So lesson six here, we're in the second half of our Bible study. Lesson six is entitled, David in Exile. This is the final third of the book of 1 Samuel. We're going to look at chapters 21 through 31 to finish this book.
And there's a lot of drama. There's a lot of activity going on because David is running hither and fitter everywhere. He can using all of his wits, all of his cunning, all of his intelligence to survive. Saul and his murderous intent.
Saul does not give up easily. And so David's really going to have to stay sharp in order to survive. So there's a ton of things that happen here. It's going to be my challenge to try to summarize the most significant of these events.
I do have the notes available for you as we go through this, you will follow along all these different dramatic escapades. I would also like to point out that through the commentaries that I recommend to you in the syllabus, I've also pulled the various Psalms that David wrote during these different chapters of his life. So you're going to find in the notes and you'll also find them in the commentaries from which I got these references, the various references of the Psalms. Okay.
So unfortunately, I don't have the time to go through these Psalms and read them. Otherwise, this would be a much, much longer lesson. The whole Bible study would be much longer as a matter of fact, as we go through the various Psalms that David wrote during these times in his life. But what I'd encourage you to do is to read the actual narrative, to study that, to prayerfully look over that and understand what's happening.
But when you look at the Psalms, it's a beautiful insight into what David was feeling and thinking and praying and dealing with from the inside view. Because when we read for a Samuel and we go through all the seconds and the next number of lessons, it's really interesting to see what he's dealing with, the highs and the lows, the ups and the downs, victories and defeats, his virtue and his vice, all this stuff. But then when you look at the Psalms, you've got the inside view, like what is he feeling? And it's a very fruitful way to look at these passages.
So I just want to draw that to your attention. I apologize that I can't go through the Psalms. We'll do that when we go through the Bible study on the book of Psalms in the future. All right.
So I just want to clarify that. Now, in these dramatic chapters of David running around, I think it's good to have a clear point of focus as to what the golden thread is. It's not just Saul trying to kill David and David trying to survive as best as he can. There is a deeper theme going on.
I'm going to pull a quote from your Catholic introduction to Old Testament from Petrian Bergzma. And I'm going to start off with this quote. And this is going to be the structure, the foundation, I should say the golden thread for understanding all of this. And I think it'll be very fruitful for you.
So this is what they say. Well, the sacred author contrasts David and Saul in their practice of cassette, an important biblical concept describing covenant fidelity. The loyalty, love and mercy expected between covenant partners. David is an admirable practitioner, excuse me, of cassette, showing mercy to Saul even when it was in his power to slay him.
Saul on the other hand, consistently violates cassette towards David through his many attempts on his life. End quote. Now, this is really interesting. The word cassette is important.
I talked about this many other Bible studies. cassette is a kind of a catch all word of God's abundant mercy, steadfast, merciful, abundant love. Like there's different ways to interpret it, but it's a word pregnant with all these beautiful concepts. So, but it's a word that's related to the covenant.
So God through the covenant shows Israel all this said his steadfast covenant to mercy and love. But if you're in a covenant with someone else, whether a spouse or a brother through the covenant like Jonathan and David, or whatever it might be, two different partners in covenant and have it treated together, you're supposed to show them covenant fidelity because your brothers with them. There's kinship through covenant. So when you're in covenant with someone, you're supposed to treat them well, right?
You're not supposed to try to kill them. You're supposed to respect them and cherish them and look out for them. Well, the story that's going on right now, and it definitely goes back a few chapters here. But it's certainly the underlying theme and golden thread for these chapters is that Saul is terrible, absolutely miserable, at following his covenant to obligations towards David.
Keep in mind that David is Saul's son in law. Saul gave Michal his daughter to David in marriage after David went out and killed 200 Philistines, remember him brought kind of morbid, kind of brought the 204 scans back to Saul and Saul only needed 100. So David's amazing. He doubles down.
It's a fantastic story, quite humorous, I believe it, very funny. And so he is Saul's son of law. So he has this cussed or Saul should have this covenant to steadfast love towards the son of law. But also in a secondary way, I think you could argue that Jonathan and David have established a covenant of brotherhood as well.
So essentially, David is related to Saul by covenant through his daughter, Michal, and his son, Jonathan. All right, so it was, I mean, that's a very, very powerful argument for why Saul should be faithful to David through covenant, I said, but I mean, generally speaking, you don't want to go around killing innocent people. So I've got a lot of problems as we go through this story. Those problems were in nut form, they're in kernel form, seed form back in previous chapters.
