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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 286. The Outlaw
Subjects in this Topic:
III
The Outlaw
Literature
Alford, B. H., Old Testament History and Literature (1910), 39.
Banks, L. A., David and His Friends (1900), 236.
Bosanquet, C., “The Man after God's Own Heart” (1875), 82.
Chandler, S., A Critical History of the Life of David (1853), 65.
Dieulafoy, M., David the King (1902), 70.
Edersheim, A., Israel under Samuel, Saul, and David, 111.
Fleming, J. D., Israel's Golden Age (1907), 62.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Biblical History of the Hebrews (1903), 156.
Garvie, A. E., A Course of Bible Study for Adolescents (1913), 142.
Geikie, C., Hours with the Bible: Samuel to Solomon (1882), 152.
Kent, C. F., The Founders and Rulers of United Israel (1909), 98.
Kittel, R., A History of the Hebrews, ii. (1896) 124.
Krummacher, F. W., David, the King of Israel, 86.
Little, W. J. K., David, the Hero-King of Israel (1903), 37.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: Deuteronomy, etc. (1906), 362.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: 2 Samuel, etc. (1906), 1, 8.
Meyer, F. B., David (1910), 55.
Ottley, R. L., A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 130.
Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, ii. (1889) 52.
Taylor, W. M., David, King of Israel (1894), 61.
Thomson, P., The Life of David (1881), 16.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 215.
David's flight is the subject of several traditions. It is only natural that many stories of his adventures should have been current among the people long before they were written down; and many a place in the wilds of Judah would doubtless claim to be the site of some memorable event in the outlaw life of the great national hero; while from 1Sa_30:26-31 it is clear that we possess but a fragmentary account of his many wanderings.
According to the First Book of Samuel, David, after escaping from Saul's messengers, fled first to Ramah, where he took refuge with Samuel at a prophetic school. But Saul was too desperate to respect even a sanctuary. Messengers sent by him hurried to Ramah as soon as David was known to be there. But they were so carried away by religious enthusiasm, from hearing the exercises of Samuel's pupils, that they could not help joining the prophets, and forgot their message. A second and a third band fared no better. At last, Saul himself determined to head a fourth band; but the sights and sounds of a spot so venerable had the same effect on him as on others. Seized by a fit of prophetic excitement, he too joined in the hymns and psalms of the prophet choir, till, like a modern dervish, he rose to such a frenzy that he tore off his mantle and fell down in a state of stupor which lasted a day and a night. This event gave rise to a common Israelite byword for something totally incongruous and out of place: “Is Saul also among the prophets?”
Grave doubts, however, have been raised regarding this narrative. For a Judæan like David, flight southwards was more natural from Gibeah than northwards to Ramah; the connexion between Samuel and the prophets is not that presented by the older history of Saul and Samuel, where indeed there is another explanation given of the proverb, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1Sa_10:11 f.); while the present narrative can hardly be by the author of 1Sa_15:1-35, who implies (1Sa_15:35) that Saul and Samuel did not meet again. The conception of the prophetic school as here described is probably later than the time of David; and we must regard it as at least doubtful whether David had on this occasion any dealings with Samuel.
David acted in this emergency more according to what is called diplomacy than according to truth. He was wrong to tell that lie to Ahimelech; it was due to weakness of faith. When David forgot God's promises and past deliverances, he became, like Samson shorn of his locks, weak as another man. Though Christ Himself referred to this incident without condemning David (Mat_12:3 ff.), this does not extenuate his sin. Evidently his faith was beginning to falter. He was looking at God through the mist of circumstances, which certainly to the eye of sense were sufficiently threatening, instead of looking at circumstances through the golden haze of God's very present help.
The same state of mind, looked at from its two opposite ends, as it were, may be designated faith or unbelief; just as a piece of shot silk, according to the angle at which you hold it, may show you only the bright colours of its warp or the dark ones of its weft. When you are travelling in a railway train with the sun streaming in at the windows, if you look out on the one hand, you will see the illumined face of every tree and blade of grass and house; and if you look out on the other, you will see the dark side. And so the same landscape may seem to be all lit up by the sunshine of belief, or to be darkened by the gloom of distrust.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, The Wearied Christ.]
