1 samuel 21-22

Read 1 Samuel 21-22 at Bible Gateway.

As long as Saul sought David’s life, there was no civilized place in Israel where David could live. He could not live in his house, with his wife. He could not stay with Samuel. He could not go back to his father’s house, or else he would bring trouble to his doorstep. He could not stay with Ahimelech the priest. Because while Jonathan had made an oath and a covenant with David, no one else had. If the king commanded David to be brought, he would be brought.

David had to live in caves and forests, and like Robin Hood, any who were outlaws came to him and he was captain over them, including his brothers, and Abiathar, the only survivor of the priests of Nob. David as a type of Messiah, likewise had no where to lay his head (Mat 8:20).

The Torah commanded that no Israelite could be killed, for that was murder, unless he had committed a capital offense for which death was the penalty. For David to be killed under the Law, he would have had to have been an idolater, a murderer, a kidnapper, a rebel against his parents, or committed a sexual perversion worthy of death. David had done none of these things, which was why he and Jonathan both kept asking Saul, “What is his sin?”

But Saul had by now abandoned either living by Torah or seeing it enforced in the land as king. We see just how far his unreasoning jealousy had taken him, when we see him command the death of the high priest and all his family, and an entire city which belonged to the Levites, down to the last man, woman, and child — something he did not do even with Israel’s enemies, even when he was commanded by God to do so!

In order to keep his parents safe from Saul’s jealousy, he took them to live with the king of Moab. Can you imagine? The hero of Israel, who killed Goliath the Philistine, and whose father’s house was to be rewarded by exemption from taxes forever, had to take his father and mother to Moab to ensure their safety from Saul’s jealousy.

Let us not ever think, that because we are of God’s covenant people, because God has used us in the past, because the Spirit has come upon us before and we have prophesied, maybe; let us not ever think that we can entertain any evil thoughts or feelings, such as envy or jealousy, pride, rejection, accusation, bitterness, unforgiveness, or any other thing, that we can entertain it and not confess it as sin, and not have it affect us and change the course of our lives. I am sure Saul never dreamed, the day he went looking for his father’s donkeys, that he would one day shed the innocent blood of thousands of Israelites without cause.

But if we identify such thoughts or feelings, not from God or of the fruit of His Spirit, then we must not be in denial about it, but confess it as sin, so that God can cleanse us from all unrighteousness (Jam 5:16, 1 Joh 1:8-9).