We had all these warning signs. Now it's going to get very, very ugly. All right. So he's on faithful.
David is very faithful. David has the chance to kill Saul not once, but twice. And I think you can maybe argue there are some other indirect references to how David could take care of Saul. If he wanted to, but David is always showing in words and in deeds that he is a faithful son in law.
Okay. So this is the foundation to read all of these stories over and over and over again. Saul proves to be worthless and sinful and murderous and vicious, but David is completely opposite. All right.
So keep in mind, and I think it'll be very fruitful for your reading as we go through all this stuff. Okay. So where do we leave off? We left off in chapter 20, which is when David and Jonathan renew their covenant of brotherhood and friendship.
And it's very, very clear through Jonathan's help that Saul does indeed intend to kill David. In fact, Saul almost killed Jonathan by throwing spirit him. So they part ways and now we have David officially in exile. He's never going to return back to court with Saul for the next.
Some people would say, you know, seven, eight years, give or take. It's hard to say if David became king at 30 and he, and I'll talk about this in the next lesson, if David is king at 30 and he rains from Judah for seven years, and then he rains over all of Israel for 33 years for a total of 40, David is king, basically from the age of 30 to 70. And so if David fought Goliath when he was a teenager, a couple years goes by, then he becomes the armor bear in the court musician for Saul for a couple of years. And then he goes into exile.
It's give or take. He's running for his life or what six, seven, eight years, something like that. That seems to be very reasonable as a theory. Looking at the little pieces of evidence here in scripture, but so we got six, seven, eight years or so of him running around living in the wilderness, being captain of a posse of men trying to survive by picking off Israel's enemies and living off their plunder.
So it's very dramatic. It's very difficult. And again, I encourage you to check out those songs as we go through them. So where we are now is in chapter 21 verse one.
Let's read a few verses here. This is a very interesting event here at the beginning of this time in exile. Verse one, David came to knob to a hymnalec, the priest and a hymn that came to meet David trembling and said him, why are you alone and no one with you? And David said, Hill, a hymn like the priest, the king has charged me with a matter and said to me, let no one know anything of the matter with which I sent you.
I made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then what if you have a hand, give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here. Right. So David, again, you see back in chapter 20, he really had to flee with haste.
He had no time to prepare to go back to the castle of the palace or the house or whatever it was to get all of his stuff. He just had to run quickly once Jonathan revealed for sure, soles, murderous intent. So he has nothing. He has no armor.
He has no food. He has no provisions, just a few men to help him out. So he's going to him, like, and pretending that he's on a secret mission because he doesn't want to endanger him. He doesn't want to give him a like plausible deniability, right?
He has and he knows nothing. He can say nothing and just keeps him safe. It's going to keep him like safe. Hopefully we'll see how that doesn't work out.
So him like responds, I have no common bread, but only holy bread. If only the young men have kept themselves from women. And David answered the pre-us of a truth. Women have been kept from us always when I go on expedition.
How much more now? So in other words, yes, we've all kept from women. So we could take the bread. He gave it.
It was the bread of the presence or the show bread that has different names. If then down in verse eight, David says, I have no sword or spirit. What you got? He's got only have the sword of Goliath, whom you slew.
And David says, great. I'll take that. OK. All right.
So here he is getting help from a Hemalec as best as he can, making him believe that he is on mission from Saul. All right, fine. So a him like gives David, interestingly, this bread of the presence or is also known as the show bread. So what is this?
The bread of the presence, if you go back to Leviticus and Exodus and I did all this on those Bibles, they talked about it a lot more, but suffice it to say, the tabernacle, later the temple is divided into three parts, the outer core of the holy place and the holy place in the holy place, where the priests, only the priests could go. Remember, only the high priests can go into the holy of holies once a year on the day of atonement, but the priests can go into the holy place and to serve. And there are three things in there. There is the altar of incense.
There is the candelabra and then there is the table of the bread of the presence called bread in the presence of God. There's all kinds of beautiful theology as to why you got bread in the presence of God. You just got to check out the Bible study that we do on Exodus and Leviticus to go into all that beautiful symbolism and typology. So vice it to say there are 12 loaves and every Sabbath, the priests go in and only the priests are allowed to eat it.
They go into the holy place. They eat the bread in the presence of God and then they replace it with fresh loaves. So abstinence was required to do this, which is why Hemalec says to David, well, I'm going to give it to your men, which is a huge deal to allow David to eat this holy bread and also to allow his soldiers as men to do it also. That's a big deal.
