1 Samuel 22:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Samuel 22:1

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Now in chapter 22, if you don't read Psalms 34 and 56 (see comment on 1 Samuel 21:10), it may seem as though God is spoiling David after his shocking behaviour of chapter 21. But if you read these psalms in between those chapters, you realise that there was a period of imprisonment, and much remorse, and a great seeking after God, which led to the gracious renewal of God's care for him in chapter 22. It helps you as a child of faith to plot there the familiar ways of the Lord. So in chapter 22 you have a new phase, and it is the chapter of the cave of Adullam. Now he has Gad the seer with him, somebody trained in Samuel’s School of the Prophets (verse 5), a preacher of the word. This is one of the most glorious passages in the life of David. He is in the cave Adullam. This is a region some seventeen miles south-west of Jerusalem. There appears to be a great cave there, or a group of caves, and what an encouragement to David that now people are joining with him! He recovers his faith – ‘When his brethren, and all his father's house heard it, they went down thither to him.’ Who were they? People from his own family circle – his mother was a godly woman – and there were people around him in his home area who went with him. Of course his family goes, because not only are they inclined to trust him and they know he's going to be king – even those difficult brothers of his – but their own lives are at risk now, because Saul is quite likely to destroy his family in his venom and his hatred. But surely there was some loyalty to him as well. ‘And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented [embittered], gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.’ What is happening here? It is not conceivable that all the inadequates of Israel. and the people who had failed in their lives. and who were in trouble and rejected, or had fled their villages, suddenly should go to David. The implication is that these were people who were particularly discontented in the reign of Saul, and in some way they had been the hurt by Saul. Perhaps these are the people whose lands had been seized, so that they could be given to Saul's servants and lords and generals. Perhaps these are people who, in other ways had been wronged by Saul. That is more the implication: everyone that had a grudge against Saul. They weren't necessarily competent soldiers. They weren't necessarily going to be that useful to David in his flight and defending of himself. But they certainly were motivated, and they were against Saul. At least they understood that there should be a new king, and perhaps there was far more faith in them than that, and they understood something of what was going on. But they gathered themselves to David, and no doubt some of their families too. They are quite a mixed bag: people in debt, people who are discontented. They are really rather good people. We are highly optimistic about people who were discontented in those days; they would be people with just the right ideas, you would think, the reactionaries, people who were just longing for something better, spiritually. He had many of those. What an army was assembled there! We are going to get such a picture of grace from this narrative, and the remarkable hand of God as you go through it.‘And David went thence to Mizpeh of Moab.’ He has some relationship with the king of Moab, and not surprisingly, because Ruth the Moabite – Ruth, of the Book of Ruth – is David's great grandmother. So there is Moabite blood in David, and obviously he had some relationship with the king of Moab, and he was able to lodge his ageing parents with them. He was going to be a man on the run. He wasn't thinking of taking his ageing parents through all that difficulty, all that hardship. So he lodges them in the Royal Court of Moab. ‘And he said unto the King of Moab, Let my father and my mother, I pray thee, come forth and be with you’ – at that time anyway – ‘till I know what God will do for me. And he bought them before the King of Moab, and they dealt with him all the while that David was in the hold in the cave Adullam.’

Application

Now if you were assembling a military force, which you were going to lead, I doubt whether these would be the qualifications that you'd ask for, that you want in your force: people in debt, people who are bitter, and people who are discontented. There may have been clever people among them, all kinds of people: who knows? But not necessarily soldiers or people with any experience. Nevertheless, that is the group that came to David, and they were going to be his defenders and his helpers in the time ahead. The old writers used to love to take this second verse as a type of the church. That is us: servants of God. But we were gathered out of every possible kind of unsatisfactory human condition. What a rabble we are in our backgrounds! As sinners against God, people with darkened minds, untrained in spiritual things, and yet God in mighty grace has recruited us, saved us, gathered us together, to be his instruments and to be his redeemed band of people to serve him and live for him. So here is David. And the son of David also, Jesus Christ, gathers together those in distress, and indebted to God, and discontented with life.

There was – as we see in the following chapters – a tremendous bond between these people. There is no union better than a union of suffering, people who all have needs, people who all share some ache of heart, some great lament or desire. As Krummacher says in his ‘Life of David’, ‘People who leave church fellowships lightly are people who have never been in the bond of suffering in that church.’ In other words it has never cost them anything to be in that church fellowship. They have never bled with it; they have never wept with it; they have never fought with it. They may appear to have been involved in Christian service, but it has evidently all been kept within a level that was easy and enjoyable for them, because people who suffer with a cause, and ache with a cause, and feel with a cause, are part of this bond, this union of suffering. These four hundred in the cave of Adullam were like this.

There is another lesson here too. Think of the family of Jesse. Bishop Hall picks this up and makes much of it. The family of Jesse, the father, Jesse himself – a country squire with his tweeds, or whatever the Israelites had by way of equivalent – and the brothers, who didn't make a very good start; they were very scornful of their younger brother. But various of these people gradually begin to be rather proud of the idea that a member of their family lived at court, that he was an armour bearer, that he was the one who had taken the life of Goliath, and everybody sings in the liturgy: ‘Saul was killed his thousands, but David is ten thousands.’ They are rather impressed, and suddenly they are very proud of this David: ‘Of course, we always knew that he would achieve this, and we always recognised it in him’ – this great identification and affection. But there is a problem. Now he is a fugitive and he is on the run, then so also are they, because they are related to him. There is a cost in being related to success; there is always a price to pay. We must remember that if we want to be associated with the instrumentality of the Lord as a unit of God's people. We think, ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful: to have some part and some association, if God opened the windows of heaven, and poured out his Spirit, and quickened up the pace of conversions and did wonderful things.’ But just remember, there is going to be a price to pay, and you are going to have to stand with the cause in very difficult times as well as triumphant times. David’s relatives soon discovered that: they would wind up in the cave of Adullam with him, and have to identify with him. Let us hope they did so cheerfully and gladly; let’s hope they had come to spiritual light. So it was no light burden for them to identify with him.

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1 Samuel 22:1 Commentary and Bible Study