I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 21-24.

    When Ahimelech the priest saw David arrive by himself, he trembled, which suggests that he was frightened by seeing a servant of Saul arrive alone. This makes me wonder if Saul had a reputation for having people killed for reasons that people did not understand. The more often I read this passage the more convinced I am that Ahimelech was eager to assist David out of fear of Saul rather than out of love for David. The story about being on a secret mission for Saul which David gives Ahimelech as his reason for being there supports this view of the situation. This suggests that Saul had killed other people in a manner similar to what he had attempted with David.

    On previous days I talked about how Saul’s insecurities undermined his ability as a leader. Today we see what happens with a leader who never deals with his insecurities but allows them to eat at them. There is more to it than that, we see here how Saul’s subordinates allowed, perhaps even encouraged his paranoia to grow. When Saul berates his lieutenants, one of whom David was just a short time earlier, for allowing David to get away none of them challenged his contention that David was plotting to kill him, not even when Saul said that his own son had encouraged David to do so. None of them even spoke up when Saul ordered Doeg the Edomite to kill the priests. So, we have Saul who, with the passive resistance of his chief lieutenants, kills those he perceives, with no real basis, to be plotting against him. Then, in contrast, we have David, refusing to kill Saul when presented with the opportunity, despite the encouragement by his chief lieutenants to do so and the clear evidence that Saul was actually plotting his death.
    The passage tells us that David refused to kill Saul because he was God’s anointed king over Israel. I believe that this was genuinely David’s reason, but I also believe that David realized that if he killed Saul it would lead to the collapse of the people of Israel as a unified people. David, by this time, knew that he had been anointed by God to replace Saul as king, but he needed to wait for God to make that happen. I mentioned in one of my previous posts that Saul was a pragmatist. In Saul’s case his pragmatism was a weakness because it was not informed by faith in God. David was also a pragmatist, but his pragmatism was informed by his faith in God. It was David’s faith in God which led him to be willing to confront Goliath, but it was his pragmatism which led him to reject using the weapons and armor of a warrior to do so.

    There is one other thing I want to point out about David as a leader. It was his love of his people, the Israelites, which led him to march to the defense of the people of Keilah when the Philistines were raiding them. David did this despite the danger involved of putting himself where Saul could pin him down. But he did not just act out of his concern for the people, he asked God for guidance first. Then when Saul began to march to trap him there, David did not just run away. First, he consulted God to see if his judgment was correct. In sum, David made plans based on his best calculation of the strategic and tactical situation, then, before he acted, he consulted God for guidance acknowledging that no matter how good of a commander he was there were things known only to God.