SAUL’S JEALOUS-DAVID'S MARRIAGE.
1Sa 18:1-30.
THE conqueror of Goliath had been promised, as his reward, the
eldest daughter of the king in marriage. The fulfillment of that
promise, if not utterly neglected, was at least delayed; but if
David lost the hand of the king's daughter, he gained, what could
not have been promised - the heart of the king's son. It was little
wonder that ''the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." Besides all else about
David that was attractive to Jonathan as it was attractive to
everyone, there was that strongest of all bonds, the bond of a
common, all-prevailing faith, faith in the covenant God of Israel,
that had now shown itself in David in overwhelming strength, as it
had shown itself in Jonathan some time before at Michmash.
To Jonathan David must indeed have appeared a man after his own
heart. The childlike simplicity of the trust he had reposed in God
showed what a profound hold his faith had of him, how entirely it
ruled his life. What depths of congeniality the two young men must
have discovered in one another; in what wonderful agreement they
must have found themselves respecting the duty and destiny of the
Hebrew people! That Jonathan should have been so fascinated at that
particular moment shows what a pure heart he must have had. If we
judge aright, David's faith had surpassed Jonathan's; David had
dared where Jonathan had shrunk; and David's higher faith had
obtained the distinction that might naturally have been expected to
fall to Jonathan. Yet no shadow of jealousy darkens Jonathan's brow.
Never were hands more cordially grasped; never were congratulations
more warmly uttered. Is there anything so beautiful as a beautiful
heart? After well-nigh three thousand years, we are still thrilled
by the noble character of Jonathan, and well were it for every young
man that he shared in some degree his high nobility. Self-seekers
and self-pleasers, look at him - and be ashamed.
The friendship between David and Jonathan will fall to be adverted
to afterwards; meanwhile we follow the course of events as they are
detailed in this chapter.
One thing that strikes us very forcibly in this part of David's
history is the rapidity with which pain and peril followed the
splendid achievement which had raised him so high. The malignant
jealousy of Saul towards him appears to have sprung up almost
immediately after the slaughter of Goliath. ''When David was
returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, the women came out of
all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul,
with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music. And the women
answered one another as they played, saying, Saul hath slain his
thousands, and David his ten thousands. And Saul was very wroth, and
the saying displeased him; and he said, They have ascribed to David
ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands; and what
can he have more but the kingdom? And Saul eyed David from that day
and forward." This statement seems (like so many other statements in
Scripture narratives) to be a condensed one, embracing things that
happened at different times; it appears to denote that as soon as
David returned from killing Goliath his name began to be introduced
by the women into their songs; and when he returned from the
expeditions to which Saul appointed him when he set him over the men
of war, and in which he was wonderfully successful, then the women
introduced the comparison, which so irritated Saul, between Saul's
thousands and David's ten thousands. The truth is, that David's
experience, while Saul continued to be his persecutor, was a
striking commentary on the vanity of human life, - on the singularly
tantalizing way in which the most splendid prizes are often snatched
from men's hands as soon as they have secured them, and when they
might reasonably have expected to enjoy their fruits. The case of a
conqueror killed in the very moment of victory - of a Wolfe falling
on the Plains of Quebec, just as his victory made Britain mistress
of Canada; of a Nelson expiring on the deck of his ship, just as the
enemy's fleet was helplessly defeated, - these are touching enough
instances of the deceitfulness of fortune in the highest moments of
expected enjoyment. But there is something more touching still in
the early history of David. Raised to an eminence which he never
courted or dreamt of, just because he had such trust in God and such
regard for his country; manifesting in his new position all that
modesty and all that dutifulness which had marked him while his name
was still un- known; taking his life in his hand and plunging into
toils and risks innumerable just because he desired to be of service
to Saul and his country, - surely, if any man deserved a comfortable
home and a tranquil mind David was that man. That David should have
become the worst treated and most persecuted man of his day; that
for years and years he should have been maligned and hunted down,
with but a step between him and death; that the very services that
ought to have brought him honour should have plunged him into
disgrace, and the noble qualities that ought to have made him the
king's most trusty counselor should have made him a fugitive and an
outlaw from his presence, - all that is very strange. It would have
been a great trial to any man; it was a peculiar trial to a Hebrew.
