It is fashionable at present to regard this incident and the other instance of David's sparing Saul, when in his power, as two versions of one event. But it is not improbable that the hunted outlaw should twice have taken refuge in the same place, or that his hiding-place should have been twice betrayed. He had but a small choice of safe retreats, and the Ziphites had motive for a second betrayal in the fact of the first, and of its failure to secure David's capture. The whole cast of the two incidents is so different that it is impossible to see how the one could have been evolved from the other, and either they are both true, or they are both unhistorical, or, at best, are both the product of fancy working on, and arbitrarily filling up, a very meager skeleton of fact. Many of the advocates of the identity of the incident at the bottom of the two accounts would accept the latter explanation; we take the former.
Saul had three thousand men with him; David had left his little troop in the wilderness,' and seems to have come with only his two companions, Ahimelech and his own nephew, Abishai, to reconnoitre. He sees, from some height, the camp, with the transport wagons making a kind of barricade in the center--just as camps are still arranged in South Africa and elsewhere,--and Saul established therein as in a rude fortification. A bold thought flashes into his mind as he looks. Perhaps he remembered Gideon's daring visit to the camp of Midian. He will go down, and not only into the camp, but to Saul,' through the ranks and over the barrier. What to do he does not say, but the two fierce fighters beside him think of only one thing as sufficient motive for such an adventure. Abishai volunteers to go with him; no doubt Ahimelech would have been ready also, but two were enough, and three would only have increased risk. So they lay close hid till night fell, and then stole down through the sleeping ranks with silent movements, like a couple of Indians on the war-trail, climbed the barricade, and stood at last where Saul lay, with his spear, as the emblem of kingship, stuck upright at his head, and a cruse of water for slaking thirst, if he awoke, beside him. Those who should have been his guards lay sleeping round him, for a deep sleep from Jehovah was fallen upon them.' What a vivid, strange picture it is, and how characteristic of the careless discipline of unscientific Eastern warfare!
The tigerish lust for blood awoke in Abishai. Whatever sad, pitying, half-tender thoughts stirred in David as he looked at the mighty form of Saul, with limbs relaxed in slumber, and perhaps some of the gloom and evil passions charmed out of his face, his nephew's only thought was, What a fair mark i what an easy blow!' He was brutally eager to strike once, and truculently sure that his arm would make sure that once would be enough. He was religious too, after a strange fierce fashion. God--significantly he does not say' Jehovah'; his religion was only the vague belief in a deity--had delivered Saul into David's hands, and it would be a kind of sin not to kill him. How many bloody tragedies that same unnatural alliance of religion and murderous hate has varnished over! Very beautifully does David's spirit contrast with this. Abishai represents the natural impulse of us all--to strike at our enemies when we can, to meet hate with hate, and do to another the evil that he would do to us.
David here, though he could be fierce and cruel enough sometimes, and had plenty of the devil in him, listens to his nobler self, which listens to God, and, at a time when everything tempted him to avenge himself, resists and overcomes. He is here a saint after the New Testament pattern. Abishai had, in effect, said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.' David's finely-tuned ear heard, long before they were spoken on earth, the great Christian words, I say unto you, Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you.' He knew that Saul had been rejected,' but he was Jehovah's anointed,' and the unction which had rested on that sleeping head lingered still. It was not for David to be the executor of God's retribution. He left himself and his cause in Jehovah's hands, and no doubt it was with sorrow and pitying love, not altogether quenched by Saul's mad hate, that he foresaw that the life which he spared now was certain one day to be smitten. We may well learn the lesson of this story, and apply it to the small antagonisms and comparatively harmless enmities which may beset our more quiet lives. David in Saul's laager,' Stephen outside the wall, alike lead up our thoughts to Jesus' prayer, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'
The carrying off of the spear and the cruse was a touch of almost humor, and it, with the ironical taunt flung across the valley to Abner, gives relief to the strain of emotion in the story. Saul's burst of passionate remorse is morbid, paroxysmal, like his fits of fury, and is sure to foam itself away. The man had no self-control. He had let wild, ungoverned moods master him, and was truly possessed.' One passion indulged had pushed him over the precipice into insanity, or something like it. Let us take care not to let any passion, emotion, or mood get the upper hand. That way madness lies.' He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, without walls.'
And let us not confound remorse with repentance. The sorrow of the world worketh death.' Saul groveled in agony that day, but to-morrow he was raging again with more than the old frenzy of hate. Many a man says, I have played the fool,' and yet goes on playing it again when the paroxysm of remorse has stormed itself out. David's answer was by no means effusive, for he had learned how little Saul's regrets were to be trusted. He takes no notice of the honeyed words of invitation to return, and will not this time venture to take back the spear and cruse, as he had done, on the previous occasion, the skirt of Saul's robe. He solemnly appeals to Jehovah's righteous judgment to determine his and Saul's respective righteousness and faithfulness.' He is silent as to what that judgment may have in reserve for Saul, but for himself he is calmly conscious that, in the matter of sparing Saul's life, he has done right, and expects that God will deliver him' out of all tribulation.' That is not self-righteous boasting, although it does not exactly smack of the Christian spirit; but it is faith clinging to the confidence that God is not unrighteous to forget' his servant's obedience, and that the innocent will not always be the oppressor's victim.
What a strange, bewildered, self-contradictory chaos of belief and intention is revealed in poor, miserable Saul's parting words! He blesses the man whom he is hunting to slay. He knows that all his wild efforts to destroy him are foredoomed to failure, and that David shall surely prevail'; and yet he cannot give up fighting against the inevitable,--that is, against God. How many of us are doing the very same thing--rushing on in a course of life which we know, when we are sane, to be dead against God's will, and therefore doomed to utter collapse some day!