2. Ahimelech's act of friendliness brought upon the city of the priests a cruel vengeance. Informed by Doeg the Edomite, his chief herdsman, of the welcome which David had received at Nob, Saul summoned Ahimelech the priest to his presence, taxed him with an act of conspiracy, and gave orders for the immediate massacre of the entire priestly clan. When the king's officers hesitated to execute the sacrilegious order, Doeg himself undertook the task. The priests and all the other inhabitants of the city of Nob were put to the sword. Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, alone escaped, and fled to David in the wilderness of Judah, bearing with him the oracular ephod.
The consequences of David's conduct show that he was wrong; and he confessed it to Abiathar, when he said, “I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy father's house” (1Sa_22:22).
The false representation by reason of which Ahimelech was induced to give David bread and a sword was the real wrong. On a wider survey of facts, and with a juster estimate of the risks of compromising the officials of the sanctuary, he would probably have sought food in some other quarter, or have cried out to God for special deliverance. As it was, his device of being on Saul's business was evidently intended to save the high priest from the political sin of aiding one outlawed by the king. But his good motives were entirely useless because the overt act was witnessed by an enemy who, David felt sure, would put on it a construction inconsistent with his own wishes and the knowledge of the high priest. His conduct, therefore, pure in intention and fenced with precaution, did compromise a band of innocent men, and was the occasion of the fearful slaughter of the priests and entire population of the city. The guilt of the slaughter rested on Saul; the occasion for the exercise of the murderous malice was unwittingly created by David. With a sorrowful heart he admits the great woe to have had its origin incidentally in his own action. It is a truism that every action carries with it consequences into the future, in which we ourselves and others are concerned. One of the effects of our action is to prompt the action of other men, or to modify the course which otherwise they would have taken. And as the interests of many may depend not on what we do directly but on the conduct of others whom we directly affect, it is obvious that it is often possible for us to perform deeds or pursue courses which shall give occasion for other men to perpetrate great wrongs on those we would gladly shield. In the memory of many a man there are records of deeds unwise and out of season, which have left a fatal mark on the world in spite of subsequent efforts of wisdom and goodness. Like David, men can say, “I have occasioned” all this.1 [Note: C. Chapman.]
3. David fled from Nob to Gath. Here at the court of Achish he was recognized as the Israelite warrior, and “king of the land.” He was instantly regarded with hatred, as having slain his ten thousands. By some means David became aware of the evil impression at court, and saw the immense peril in which he stood of imprisonment or execution. He saved himself by descending to the unworthy subterfuge of counterfeiting the behaviour of a madman, drumming on the leaves of the city gate, and allowing his spittle to fall down upon his beard. His device succeeded; and Achish dismissed him with the humorous remark to his servants that he had already madmen enough around him, and had no need of another.
It may have been a harmless and successful device to simulate madness; but self-respect was gone, and a “more excellent way” of escape might have been sought of God. This is the great peril of us all both in prosperity and in adversity. The guise under which the simulation appears is varied. An appearance of wealth covers real poverty; a geniality of manner is adopted when real aversion lies in the heart; a pretence of ill-health secures escape from obligations; ambiguous words and evasions are employed to suggest our ignorance of matters when we know them well. To be real, to be known to be just what we are, is the only safe and wise course for a true Christian.
Certainly the ablest men that ever were have had all an openness and frankness of dealing, and a name of certainty and veracity. But then they were like horses well managed; for they could tell passing well when to stop or turn. There be three disadvantages of Simulation and Dissimulation. The first, that Simulation and Dissimulation commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business, doth spoil the feathers of round flying up to the mark. The second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many, that perhaps would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man walk almost alone to his own ends. The third, and greatest, is, that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments for action; which is trust and belief.1 [Note: Bacon's Essays: “Of Simulation and Dissimulation”.]
