The Friend and the Hunted Man

After the giant, David could not go back to the sheep. The king kept him at the palace, and gave him soldiers to lead, and he did well at everything he was given — and everybody in Israel loved him. And that was the trouble. When the army came home, the women came out of all the towns to meet them, dancing, with drums and cymbals, and this is what they sang: “Saul has struck down his thousands — and David his ten thousands!” And Saul heard it, and it went into him like a splinter. ‘They have given David ten thousands,’ he said, ‘and me only thousands.’ And from that day on the king watched David out of the corner of his eye. But Saul had a son named Jonathan. And Jonathan should have hated David most of all — because Jonathan was the prince, and one day the crown should have come to him, and here was this shepherd everybody sang about. And instead Jonathan loved him. The two of them became such friends that Jonathan loved David like his own soul, and he gave David his own robe and his own sword and his own bow, and they made a promise to each other in front of the Lord.

The king grew worse. One evening the dark spirit came on him, and he sat in his house with his spear in his hand while David played the harp for him — and he suddenly threw the spear, hard, to pin David to the wall. David slipped aside, and the spear stuck in the plaster. Jonathan tried to mend it. He went to his father and spoke up for his friend: “Do not do wrong to David. He has never done anything against you — everything he has done has been good for you. He took his life in his hands and killed the Philistine, and the Lord gave Israel a great victory, and you saw it and were glad. Why would you do wrong and kill a man for nothing?” And Saul listened, and swore, ‘As the Lord lives, he will not die.’ And for a while it was all right again. But it did not last. The spear came a second time, and that night the king sent men to watch David’s house and kill him in the morning. David’s wife Michal — who was Saul’s own daughter — said to him, “If you do not get away tonight, tomorrow you will be dead.” And she let him down out of the window on a rope in the dark, and then she took the household images and laid them in the bed and put a goat’s-hair pillow at the head and pulled the blanket over them, so that when the men came in the morning it looked like a man asleep. It bought David half a day. He was gone.

David came running to Jonathan and said, “What have I done? What wrong is there in me, that your father wants my life?” And Jonathan could not believe it — his father told him everything, surely he would know. So the two of them made a plan to find out for certain. Tomorrow was a feast day, and David was supposed to eat at the king’s table. David would hide out in the fields instead, and Jonathan would watch what his father said about the empty place. And Jonathan said, “Come out to the field on the third day, to the place you hid before, and wait by the pile of stones. I will shoot three arrows off to one side, as if I were shooting at a mark, and I will send the boy to fetch them. If I call out, ‘The arrows are on this side of you, come and get them’ — then it is safe. But if I call, ‘The arrows are beyond you, further out’ — then go, because the Lord is sending you away.” And he said one thing more, and it is the kind of thing you only say to a friend you may not see again: “And whatever happens, be kind to me while I live — and never take your kindness away from my family, ever. The Lord is witness between me and you, and between your children and mine, forever.”

So David hid in the field, and the feast came, and the king sat down in his usual place by the wall — and David’s seat was empty. The first day Saul said nothing. The second day he said, “Why has the son of Jesse not come to the table, yesterday or today?” And Jonathan gave the answer they had agreed on: David had asked to go home to Bethlehem for his family’s yearly sacrifice. And Saul went white with rage. He shouted at his own son that he was taking sides with the son of Jesse against his own family, and that as long as David lived Jonathan would never be king, and, ‘Send for him — he is a dead man.’ And Jonathan said, “Why should he die? What has he done?” And his father threw the spear at him too. So Jonathan got up from the table shaking, and ate nothing that day, because he was grieved for his friend and ashamed of his father.

In the morning he went out to the field with a little boy to fetch his arrows, and shot one far out past him, and called, “The arrow is beyond you — further out! Quick, hurry, do not stand still!” And the boy ran and gathered up the arrows and brought them back, and never knew a thing about what he had just been part of. Only Jonathan knew, and the man lying flat behind the stones. And when the boy had gone back into the town, David came out from his hiding place and bowed to the ground three times, and the two of them held each other and wept, and David wept the hardest. And Jonathan said, “Go in peace. We have sworn to each other in the name of the Lord, and the Lord is between me and you forever.” And David went out into the wilderness, and he did not come home again for years.

So began the strangest part of David’s life. The anointed king of Israel lived out in the wild country, in caves and crags, hiding. He went first to a cave called Adullam, and there his family came down to him — and so did other people: everybody who was in trouble, everybody who was in debt, everybody with a bitter heart and nowhere else to go. About four hundred of them. That was David’s army: the people nobody else wanted. And Saul hunted him from one hiding place to the next, with three thousand soldiers. And here is a thing that happened because of that hunt. When David was running, hungry and with no weapon, he had gone to the little town of Nob where the priests lived, and Ahimelech the priest had given him bread to eat and Goliath’s old sword to carry, and had asked God for him — the way a priest would do for anybody. One of Saul’s men saw it and told the king. And Saul sent for Ahimelech and accused him of plotting. And the priest said, “Who in all your service is as faithful as David — the king’s own son-in-law, the captain of your guard, honored in your house? Your servant knew nothing at all about any of this.” It was the plain truth, and Saul would not hear it. He ordered his own guards to kill the priests — and his guards would not do it; not one of them would lift a hand against the priests of the Lord. So the king found a foreigner named Doeg who would, and Doeg killed them: eighty-five priests in one day, and then the whole little town of Nob with them, women and children and animals and all. That is what Saul had become. He had begun as a shy young man hiding among the luggage, and he ended as a king who murdered a town of priests because he could not catch one man. One son of Ahimelech got away alive — Abiathar — and he ran to David in the wilderness and told him. And David said, “I knew it. I knew that day that Doeg would tell Saul. It is my fault — the lives of your father’s house are on me. Stay with me. Do not be afraid. Whoever wants my life wants yours; you will be safe beside me.”