1 Sam. 16-31
Introduction
This lesson conludes the study of 1 Samuel. It begins with Samuel anointing David, and ends with the death of Saul. Please refer to these resources as well: this commentary, the NETS Bible, and this LXX Interlinear.
1 Sam. 16
The prophet Samuel can’t seem to accept that Saul has been rejected by God as king of Israel, but God tells him to go anoint the new king he has chosen. This is where we see one of God’s cover stories that we’ve mentioned in earlier lessons; Samuel is afraid that Saul will kill him if he finds out what he’s about to do, so God tells him to pretend he’s just going to make a sacrifice.
Verse 7 is where we see God’s opinion of how people choose leaders. We pick the most outwardly impressive, but God picks the most inwardly impressive. God picks “the runt of the litter” in front of all his more outwardly-impressive brothers. And as with Saul, David immediately receives the Holy Spirit.
Meanwhile, that same Spirit left Saul and was replaced by a tormenting spirit from God. For whatever reason, Saul’s advisors recommend a good harp player to soothe him during his episodes. David, the despised sheep herder, happened to be just such a musician, along with being a brave warrior, a good speaker, and a good-looking guy. He becomes Saul’s armor-bearer and soul-soother.
1 Sam. 17
Now back to the pesky Philistines, who camp out on one side of a valley while Saul’s army camps out on the other. Then out from the Philistine camp comes their champion, the famous giant Goliath. His actual height is disputed, but all seem to agree that he was at least seven feet tall, but likely taller judging by the sizes given of his weapons and armor. Every morning and evening for forty days, Goliath would dare Israel to send out their champion to fight him. Saul was the biggest man in Israel, but he was afraid to face him.
Meanwhile, David had been commuting between sheep herding and placating Saul, but in another case of “just so happened”, David’s father sends him to bring supplies to his older brothers in Saul’s army. He arrives just as the soldiers are marching to the battle lines for the day, and he hear’s Goliath’s taunt.
But while the army retreats in fear, David hears them talk about the rewards promised to whoever would face him. His questions here are not to get the answers he already knows, but to declare his intention of being the one to fight Goliath. His oldest brother rebukes him for arrogance and for allegedly only coming to watch the battle. But David’s retort is one many of us can totally relate to: “Can’t I say anything?”
Eventually Saul gets wind of David’s offer, but he tells David that he, as a mere youth, can’t hope to compete with this powerful seasoned warrior. Yet David is confident, due to his experiences with wild animals, and his outrage that anyone would defy the living God who has given him his successes.
So Saul has David try on his own armor, but he rejects it― not because it’s too big but because he’s not used to wearing armor. He goes with his familar and trusted weapon, a slingshot. As you can see in this video (first segment), this is not the Y-shaped version we’re used to, but a long strap with a pouch that the person would swing in circles like a lasso. The stone released from this has enough force to break a skull, but it takes great skill to use with both power and accuracy.
As David approaches Goliath with only his shepherd’s gear and a walking staff, Goliath despises him and is insulted at Israel apparently sending its worst instead of its best to fight him. Trash talk ensues, but David fearlessly runs toward him and then stops to sling the rock, which sinks into Goliath’s forehead. Seeing Goliath drop dead on his face, David takes Goliath’s own sword and beheads him. Only now, in typical Israelite fashion, the army is emboldened and chases after the terrified Philistines. David takes Goliath’s weapons and puts them in his tent, but takes the head to Jerusalem.
Saul had been watching from a safe distance of course, but we’re puzzled to read that he doesn’t even seem to recognize him, though he had met him just a short time ago. But the end of the chapter tells us that what Saul didn’t know was the name of David’s father, not David himself, and this likely was at least being asked because of the promise he made about exempting the champion’s family from taxes.
1 Sam. 18
Remember Saul’s son Jonathan? He and David become best friends at this time, and Saul employs David full-time so he no longer commutes to his shepherding job at home. David goes on to become a respected warrior, but the rainbows and lollipops are fleeting. The women sing after the defeat of Goliath, but they credit David with ten times the honor of Saul. Not surprisingly, Saul is a tad jealous, and he keeps a wary eye on David from then on.