The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and exemplary. His parents had the happiness of living till he was at the summit of poetical reputation-till he was at ease in his fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, amongst its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than such a Son_1:1-17 [Note: Johnson, Lives of the Poets.]
The nature of the ephod, or oracle, is unknown. Probably it was simply a contrivance by which to cast a sacred lot. The interpretation, however, belonged to the priest. A rare opportunity was thus given for this enlightened representative of Jehovah, under the protection of his sacred office and with Divine authority, to counsel David and his followers at each crisis in their varying fortunes.2 [Note: C. F. Kent.]
2. “And the Lord said unto David, Go, and smite the Philistines, and save Keilah” (1Sa_23:2). David accordingly marched to the place and drove the enemy away with great slaughter. The people of Keilah welcomed their deliverer; and David would have continued in the place, which was more commodious than Adullam for his growing army, had he not heard that Saul was making great preparations against him. When Saul heard that David had shut himself in, by entering into a town that had gates and bars, it seemed to him almost as if judicial blindness had fallen upon him, or, as the king put it: “Elohim has rejected him into my hand.” So thinking, Saul rapidly gathered a force to march against Keilah. But David knew his danger, and in his extremity once more appealed to the Lord. Being told that the men of Keilah, if forced to choose between the king and himself, would not scruple to save themselves by surrendering their deliverer, David and his company, now increased to about six hundred, left the town, and betook themselves once more to strongholds in the “hill-country” of Judah, this time in the district of Ziph, three miles south-east of Hebron.
The story of David's wanderings is one of the most interesting episodes of the Old Testament, and we have now so recovered its topography that the various scenes seem as vivid as if they had occurred only yesterday. First we have the stronghold of Adullam, guarding the rich corn valley of Elah; then Keilah, a few miles south, perched on its steep hill above the same valley. The forest of Hareth lay close by, surrounded by the “thickets” which properly represent the Hebrew “Yar”-a word wrongly supposed to mean a woodland of timber trees.
Driven from all these lairs, David went yet farther south to the neighbourhood of Ziph (Tell Zif); and here also our English version speaks of a forest-the “Wood (Choresh) of Ziph,” where David met with Jonathan. A moment's reflection will, however, convince any traveller that no wood of trees could have flourished over this unwatered and sun-scorched region. The true explanation seems to be that the word Choresh is a proper name with a different signification, and such is the view of the Greek version and of Josephus. We are able considerably to strengthen this theory by the discovery of the ruin of Khoreisa and the Valley of Hiresh (the same word under another form), close to Ziph, the first of which may well be thought to represent the Hebrew Choresh Ziph.
The treachery of the inhabitants of Ziph, like that of the men of Keilah, appears to have driven David to a yet more desolate district, that of the Jeshimon, or “Solitude,” by which is apparently intended the great desert above the western shores of the Dead Sea, on which the Ziph plateau looks down. As a shepherd boy at Bethlehem, David may probably have been already familiar with this part of the country, and the caves, still used as sheep-cotes by the peasant herdsmen, extend all along the slopes at the edge of the desert.
East of Ziph is a prominent hill on which is the ruined town called Cain in the Bible; hence the eye ranges over the theatre of David's wanderings. On the south are the wolds of the Negeb plateau, with the plains of Beersheba beyond. On the east is the “Solitude,” with white peaks and cones of chalk, and deep, narrow watercourses, terminated by the great pointed cliff of Ziz, above Engedi, and by the precipices over the Dead Sea, two thousand feet high. Here, among the “rocks of the wild goats,” the herds of ibex may be seen bounding, and the partridge is still chased on the mountains, as David was followed by the stealthy hunter Saul. The blue sea is visible in its deep chasm, and is backed by the dark precipice of Kerak, “scarred with a hundred wintry watercourses.” The great hump of rock on which Maon-the home of Nabal-stands is seen to the south, and rather nearer is the Crusading castle at Carmel, where were Nabal's possessions; the ruined mound of Ziph is to the west, and Juttah among its olives. Thus the whole scenery of the flight of David, and of Saul's pursuit, can be viewed from this one hill. The stronghold chosen by the fugitive was the hill Hachilah, in the wilderness of Ziph, south of Jeshimon. This I would propose to recognize in the long ridge called El Kôlah, running out of the Ziph plateau towards the Dead Sea desert, or Jeshimon. On the north side of the hill are the “Caves of the Dreamers,” perhaps the actual scene of David's descent on Saul's sleeping guards.