For under the Hebrew economy the principle of temporal rewards and
punishments had a prominence beyond the common. Why was this
principle reversed in the case of David? Why was one who had been so
exemplary doomed to such humiliation and trial, - doomed to a mode
of life which seemed more suitable for a miscreant than for the man
after God's own heart?
The answer to this question cannot be mistaken now. But that answer
was not found so readily in David's time. David's early years bore a
close resemblance to that period of the career of Job when the hand
of God was heavy upon him, and thick darkness encompassed one on
whose tabernacle the candle of the Lord had previously shone very
brightly. It pleased God, in infinite love, to make David pass
through a long period of hard discipline and salutary training for
the office to which he was to be raised. The instances were
innumerable in the East of young men of promising character being
ruined through sudden elevation to supreme unchallenged power. The
case of Saul himself was a sad instance of this doleful effect. It
pleased God to take steps to prevent it from happening in the case
of the distinguished Athenian, was young, Socrates tried hard to
withhold him from public life, and to convince him that he needed a
long course of inward discipline before he could engage safely and
usefully in the conduct of public affairs. But Alcibiades had no
patience for this; he took his own way, became his own master, but
with the result that he lost at once true loftiness of aim and all
the sincerity of an upright soul. We do not need, however, to
illustrate from mere human history the benefits that arise from a
man bearing the yoke in his youth. Even our blessed Lord, David's
antitype, ''though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the
things which He suffered." And how often has the lesson been
repeated! What story is more constantly repeated than, on the one
hand, that of the young man succeeding to a fortune in early life,
learning every wretched habit of indolence and self-indulgence,
becoming the slave of his lusts, and after a miserable life sinking
into a dishonoured grave? And on the other, how often do we find, in
the biography of the men who have been an honour to their race, that
their early life was spent amid struggles and acts of self-denial
that seem hardly credible, but out of which came their resolute
character and grand conquering power? O adversity, thy features are
hard, thy fingers are of iron, thy look is stern and repulsive; but
underneath thy hard crust there lies a true heart, full of love and
full of hope; if only we had grace to believe this, in times when we
are bound with affliction and iron; if only we had faith to look
forward a very little, when, like the patriarch Job, we shall find
that, after all, He who frames our lot is ''very pitiful and of
tender mercy"!
In the case of David, God's purpose manifestly was to exercise and
strengthen such qualities as trust in God, prayerfulness,
self-command, serenity of temper, consideration for others, and the
hope of a happy issue out of all his troubles. His trials were
indeed both numerous and various. The cup of honour dashed from his
lips when he had just begun to taste it; promises the most solemn
deliberately violated, and rewards of perilous service coolly
withheld from him; faithful services turned into occasions of cruel
persecution; enforced separation from beloved friends; laceration of
feelings from Saul's cruel and bloody treatment of some who had
befriended him; calumnious charges persisted in after convincing and
generous refutation; ungrateful treatment from those he had
benefited, like Nabal; treachery from those he had delivered, like
the men of Keilah; perfidy on the part of some he had trusted, like
Cush; assassination threatened by some of his own followers, as at
Ziklag, - these and many other trials were the hard and bitter
discipline which David had to undergo in the wilderness.
And not only was David thus prepared for the great work of his
future life, but as a type of the Messiah he foreshadowed the deep
humiliation through which He was to pass on His way to His throne.
He gave the Old Testament Church a glimpse of the manner in which
''it became Him, by whom are all things and for whom are all things,
in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their
salvation perfect through suffering."