The next time David comes to play the harp for one of Saul’s episodes, he tries to impale David with a spear. After it happens again without success, Saul removes David from being his bodyguard to being a field commander. This of course only made things worse for Saul, because David turns out to be a superb warrior.
So Saul decides to let the Philistines do his dirty work for him, by luring David into battle to win the right to marry his daughter Merab. But David feels unworthy, so Saul marries her to another man. Saul tries again with his other daughter Michal, who had a crush on David anyway. But David escapes death again and finally agrees to marry Michal. He continues to rise in rank and esteem by pretty much everyone but Saul.
1 Sam. 19
Saul tries to get his staff to kill David, but Jonathan gets wind of it and warns David, then gets Saul to relent― for the time being. After an unknown length of time passes, Saul goes back to his old ways of trying to impale David with a spear while he’s playing the harp to soothe him. (I think the anger management classes aren’t working.) Then Saul sends a squad to David’s house to arrest him, but his wife Michal helps him escape during the night. She puts an idol on his bed and covers it with a quilt to make it look like he’s still there, and she tells the assassins that he’s sick. But when they come back to Saul without him, he sends them right back to haul him off anyway, and then they realize they’ve been had.
So Saul confronts Michal, who says he threatened to kill her, which of course is a lie, but again I would recommend the earlier discussions concerning what God considers sinful deception. Meanwhile, David has run to see Samuel. When Saul’s police catch up to them, they see them all prophesying, and even the police start to prophesy! So finally Saul goes there himself, and even he starts to prophesy. Pretty bizarre scene to say the least, but sometimes God seems to have a twisted sense of humor.
1 Sam. 20-21
While all that’s going on, David takes off to find Jonathan and ask him what Saul’s problem is. So the two of them devise a series of tests to see if Saul is hiding his intentions from Jonathan, and again, the plan involves lying. And to no one’s surprise, Saul has every intention of killing David, and seems to also hate Jonathan for being his friend.
So per the pre-arranged signal, David runs away, and will keep running away until God himself takes Saul’s life. Verse two is the incident Jesus would later refer to regarding the Pharisees’ objection to his healing people on the Sabbath. David is on the run and needs some bread, but the only bread available has been offered in sacrifice to God. He is given the bread anyway, and God doesn’t express any problem with David’s cover story.
From there David runs to Gath, but the people there are suspicious of his intentions, so David pretends to be insane― another deception. I keep pointing these out to impress on us how often deceit seems to further God’s plans, when such deceit is only doing harm to God’s enemies.
1 Sam. 22-23
Off David goes again, and this time his family finds him. Then all the discontented people in the area made him their leader and form a force of about 400 men. But then we see that there has been a snitch by the name of Doeg following David around. At Saul’s order, he had killed the priests who had sheltered David, but someone named Abiathar escaped and told David what happened.
After a skirmish with the Philistines, David hears that Saul and his army are coming after him again, and Saul stays in pursuit until God diverts them to deal with the Philistines.
1 Sam. 24
Now we come to the familiar incident where David has a chance to kill Saul, but he only takes a corner of Saul’s robe as he is busy relieving himself in a cave where David and his men were hiding, and he doesn’t even know anything happened. So David’s group sneaks out of the cave and goes a safe distance, where David shouts to Saul and holds up the corner of his cloak to show that he could have killed him but didn’t.
David’s statement about not “touching God’s anointed” is one the Christian community has grossly misapplied. They take it to mean that preachers are not to be criticized, in spite of the New Testament’s explicit teaching that leaders are to be held to the highest standards. They are not “God’s anointed” above other believers. There is nothing elevated or special about one spiritual gift than others, as you can read in 1 Cor. 13. Any church leader or popular speaker who uses this phrase as a free pass to sin is a fake and should be disfellowshiped. Anyway, Saul admits his fault and breaks off the pursuit for the time being.