Pursued even to Hachilah, David descended farther south, to a rock or cliff in the wilderness of Maon, which was named Sela Ham-mahlekoth, “Cliff of Divisions” (1Sa_23:2-8). Here he is represented as being on one side of the mountain, while Saul was on the other. Now between the ridge of El Kôlah and the neighbourhood of Maon there is a great gorge called “the Valley of Rocks,” a narrow but deep chasm, impassable except by a detour of many miles, so that Saul might have stood within sight of David, yet quite unable to overtake his enemy; and to this “Cliff of Divisions” the name Malâky now applies, a word closely approaching the Hebrew Mahlekoth. The neighbourhood is seamed with many torrent-beds, but there is no other place near Maon where cliffs such as are to be inferred from the word Sela can be found. It seems to me pretty safe, therefore, to look on this gorge as the scene of the wonderful escape of David, due to a sudden Philistine invasion, which terminated the history of his hair-breadth escapes in the South Country.1 [Note: C. R. Conder, Tent Work in Palestine, 243.]
In the summer, Carlyle and his wife ran down for a short holiday at Scotsbrig, giving a few brief days to Templand, and a glance at Craigenputtock. By August they were again settled in Comely Bank. The Carlyles, as he said long before, were a clannish set, and clung tenaciously together. The partings after ever so brief a visit were always sorrowful. On his return home, Carlyle wrote to his Mother at Scotsbrig;-“My dear Mother,-It was a pity that we were all so wae that day we went off; but we cannot well help it. This life is but a series of meetings and partings, and many a tear one might shed, while these ‘few and evil days' pass over us. But we hope there is another scene to which this is but the passage, where good and holy affections shall live as in their home, and for true friends there shall be no more partings appointed. God grant we may all have our lot made sure in that earnest and enduring country; for surely this world, the more one thinks of it, seems the more fluctuating, hollow, and unstable. What are its proudest hopes but bubbles on the stream of time, which the next rushing wave will scatter into air?”1 [Note: J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1835, i. 408.]
2. The problem which confronted David, that of supporting his six hundred restless warriors in the thickly peopled, unproductive border-land of southern Judah, was exceedingly difficult. Occasional forays against hostile Arab tribes in part supplied their needs; but for the most part they were dependent upon the gifts of the neighbouring friendly clans and the profits of freebooting. In the pressing need of the situation, it is too probable that the rights of property were often disregarded; and no doubt there were some who would willingly have seen the district rid of such highhanded outlaws. David apparently made himself obnoxious to the neighbouring people of Ziph; they acted the part of traitorous spies, and reported David's whereabouts to the king. Hearing of this treachery, David moved farther south to the wilderness of Maon, where a conical hill gives a far extended view of the surrounding country. But to the spot the men of Ziph conducted the king with such deadly accuracy that, before they could escape, the little beleagured band found the hill on which they gathered surrounded by the royal troops, and their escape rendered impossible. Like a miraculous deliverance, news of a Philistine raid came to Saul, and he was compelled to withdraw his army to meet them.
The inscription on the obelisk in the downs at Scheveningen, “God saved Nederland,” is the summary of the history of thousands saved from temporal or spiritual destruction. “Rock of escape.” How many spots are there on our pilgrimage where we might express the same sentiment: preserved or delivered from apparent danger as we were, perhaps through a seeming accident, as unexpectedly but as decisively as here by the message to Saul! Oh that we may never forget God's goodness, and in the severest trouble cling to the Rock of Ages! On Golgotha He has prepared a rock of deliverance also for the chief of sinners. He who takes refuge there has nothing more to fear even from the last foe, and sees himself finally, like David, surrounded on all sides by joyful songs of deliverance. Oh, ye who can bear witness: “Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling,” let not this note, moreover, die on your lips: “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living” (Psa_116:8-9).1 [Note: J. J. van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, ii. 441.]
