1 Samuel 21:10 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Samuel 21:10

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‘And David arose, and fled that day for fear of Saul.’ David had become very despondent. He hadn't made his predicament a matter of prayer; he gone from bad to worse. His fears had grown so much in his mind that he did the unthinkable and went to Achish the king of Gath. Why did he go to Achish, one of the lords of the Philistines? Goliath came from Gath, and there must have been considerable outrage at David in Gath, because he had slain Goliath, and then there had been the rout of the Philistines, and the Philistine contingent that was sent against Israel was slaughtered, and so Gath was full of widows who were furious against David. You would think that this link with the city would have jolted David into realising that this was something he could not do, that it would be irrational and foolish behaviour. He is saying to himself, ‘I shall be far, far safer under the protection of the King of Gath.’ What nonsense! It is astonishing. It may be that the king of Gath had offered to have David for asylum, to exploit this breach and to make use of him. To take Saul's lieutenant, and to divide Israel: perhaps it was offered in some way. There is also the possibility that he didn't go voluntarily: that he went into the region and was arrested and taken to the king. But that is less likely. But however it comes about, he is with Achish the king of Gath.The servants of Achish say, ‘And the servants of Achish said unto him, Is not this David the king of the land? did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?’ They recognise him. Of course David was not yet the king of the land. He was anointed by Samuel, but that had been a secret anointing. Jonathan knew it; Saul suspected it; the family of David probably knew it, but it had been a secret. He wasn't king and wouldn't be for some years yet. Either they say this because, to them, he was the most well-known of all Israelites, and the courtiers and officers of state in the kingdom of Gath saw this as a foregone conclusion. Or else the secret was out: it was actually by this time widely known that David was anointed to be king. It was even an intelligence for Israel's enemies. Are they really going to let him move around freely in their midst, when he is such a warrior and has already killed their champion and triggered a massive defeat of their armies? So they bring him to the king for him to consider what to do. David is now in their land and in their power. How can he have put himself in such a vulnerable position? He hears what they are saying about him, and he is even more afraid. His plan seems to be unravelling. ‘And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the king of Gath.¹³ And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.’ Why did he do that? Because he is still trying to solve his own problems. Poor David, he is stuck. He is afraid of Saul. Now he is in Gath, he is afraid of the king of Gath. What is he to do? What humiliation! The man who had so proved the Lord; the man who had seen such amazing things, the hero of faith, the one with a strong spiritual view, is now in such a situation that he has to do the most humiliating thing to get out of it, and he has to feign madness. He has been brought into the court. He doesn't want to face a trial. He doesn't want to face the anger of the king. He realises he has done the most foolish thing in running to Gath, and so in his panic he feigns madness, calculating that the king will not be interested in him if he is mad, and indeed it was a form to madness to even come to Gath. When we have gone down a wrong track, we can at any point turn back to the Lord and begin to seek his help and guidance, but so often our fears and our low faith make us to seek out further solutions of our own.At the beginning of chapter 22 you get the hint that he was in fact arrested, because the Hebrew says, ‘David therefore departed thence, and escaped.’ The word ‘escaped’ there in the Hebrew is a word which is used for escape from a stronghold, dungeon, or prison. So although the text doesn’t say he has been put in prison, it more or less implies it. He has been flung into jail to rot. There, as you read in the Book of Psalms, he comes to his senses. Psalm 34 and Psalm 56, which are the psalms of deliverance from this particular captivity, imply that that arrest lasted some time. There he turned his attention and his heart back to his God, and he prayed for deliverance, and was able to make his escape. The drama of that escape and the way in which the Lord enabled him to make that escape, are not recorded in the Scripture. But he did make that escape, and it was a way provided by the Lord. So God restores him, and in chapter 22 then you get a new phase.