1 Sam. 25
(Now we read the briefest mention of the death of Samuel, before coming to the next bit of drama. There was a wealthy man in the area, who had a wife named Abigail. The scripture describes her as wise and beautiful, but her husband Nabal as a harsh and evil fool.
David finds out that Nabal is sheering sheep and sends messengers to ask for provisions, since David and his men never gave Nabal and his servants any trouble. But Nabal insults them, so David decides to attack Nabal’s household. One of the servants finds out what’s about to happen, so he runs to Abigail to see what she might be able to do to keep them from being wiped out due to her husband’s stupidity and ego. And just to continue driving home a point, today’s Christian teachers would say she should have let them all be slaughtered rather than go behind her wicked husband’s back.
While David is on his way there, Abigail loads up a caravan of gifts for him and his men and rushes out to meet him. She takes full responsibility for all this, though none of it is her fault, and she tells him that her husband lives up to his name which means “fool”.
She presents her plea for mercy, and David is very impressed with her good judgment. So he accepts the gifts she brought and passes by. But when she gets home, she finds her husband throwing a party and slobbering drunk, so she doesn’t bother to tell him anything till the next day. When he finally sobers up and hears her story, he has a stroke and is paralyzed, until God kills him ten days later.
When David hears the news, he asks Abigail to be another of his wives. Though by this time Saul had married off Michal to someone else, David had married another woman. This sort of uneven playing field has been the cultural norm for most of history, so any modern-day whining about the field tilting the other way just a bit will get no sympathy from me.
1 Sam. 26
Now it’s back to Saul chasing David, which presents David with another opportunity to kill him. He and another man actually sneak into the middle of the sleeping enemy camp where Saul was surrounded by soldiers, but again David won’t strike him down. He had just seen how God took care of Nabal, so he has full confidence that God will do the same with Saul.
This time David takes a spear and a jug of water from right beside Saul, but he isn’t caught because God put them into a deep sleep. After retreating a safe distince, instead of shouting to Saul he shouts to Saul’s bodyguard Abner, to scold him for not protecting his king. How embarrassing!
Then David warns Saul that if he has tried to kill him without justification or permission from God, he and his men will be cursed. Again Saul confesses his sin, again they part ways, but again we all know how this will go.
1 Sam. 27-28
Now David does something totally unforseen: He takes refuge among the Philistines! His reasoning is that Saul won’t pursue him there, and the Philistines actually agree to his presence among them.
Then the time comes for the Philistines to go into battle again with Israel, so David pledges his support for the Philistines. Saul is terrified at the sight of the Philistine army, but of course God doesn’t listen to his pleas for help. So he seeks out a medium in a town called Endor. Why Saul thought a disguise could be of any use when visiting someone believed to have psychic powers, we can only guess.
Of course, she thinks this is a hit squad from Saul that has come there to entrap her since he had expelled all the other mediums from his land. He assures her that isn’t the case, so she asks who he wants her to conjure up, and he says Samuel. But to her great horror, Samuel actually appears! She had expected the usual trickery or even perhaps a demon, so this terrifies her.
So she knows that this is Saul himself, and then Samuel actually speaks to Saul and demands to know why he disturbed him from among the dead. He also tells him that Saul and his sons will be with him in the grave the next day.
1 Sam. 29-31
Meanwhile, the upper leadership of the Philistine army decides that David and his men cannot be trusted in battle, so again David is held in suspicion though nothing he ever did made him deserving of it. Many of us who defend the faith online know this feeling all too well.
So David returns to where he had been living in the land of the Philistines while the army goes off to fight Israel. But they find that their city has been raided and burned and their women kidnapped. So David inquires of God what he should do, and he’s given the green light to go after the raiding party. He recovers everything and everyone that had been taken.
Now back to the battle between the Philistines and Israel, which Israel was losing. Saul’s sons all die as predicted, and Saul himself is mortally wounded. He asks his servant to finish him off so he won’t be captured and tortured, but the servant is afraid, so Saul falls on his own sword.