3. One of the most detailed and most reliable accounts which we possess of the whole period of David's wanderings relates to the time when he was still in the region of Maon. Nabal, a wealthy sheep-owner of Maon, was celebrating the feast of sheep-shearing at Carmel, when David sent messengers to him requesting a contribution in return for the protection he had afforded to his herdsmen and flocks. Nabal was little inclined to favour the freebooters, still less to contribute to their support; he returned an insolent answer. David at once ordered his men to arm, and advanced to chastise the man who had defied him; and it would have gone hard with Nabal had it not been for his wife, Abigail, who anticipated David's intended vengeance by winning words and a handsome present.
In demanding a liberal gift from Nabal, the wealthy Calebite, whose flocks and shepherds David's followers had protected, David was standing squarely on the customary law of the wilderness. In repudiating his obligations Nabal defied that law; but for David to have followed the impulse of the moment and turned his sword against a friendly clan would have been suicidal to his interests.2 [Note: C. F. Kent.]
On the 22nd of October we marched south, to camp at Yuttah, the ancient Levitical town of Yuttah, five miles south of Hebron. In the neighbourhood of Yuttah, Dûra, and Yekin, the country descends by a sudden step, and forms a kind of plateau, divided into two by the great valley which runs from north of Hebron to Beersheba, and thence west, to Gerar, and the sea. The plateau is about 2600 feet above sea-level, and 500 feet below the general level of the Hebron watershed. It has only two inhabited villages on it, but is covered with ruins. It is dry and treeless, but rich in flocks and herds. It seems to have been the country of the Horites, for the place is riddled with caves intended for habitations, and the name of this troglodytic race is preserved in the titles of two of the ruined towns. The plateau formed part of the district called Negeb, or “dry land,” in the Bible. One is at once struck with the fitness which the plateau presents for the adventures of the fugitive bandit chief who was destined to become the king of Israel. The inhabitants, like Nabal of Carmel, are rich in sheep and oxen. The villagers of Yuttah owned 1700 sheep, of which 250 belonged to the sheikh. All along the borders of the Jeshimon and Beersheba deserts there is the fine pasturage, to which the peasants descend in spring-time, having made some sort of agreement with the neighbouring Bedawin to protect them from other tribes. Thus we find perpetuated the old system under which David's band protected the cattle of Nabal.1 [Note: C. R. Conder, Tent Work in Palestine, 242.]
The relationship between Arab tribes and the settled inhabitants in regard to their flocks and herds was once illustrated to me in a very agreeable way, when I had to do with a veritable Nabal and a Bedawee David. Travelling in Moab in the month of February, our whole party were taken prisoners by the chief of Kerak (Kir-Moab), and confined by him in the famous crusading castle. We were on our way to visit a powerful tribe, the Beni Sakk'r, whose sheikh was an old friend of mine, with whom I had travelled in previous years. Having heard of our detention, he suddenly one day appeared most unexpectedly, with only two mounted companions, and announced his intention of leaving with us next morning. Our captor demurred, and told him he must have a ransom. The sheikh, with a calmness unlike David, quietly observed, “You men of Kerak have hundreds of camels with their young, and thousands of sheep with their lambs, out on our plains. The Beni Sakk'r have been a wall to them all these months, and now you ask ransom for my brothers. Nay, my friends; but if we return not within two days, your camels and goats will travel farther, even to our camp, and I shall weep for the losses of you, my friends, but my people will not make them good.” I scarcely need to add that the argument was found unanswerable, and that we set off the next morning.2 [Note: H. B. Tristram, Eastern Customs in Bible Lands, 119.]
4. Nabal died soon after; and David, who felt that now Jehovah had indeed defended his cause, took Abigail to wife. He thus established a powerful family connexion with the south of Judah, and he further increased his influence by marriage with Ahinoam of the southern Jezreel.
