the whole plan have flashed upon him, and how awed must he have been at the proof now so clearly afforded that the whole arrangement had been frowned on by the G.o.d of heaven! What an agony of suspense and distress he must have been in till more definite news could be obtained; and what a burst of despair must have been heard through the camp when it became known to his followers that the worst that could be conceived had happened--that their houses were all destroyed, their property seized, and their wives and children carried off, to be disgraced, or sold, or butchered, as might suit the fancy of their masters! And then, that remorseless ma.s.sacre that they had lately inflicted on the kinsmen of their invaders, how likely it would be to exasperate their pa.s.sions against them! What mercy would they show whose neighbours had received no mercy? What a dreadful fate would these helpless women and children be now experiencing!

It was probably one of the bitterest of the many bitter hours that David ever spent. First there was the natural feeling of disappointment, after a long and weary march, when the comforts of home had been so eagerly looked forward to, and each man seemed already in the embrace of his family, to find home utterly obliterated, and its place marked by blackened ruins. Then there was the far more intense pang to every affectionate heart, caused by the carrying off of the members of their families; this, it appears, was the predominant feeling of the camp: "the soul of the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters." And somehow David was the person blamed, partly perhaps through that hasty but unjust feeling that blames the leader of an expedition for all the mishaps attending it, and partly also, it may be, because Ziklag had been left utterly undefended. "What business had he to march us all at the heels of these uncirc.u.mcised Philistines, as if we ought to make common cause with them, only to march us back again just as we came, to gain nothing there and to lose everything here!" To all this was added a further element of excitement: it was not merely calamities known and seen that worked in the minds of the people; the gloom of dreaded but uncertain horrors helped to excite them still more.

Imagination would quickly supply the place of evidence in picturing the situation of their wives and children. The feelings of the troops were so fearfully excited against David that they spoke of stoning him. The very men that had lately approached him with the beautiful salutation, "Peace, peace be to thee, and peace be to thine helpers, for thy G.o.d helpeth thee," now spoke of stoning him. How like the spirit and the conduct of their descendants a thousand years later, shouting at one time, "Hosanna to the Son of David," and but a few days after, "Crucify Him, crucify Him." The state of David's feelings must have been all the more terrible for the uneasy conscience he had in the matter, for he had too much cause to feel that the dissembling policy which he had been pursuing had caused another ma.s.sacre, more frightful than that of the priests after his visit to n.o.b.

It is probable that at this awful moment the mind of David was visited by a blessed influence from above. The wail of woe that spread through his camp, and the dismal ruins that covered the site of his recent home, seem to have spoken to him in that tone of rebuke which the words of the prophet afterwards conveyed, "Thou art the man!" Under great excitement the mind works with great rapidity, and pa.s.ses almost with the speed of lightning from one mood to another. It is quite possible that under the same electric shock, as we may call it, that brought David to a sense of his sin he was guided back to his former confidence in the mercy and grace of his covenant G.o.d. In one instant, we may believe, the miserable hollowness of all those carnal devices in which he had been trusting would flash upon his mind, and G.o.d--his own loving Father and covenant G.o.d--would appear waiting to be gracious and longing for his return. And now the prodigal son is in his Father's arms, weeping, sobbing, confessing, but at the same time feeling the luxury of forgiveness, rejoicing, trusting and delighting in His protection and blessing.

It may indeed be objected that we are proceeding too much on mere imagination in supposing that David's return to a condition of holy trust in G.o.d was effected in this rapid way. The view may be wrong, and we do not insist on it. What we found on is the very short interval between his last act of dissimulation in professing to desire to accompany Achish to battle, and his manifest restoration to the spirit of trust, evinced in the words, applied to him when the people spoke of stoning him, "But David strengthened himself in the Lord his G.o.d" (ver.

6). These words show that he has got back to the true track at last, and from that moment prosperity returns. What a blessed thing it was for him that in that hour of utmost need he was able to derive strength from the thought of G.o.d,--able to think of the Most High as watching him with interest, and still ready to deliver him!

It was a somewhat similar incident, though not preceded by any such previous backsliding--a similar manifestation of the magical power of trust--that took place in the life of a more modern David, one who in serving G.o.d and doing good to man had to encounter a life of wandering, privation, and danger seldom surpa.s.sed--the African missionary and explorer, David Livingstone. In the course of his great journey from St.

Paul de Loanda on the west coast of Africa to Quilimane on the east, he had to encounter many an angry and greedy tribe, whom he was too poor to be able to pacify by the ordinary method of valuable presents. On one occasion, in the fork at the confluence of the river Loangwa and the river Zambesi, he found one of those hostile tribes. It was necessary for him to have canoes to cross--they would lend him only one. In other respects they showed an att.i.tude of hostility, and the appearances all pointed to a furious attack the following day. Livingstone was troubled at the prospect,--not that he was afraid to die, but because it seemed as if all his discoveries in Africa would be lost, and his sanguine hopes for planting commerce and Christianity among its benighted and teeming tribes knocked on the head. But he remembered the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, "Go ye therefore into all the world, and preach the gospel unto every creature, and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." On this promise he rested, and steadied his fluttering heart. "It is the word of a gentleman," he said, "the word of one of the most perfect honour. I will not try, as I once thought, to escape by night, but I will wait till to-morrow, and leave before them all. Should such a man as I be afraid? I will take my observations for longitude tonight, though it should be my last. My mind is now quite at rest, thank G.o.d." He waited as he had said, and next morning, though the arrangements of the natives still betokened battle, he and his men were allowed to cross the river in successive detachments, without molestation, he himself waiting to the last, and not a hair of their heads being hurt. It was a fine instance of a believing Christian strengthening himself in his G.o.d. When faith is genuine, and the habit of exercising it is active, it can remove mountains.