There's a concession being made here, which I'll talk about in a second, but you got to be abstinent from women because to eat something holy and sacred like this requires a ritual purity. And for reasons I can't get into right now to engage in marital intercourse, it makes you temporarily, richly, impure again, go back to Leviticus for the details on that. But David says, yes, we've observed all of these things here. We're richly, pure, no big deal.
And so the Hemalec allows him to eat it. Okay. So this is really interesting. This whole story here, how David is given permission to really eat the sacred bread.
And Jesus quotes this story in Matthew chapter 12 and the other related passages and the gospels to make a very important point to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who, you know, got a huge problem with Jesus, pretty much doing anything on the Sabbath. So on flip ahead here, in Matthew chapter 12, I want to read this, take the time for a second and read this story. And then I'll share with you a quote from you in the Bible. So it says Matthew chapter 12, verse one, at that time, Jesus went through the grain field on the Sabbath.
His disciples were hungry and they began to pluck heads of grain to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. And he said, have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him, how we entered the house of God and ate the show bread, bread of the presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, more for those who were with him, but only the priests, or have you not read in the law on how this, on the, how on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profing the Sabbath and are guiltless. I tell you something greater than the temple is here.
And he goes on to this really beautiful. So the point here is that Jesus quotes this whole story here, essentially to make a long story short, not turn this into a Bible study on the book of Matthew, the gospel of Matthew. Jesus is saying that Jesus, he is the new David, he is the new king. He's greater than the Sabbath and he's greater than the temple.
So if David could have permission to receive this holy showbread for a good cause, then surely Jesus, who is the fulfillment of all these things with his apostles, who are the new men of the kingdom, they can also be held guiltless if they're just plucking some simple heads of grain on the Sabbath, which by itself, in and of itself, is completely permissible. It's just a Pharisees have completely got their priorities mixed up. And that's again, another conversation for another time. So Jesus is the new David and his men with him are essentially going to be the new priests who are able to eat in the presence of God, who is Jesus himself.
So check out this little quote from the new of our Bible. And there's a lot to say here. So hopefully I'm summarizing this well for you. There's a hymn of that is going beyond the letter of the law and is acknowledging that David as sovereign has a right to use it as food in the new testament, quoting the passage we just read in Matthew 12 and the parallel passages, this generous interpretation of the law is praise and is applied to the law of the Sabbath.
If David, the sovereign and Lord did not break the law by the Holy bread by giving it to his men to eat by the same token, Jesus, who is Lord of the Sabbath, is not breaking the law by allowing his disciples to put grains of wheat on the Sabbath to eat them. And the Father see in these actions of David, if they're of Christ, end quote. So this is beautiful here. Right.
So Jesus is the new David. He is not breaking the law by allowing his own men to eat these heads of grain, because he's greater than the temple. He's greater than the Sabbath. All right.
So they're eating. And of course, the bread connection here, I think is really beautiful. They're eating heads of grain, which is, of course, all about bread and eating in the presence of Jesus Christ, who then references the true bread of the presence, which is the Eucharist. It's really incredible.
There's a lot to think about and a lot to reflect on here. Jesus is the new law, the new temple and his men with him. Well, I would actually add, stop myself a second. I had one other little detail here that I think is just worth reflecting on how David says how his men are richly pure.
They're absent that they haven't been with women. I think you could make in the overarching structure of scripture, you could make the argument that this is a prefigurement of priestly celibacy. Right. So if David points forward to Jesus and David's men who are abstinent from women points forward to Jesus' apostles, you could make the connection here that priestly celibacy is hidden in these passages.
Then it's going to be the preferred means by which the apostles and their successors serve the church and serve Christ in person. So good stuff there. All right. Now, are we going to move on here?
There's too much to say. David receives all of these provisions and help and assistance from the hymnalecta priest. He gets the Goliath sword. Goliath, remember, is from Gath.
That's going to be interesting for just a minute here. But there's a problem, a little warning that first seven tells us in the midst of all of this, there's a man by the name of Doeg. He is an Edomite. Now, Edomite descends from Esau.
So they are Edomites, Edomites, even means red. Edom, because he was born a little red baby, hairy baby. Looks like the joke, he was born a little red Ewok or Elmo, even better, like he's born a little red Elmo. So he's given the name Edom, but also because he sold his birthright for a pot of red pottage.
So he's called Edomite. All this descendants called Edomite. So they're related to the Israelites. They're like distant cousins.
So Doeg is an Edomite and he is the head of Saul's herdsmen. And he's going to become an informer as we're going to see here really soon. So David rushes as far as quickly as he can to be able to get away from Saul in the time of exile and where does he go first? Interestingly, he goes to the city of Gath, a Philistine city.
