1 Samuel 30:7 Commentary and Bible Study

‘David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod.’ Now this is interesting. The priest, the acting high priest, and the ephod, the means of seeking the guidance of God through the high priest, had been with David all the time. It had clearly been on the journey to see the king of Gath fifty miles to the north. It had been on the return journey fifty miles back; it was still with David. If it hadn't been, then Abiathar would have been taken with everybody else by the Amalekites, and the ephod would be gone and nowhere to be found. Therefore you ask yourself, why hadn't David consulted it up until this point? It is fairly clear that he hadn't done so; only now that he strengthened himself in the Lord, does he seek the guidance of God. He asks the Lord, ‘Shall I pursue?’ It's an urgent question. After all, this Amalekite band is enormous. It isn't one or two hundred marauding people. There are at least at least two or three thousand of them; David only had six hundred men, and only four hundred of them were fit to fight. The others were old men, we imagine, who were exhausted from the journey. They were, we have been told, all malcontents, not crack soldiers, and that is all he had. So he asks the Lord, ‘Shall I pursue?’ and the answer of the Lord through the ephod and the priest is, ‘Pursue and you will take them, and you will repossess all that they have removed.’ So it is the first time that the priest, the acting high priest, and the ephod, the means of grace, had been near him all that time: one year and four months. Only now do we read that he consults them.It is only now that David gets a mighty deliverance; he consults the Lord and receives a clear answer. ‘And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David. ⁸ And David enquired at the LORD, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, ‘Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.’ That was a message for David and the six hundred who were with him. David is now trusting the Lord again. He has got the assurance of God. ‘I will go with four hundred men and confront this mighty force.’ Nevertheless, his troubles are not over. There is still going to be a test of faith. Now from the scale of the destruction and the theft, it would have been clear to David that there were perhaps thousands of Amalekites, a raiding party, one would think, of at least two, three, four, five thousand, and that is confirmed when you see how long it took for David and his men to deal with them all. So this requires faith. And then he discovers that one third of his men are not capable of pursuing the Amalekites. When they come to the brook Besor, some of the men can go no further and cannot make the crossing. Why not? Well, the fifty miles north and the fifty miles back in a few days had just knocked them for six; they were not up to it. They were probably not all young by any means. So that too is a test of faith.