The growth of the malignant passion of jealousy in Saul is portrayed
in the history in a way painfully graphic. First, it is simply a
feeling that steals occasionally into his bosom. It needs some
outward occasion to excite it. Its first great effort to establish
itself was when Saul heard the Hebrew women ascribing to David ten
times as great a slaughter as they ascribed to Saul. We cannot but
be struck with the ruggedness of the women's compliment. To honour
David as more ready to incur risk and sacrifice for his country,
even in encounters involving terrible bloodshed, would have been
worthy of women, and worthy of good women; but to make the standard
of compliment the number of lives destroyed, the amount of
bloodshed, indicated surely a coarseness of feeling, characteristic
of a somewhat barbarous age. But the compliment was quite
significant to Saul, who saw in it a proof of the preference
entertained for David, and began to look on him as his rival in the
kingdom. The next step in the history of Saul's jealousy is its
forming itself into an evil habit that needed no outward occasion to
excite it, but kept itself alive and active by the vitality it had
acquired. ''And Saul eyed David from that day and forward" (1Sa
18:9). If Saul had been a good man, he would have been horrified at
the appearance of this evil passion in his heart; he would have
said, "Get thee behind me, Satan;" he would have striven to the
utmost to strangle it in the womb. Oh! what untold mountains of
guilt would this not have saved him in after life! And what
mountains of guilt, darkening their whole life, would the policy of
resistance and stamping out, when an evil lust or passion betrays
its presence in their heart, save to every young man and young woman
who find for the first time evidence of its vitality! But instead of
stamping it out, Saul nourished it; instead of extinguishing the
spark, he heaped fuel on the flame. And his lust, having been
allowed to conceive, was not long of bringing forth. Under a fit of
his malady, even as David was playing to him with his harp, he
launched a javelin at him, no doubt in some degree an act of
insanity, but yet betraying a very horrible spirit. Then, perhaps
afraid of himself, he removes David from his presence, and sends him
out to battle as a captain of a thousand. But David only gives fresh
proofs of his wisdom and his trustworthiness, and establishes his
hold more and more on the affections of the people. The very fact of
his wisdom, the evidence which his steady, wise, and faithful
conduct affords of God's presence with him, creates a new
restlessness in Saul, who, with a kind of devilish feeling, hates
him the more because "the Lord is with him, and is departed from
Saul."
The next stage in the career of jealousy is to ally itself with
cunning, under the pretence of great generosity. "Saul said to
David, Behold my elder daughter Merab, her will I give thee to wife;
only be thou valiant for me, and fight the Lord's battles. For Saul
said. Let not mine hand be upon him, but let the hand of the
Philistines be upon him." But cunning and treachery are close
connections, and when this promise ought to have been fulfilled,
Merab was given to Adriel the Meholathite to wife. There remained
his younger daughter Michal, who was personally attached to David.
"And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him,
and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him." The
question of dowry was a difficult one to David; but on that point
the king bade his servants set his mind at rest. "The king desireth
not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be
avenged of the king's enemies. And Saul thought to make David fall
by the hand of the Philistines."
Alas! the history of Saul's malignant passion is by no means
exhausted even by these sad illustrations of its rise and progress.
It swells and grows, like a horrid tumour, becoming uglier and
uglier continually. And the notices are very significant and
instructive which we find as to the spiritual condition of Saul, in
connection with the development of his passion. We are told that the
Lord was departed from him. When Saul was reproved by Samuel for his
transgression, he showed no signs of real repentance, he continued
consciously in a state of enmity with God, and took no steps to get
the quarrel healed. He preferred the kind of life in which he might
please himself, though he offended God, to the kind of life in which
he would have pleased God, while he denied himself. And Saul had to
bear the awful penalty of his choice. Living apart from God, all the
evil that was in his nature came boldly out, asserting itself
without let or hindrance, and going to the terrible length of the
most murderous and at the same time the meanest projects. Don't let
anyone imagine that religion has no connection with morality! Sham
religion, as we have already seen, may exist side by side with the
greatest wickedness; but that religion, the beginning of which is
the true fear of God, a genuine reverential regard for God, a true
sense of His claims on us, alike as our Creator and our Redeemer, -
that religion lays its hand firmly on our moral nature, and scares
and scatters the devices of the evil that still remains in the
heart. Let us take warning at the picture presented to us in this
chapter of the terrible results, even in the ordinary affairs of
life, of the evil heart of unbelief that departs from the living
God. The other side of the case, the effect of a true relation to
God in purifying and guiding the life, is seen in the case of David.
God being with him in all that he does, he is not only kept from
retaliating on Saul, not only kept from all devices for getting rid
of one who was so unjust and unkind to himself, but he is remarkably
obedient, remarkably faithful, and by God's grace remarkably
successful in the work given him to do. It is indeed a beautiful
period of David's life - the most blameless and beautiful of any.
The object of unmerited hatred, the victim of atrocious plots, the
helpless object of a despot's mad and ungoverned fury, yet
cherishing no trace of bitter feeling, dreaming of no violent
project of relief, but going out and in with perfect loyalty, and
straining every nerve to prove himself a laborious, faithful, and
useful servant of the master who loathed him.