Gath, as I just said, is the city of Goliath. So this is going to be problematic and very dangerous for David to go to the city of the great champion that he slew. So at this point, if it's at the beginning of his exile, it's hard to say, like I was pointing out earlier, let's just say, give or take four or five years prior to this, maybe he kills Goliath. And now he's going to the very city from which Goliath came.
That's going to be very, very dangerous. And everybody recognizes him. They're like, well, hold on a second. And verse 11 is this not David, the king of the land.
So notice how David's reputation as really the de facto king has spread even to Philistine lands. You know, in the fact they referenced the ladies with their pom poms singing and dancing that Saul has slain his thousands. David is 10,000. So everybody knows from Saul, I would argue back in chapter 18 to Jonathan, to the rest of the Israelites, even to the Philistines.
And I was going to share with you later on Abigail, there's all kinds of references. Everybody knows that David is the king. And so this is why Saul is trying to kill him. And so the Philistines, like this is the king and he's a man who killed Goliath.
And what are we going to do about him? David was afraid. And so he became he feigned in verse 13, himself mad. He pretended to be insane and making marks on the doors, scratching the doors in the gates and letting spit run down his beard like he really should get an Oscar for his performance on pretending to be mad.
And everyone leaves him alone, like whether they hate him or they want to kill him or they admire him or whatever they do, they just want to stay away from him because maybe he's possessed, you know, maybe he's on richly unclean in some way and he's done something wrong. And now he's just reduced to this insane, blubbering man who is no longer a threat to them. It's very genius on David's part to pretend that he is insane like this. If in my extension, the presumption is they're not going to want to touch him and be contaminated spiritually or ritually or physically in any kind of way.
So he pretends to be insane. It's it works for a little bit. And he's going to flee in verse 22 chapter 22 verse one and following. He's going to flee to the wilderness.
And at this point, he now has a band of 400 men. So previously in chapter 21, he just got a few men. Right. He goes to him, let with a few men.
He's given permission to take the Holy Bread. He moves on to gath and then he's like, you know, some time goes by a little bit. He can presume and he has 400 men and these aren't necessarily the creme belecreme of society here. They're all of the disenfranchised.
So check this out. Chapter 22 verse two, everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt and everyone who was discontented gathered to him and he became captain over them. And there was with him about 400 men. So it occurred to me in preparing this at least one day, it occurred to me.
I don't remember when you got all these disenfranchised of society. Those who are in debt, you know, to somebody else, which is never a good thing. Those who are discontented with society or just the rejects of society, they all go to David. He becomes captain over them and leads them.
This to me seems like an echo and a foreshadowing of Jesus and his disciples initially, right? The people that he goes after and calls to him. Jesus gets into trouble all the time for guess what, for going after the sinners and the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the Gentiles and doing all these things that the Pharisees hated. So to me, it seems very typological that the disenfranchised who follow David are pointing forward to all the various sinners in the rejects of society in Jesus' time, who follow Jesus.
And Jesus becomes the leader of a new and growing church. Beginning with all the sinners, obviously the Pharisees are sinners too, but they don't think so. They think that they're the crème de crème of society. Now granted in time, everyone will convert by not by everyone.
I mean, from every rank of society, they will convert and follow Christ. But I think it's interesting how Jesus really calls to himself those who are rejected, just like David brought to himself and led all those who were rejected or had problems. I think that's kind of cool. Alrighty, so he next flees to Moab, which is interesting.
That's another foreign, you know, power at the time, the Moabites. They're not too friendly with the Israelites, historically speaking. But David takes his family to the king of Moab and asks for a favor. And it's really interesting, like, why would the king of Moab help David?
And we don't exactly know, but one speculation would be that, remember, David descends from Ruth, his great-great-grandmother, or great-grandmother, great-grandmother. They'll check that. But Ruth is a Moabite. And so David's dad, Jesse, was even closer related to Ruth.
And so his whole family is like half Moabite, so to speak. So it may be that David has support from the Moabites because of his blood relations. It may simply be speculating a little bit that the king of Moab hates all. And the king of Moab is going to support the new rising king against Saul.
And by helping David's family, the king of Moab might have a little bit of favors. He's going to seek a cash in the future. So there's different thoughts behind that. But it is significant that David feels so in danger that he's got to take his family, his father, his mother, and anyone else in the family to go to the king of Moab and protect them.
That's how dangerous the situation is.