Application

Some years ago I spoke to a pastor who was being greatly blessed of God, but various circumstances had conspired together, and his reaction was to give up. Nobody wanted him to give up, apart from a few adversaries, but he was overcome. The only way out was to resign his work and to go to such and such a place, and do such and such a thing. It was a foolish solution and a completely unwarranted action, but that is what he wanted to do. It was parallel with what David was doing. The devil can bring us into a foolish situation like that, if we let him. We can fall rapidly an awful long way, by skipping devotions, allowing our solid trust to be eroded away. It can have results we never expected, and a loss of faith on a large scale. You feel down? Will you turn to the world for entertainment? Go back to the old debased music? There are consequences. Faith is being eroded, and it might collapse altogether.

‘David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam.’ When you read the narrative in 1 Samuel, you wish that more was told you, that there was more detail about the events in Gath and the escape and deliverance. And there are additional details in different passages, and one of them is in Psalm 34. Psalm 34 has the inscription, ‘A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed’. Abimelech is a name found in Genesis and Judges, and it means ‘father of the king’ or ‘my father is king’. It is suggested that it was a title used by various Philistine kings, and in this case the king referred to was Achish (1 Samuel 21:10). There in chapter 21 we read of how David changed his behaviour to feign madness before Achish, and there can be little doubt that the title of Psalm 34 refers to the same event. But Abimelech drove him away and he departed. Psalm 34 is about just that: ‘I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad.’ Verse 4 tells us that alongside his own acts to get his deliverance, he sought the Lord: ‘And he heard me and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.’ Now he is back to faith. ‘The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.’ He is so filled with praise and gratitude. ‘Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in him.’ Well he had not trusted, but he began to trust again by the end of the story, and God had forgiven him and blessed him. And so the psalm goes on. Verse 11: ‘Come ye children, hearken unto me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord.’ Well certainly he will. David has slipped and fallen, and bought himself into terrible circumstances. But then he has called upon the Lord, and the Lord has delivered him. He seems to be saying to us, ‘I had to learn the hard way, so that you don't have to learn the hard way.’ Never let your faith in the Lord slip. Maintain holiness, verse 12. Watch your tongue, verse 13. It was his tongue that let him down in the first place. ‘Depart from evil and do good.’ You don't have to fear the outcome, verse 15. The eyes of the Lord are always upon you. They are ‘upon the righteous, and his ears open unto their cry. The face of the Lord is against them that do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.’ And then the promise of answers to prayer in verse 17. The need for contrition and repentance for sin, verse 18. ‘The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.’ His heart was broken by the situation that he bought himself into. He had a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.

Psalm 56 was also written at this time, and in it we can see the attitude of David. The inscription over the Psalm makes it clear that the Philistines took him in Gath. So either they took him to the king and he was under arrest when he went, or there was some arrangement with the king of Gath, but the subordinate officers of state suspected him and arrested him. Here he prays, ‘Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me. ² Mine enemies would daily swallow me up.’ He is in tremendous danger. He is surely going to be executed. In verse 3: ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’ The Spirit of God is working in his heart, and he is more like the David of former times. He is coming back to trust. He has tried to lie his way out of the situation, and that didn't help him: only with bread and a sword, but it put Ahimelech’s life in grave danger. Verse 4: ‘In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.’ He is recounting his past blessings. He is turning to praise even in the midst of his terror. What an example of how to handle a dangerous and difficult situation, and his worship emboldens him. He complains again in verse 5: ‘Every day they wrest my words.’ You can see behind the words, they seem to be interrogating him. ‘All their thoughts are against me for evil. They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.’ They give him some sort of liberty, but he knows that eyes are peering at him from everywhere. ‘Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God. ⁸ Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?’ It is an expression of his repentance and his regret and his dismay at what he has done. ‘When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.’ He has remembered the promise at his anointing: that God will have him to be king, and that includes a promise: if God is going to make him king, he is surely going to be kept. ‘In God will I praise his word: in the LORD will I praise his word.’ He is now able to praise God and put confidence in him, because the outcome will be God's will. ‘In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.’ That psalm is a wonderful psalm in time of distress and confusion and difficulty.

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1 Samuel 21:10 Commentary and Bible Study