The question of David's marriage is a somewhat difficult one,
appearing to involve some contradictions. First of all we read that
a daughter of Saul, along with great riches, had been promised to
the man who should kill Goliath. But after David kills him, there is
no word of this promise being fulfilled, and even afterwards, when
the idea of his being the king's son-in-law is brought forward,
there is no hint that he ought to have been so before. Are we to
understand that it was an unauthorized rumour that was told to David
(1Sa 17:25-27) when it was said that the victor was to get these
rewards? Was it that the people recalled what had been said by Caleb
about Kirjath-sepher, a town in that very neighbourhood, and
inferred that surely Saul would give his daughter to the conqueror,
as Caleb had given his? This is perhaps the most reasonable
explanation, because when David came into Saul's presence nothing of
the kind was said to him by the king; and also because, if Saul had
really promised it, there was no reason at the time why he should
not have kept his promise; nay, the impulsive nature of the king,
and the great love of Jonathan toward David, and the love with which
David inspired women, would rather have led Saul to be forward in
fulfilling it, and in constituting a connection which would then
have been pleasant to all. If it be said that this would have been a
natural thing for Saul to do, even had there been no promise, the
answer is that David was such a stripling, and even in his father's
household occupied so humble a place, as to make it reasonable that
he should wait, and gain a higher position, before any such thing
should be thought of. Accordingly, when David became older, and
acquired distinction as a warrior, his being the king's son-in-law
had become quite feasible. First, Saul proposes to give him his
elder daughter Merab. The murderous desire dictates the proposal,
for Saul already desires David's death, though he has not courage
himself to strike the blow. But when the time came, for some reason
that we do not know of Merab was given to Adriel the Meholathite.
David's action at an after period showed that he regarded this as a
cruel wrong (2Sa 3:13). Saul, however, still desired to have that
hold on David which his being his son-in-law would have involved,
and now proposed that Michal his younger daughter should be his
wife. The proposal was accepted, but David could bring no dowry for
his wife. The only dowry the king sought was a hundred foreskins of
the Philistines. And the hundred foreskins David paid down in full
tale.
What a distressing view these transactions give us of the malignity
of Saul's heart! When parents have sacrificed the true happiness of
their daughters by pressing on them a marriage of splendid misery,
the motive, however selfish and heartless, has not usually been
malignant. The marriage which Saul urged between David and Michal
was indeed a marriage of affection, but as far as he was concerned
his sin in desiring it, as affording facilities for getting rid of
him, was on that account all the greater. For nothing shows a
wickeder heart than being willing to involve another, and especially
one's own child, in a lifelong sorrow in order to gratify some
feeling of one's own. Saul was not merely trifling with the heart
and happiness of his child, but he was deliberately sacrificing both
to his vile passion. The longer he lives, Saul becomes blacker and
blacker. For such are they from whom the Spirit of the Lord has
departed.
We may well contrast David and Saul at this period of their lives;
but what a strange thing it is that further on in life David should
have taken this leaf from Saul's book, and acted in this very spirit
towards Uriah the Hittite? Not that Uriah was, or was to be,
son-in-law to the king; alas! there was an element of blackness in
the case of David which did not exist in that of Saul; but it was in
the very spirit now manifested by Saul towards himself that David
availed himself of Uriah's bravery, of Uriah's faithfulness, of
Uriah's chivalrous readiness to undertake the most perilous
expeditions - availed himself of these to compass his death. What do
we learn from this? The same seeds of evil were in David's heart as
in Saul's. But at the earlier period of David's life he walked
humbly with God, and God's Spirit poured out on him not only
restrained the evil seed, but created a pure, holy, devoted life, as
if there were nothing in David but good. Afterwards, grieving the
Holy Spirit, David was left for a time to himself, and then the very
evil that had been so offensive in Saul came creeping forth drew
itself up and claimed that it should prevail. It was a blessed thing
for David that he was not beyond being arrested by God's voice, and
humbled by His reproof. He saw whither he had been going; he saw the
emptiness and wickedness of his heart; he saw that his salvation
depended on God in infinite mercy forgiving his sin and restoring
His Spirit, and for these blessings he pled and wrestled as Jacob
had wrestled with the angel at Peniel. So we may well see that for
anyone to trust in his heart is to play the fool; our only trust
must be in Him who is able to keep us from falling, and to present
us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
"He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much
fruit, for without Me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in Me,
he is cast forth as a root and withered, and men take them and cast
them into the fire and they are burned.''
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