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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 301. His Religiousness
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His Religiousness
David, in spite of his grievous falls, had upon his heart and conscience continually the impress-awful, yet most fascinating-of the majesty, the beauty, the tenderness, the encompassing presence, the boundless magnificence of God. This great possession remained with him throughout his life.2 [Note: H. P. Liddon, Sermons on the Old Testament, 134.]
2. His history is that of a man kept out of his destiny for years, while the whole land is crying out for such services as he could render. Hated, maligned, wronged, pursued, and persecuted by the king whom he had served with rare capacity and unswerving loyalty, for long years he was a homeless outlaw, driven from the abodes of his own beloved people, and hunted like a partridge on the hills and in the wilderness. During the whole of that time there is only one instance recorded of his faith having broken down, and that is very near to the end of his long and weary exile. Apparently his trust in God's goodness never failed him. Tried and wronged-seemingly beyond endurance-he never rebelled against either the Lord or His anointed. It was for God to give him the kingdom, and therefore he refused to take one step towards the throne apart from the direct Divine impulse.
3. David's pride was in being honoured of God. His was a true religious nature that did not hesitate to approach what even in that age seemed religious eccentricity. At the height of his political power, he cast his royal robes aside, assumed the white linen garments of the priesthood, and played, as in the days of his old shepherd-minstrel life, upon stringed instruments. He joined with unrestrained enthusiasm in one of those sacred dances which in early and later times have often in the East expressed profound religious emotion. We know what Saul's daughter Michal, who inherited something of her father's temper, thought and said of him; we know how she was rebuked. And the same disposition was shown in David's anxiety about the temple which he was not permitted to build, about the priesthood which he ordered and organized, about all that related to the services of religion. Even his terrible sins of lust and bloodshed only throw his deep repentance into stronger relief, as the expression of his soul's inmost feelings towards God:
“Against thee only have I sinned,
And done this evil in thy sight:
That thou mightest be justified in thy saying,
And clear when thou art judged.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Cast me not away from thy presence,
And take not thy holy Spirit from me.
O give me the comfort of thy help again,
And stablish me with thy princely Spirit.
Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God,
And my tongue shall sing of thy righteousness.”
This is the reason why David is called, in contrast to Saul, “a man after God's own heart.” Certainly David's sins were not after God's own heart, but beyond and beneath those sins there was a permanent character of soul, instinct with the fear and with the love of God, that survived and conquered them.
Though David was imbued with principles of true religion, it cannot be denied that in the earlier records he is not represented as altogether superior to the superstitions of his age. It would perhaps be unjust to attribute the slaughter of Saul's sons at the request of the Gibeonites entirely to cold-blooded policy. Rather was David actuated by a belief that the famine would not cease till the sons of the late king had expiated their father's crime in violating the ancient treaty with Gibeon; and it was for this reason that he permitted them to be hung up before Jehovah. This single incident, however, shows the impossibility of judging David by a Christian or even a modern standard.1 [Note: F. J. Foakes-Jackson, The Biblical History of the Hebrews, 191.]