Throughout all their history, polygamy seems to have been the exception rather than the rule among the Hebrews. The tribal chieftains and kings were almost the only ones who appear to have indulged in this pernicious Oriental institution. Their object was to extend their power and influence by means of alliances with neighbouring tribes and peoples. The accepted method of sealing such alliances was by intermarriage. The fact that David, even during his outlaw life, had two wives in addition to Michal-whom Saul had given to another husband-reveals the ambition which was already beginning to stir within the mind of the young Judæan leader. His marriage with Abigail was apparently prompted by true love. It brought to him a sane and devoted counsellor. It also strengthened still further his position among the tribes of the south country. Thus at every step David was increasing his hold upon the Hebrews of the south, and preparing for the moment when they should choose their own king. But at the same time he was preparing serious trouble for himself.
The law of monogamy is not found formally enunciated in the Hebrew Scriptures, yet the love of one for one is unquestionably a Hebrew ideal. “They twain shall be one flesh” is a very ancient Divine precept, contained in the earliest stratum of Genesis. “The marriage of one man and one woman is to form the fundamental indissoluble relationship before which all other ties, even the most sacred, must give way” (Schultz). Almost every specimen of polygamy given in the Bible is so thoroughly bad that no one can doubt its radical wrongness even in its mildest form. Pure love bestows incomparable happiness, impure love creates piteous tragedies. True religion, which is the foundation of the highest and holiest manhood and womanhood, is the best friend of the home and the best guardian of its sanctities. Love refined, purified, and consecrated by faith is necessarily opposed to polygamy. “These devices, which produced such irregularities and heart-burnings in the families of the patriarchs,” says Dr. Thomson in The Land and the Book, “are equally mischievous at the present day. The whole system is productive of evil, and that only, to the individual, the family, and the community.” Polygamy is the profanation of marriage and the degradation of woman. True religion emancipates woman, raises her to spiritual equality with man, and restores marriage to its proper dignity and purity. The Hebrew ideal of wedded life-the entire self-surrender and mutual delight of two souls-is expressed in the exquisite idyll of the Song of Songs: “My beloved is mine, and I am his.”1 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 88.]
Although polygamy occurs among most existing peoples, and polyandry among some, monogamy is by far the most common form of human marriage. It was so among the ancient peoples of whom we have any direct knowledge. Monogamy is the form which is generally recognized and permitted. The great majority of peoples are, as a rule, monogamous, and the other forms of marriage are usually modified in a monogamous direction. We may without hesitation assert that, if mankind advance in the same direction as hitherto; if, consequently, the causes to which monogamy in the most progressive societies owes its origin continue to operate with constantly growing force; if, especially, altruism increases, and the feeling of love becomes more refined, and more exclusively directed to one-the laws of monogamy can never be changed, but must be followed much more strictly than they are now.1 [Note: E. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, 510.]
In all those regions in which polygamy has existed or still exists, the status of woman is extremely low; she is treated as man's property, not as his companion; her life is invariably one of great hardship, while her moral, spiritual, and intellectual qualities are almost utterly neglected. Even the male human being is in the highest sense of the phrase naturally monogamous. His moral, spiritual, and æsthetic faculties can obtain normal development only when his sexual relations are confined to one woman in the common life and enduring association provided by monogamy. The welfare of the children, and, therefore, of the race, obviously demands that the offspring of each pair shall have the undivided attention and care of both their parents. When we speak of the naturalness of any social institution, we necessarily take as our standard, not nature in a superficial or one-sided sense, or in its savage state, or as exemplified in a few individuals or in a single generation, but nature adequately considered, in all its needs and powers, in all the members of the present and of future generations, and as it appears in those tendencies which lead toward its highest development. The verdict of experience and the voice of nature reinforce, consequently, the Christian teaching on the unity of marriage.2 [Note: J. A. Ryan, in The Catholic Encyclopœdia, ix. 695.]