Twice He Would Not

David had four hundred men, and a sword, and every reason in the world to fight back. Saul had murdered a town of priests to get at him. And what the next part of David’s life is really about is not how well he could fight. It is about the times he could have killed, and did not. The first time was in a cave. Down by the Dead Sea, in the wilderness of En-gedi, where the cliffs are full of caves, Saul came hunting him with three thousand men. And at midday the king came into a cave alone, out of the hot sun, to rest — the very cave where David and his men were sitting, far back in the dark. He never saw them. They could see him perfectly. And David’s men whispered, “This is the day! The Lord has handed your enemy over to you. Do whatever you like with him.” And David crept up behind the king in the dark with a knife in his hand — and cut off a corner of his cloak, and crept away again. And even for that, afterwards, his conscience hurt him. And he said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my lord — to lift my hand against him. He is the Lord’s anointed one.” And he held his men back with words, and would not let them touch Saul. And Saul got up and walked out into the sunlight, none the wiser. And then David went out after him and called down the hill, “My lord the king!” And Saul turned round. And David bowed to the ground and called out, “Why do you listen to people who tell you I want to hurt you? Look at this — the corner of your own cloak, in my hand. Today the Lord put you into my hands in that cave, and I would not kill you. See for yourself: there is nothing evil in my hand. I have not sinned against you — and you are hunting me to take my life. Let the Lord judge between me and you. But my hand will never be against you.” And there was a long silence on the hillside. And then Saul said, “Is that your voice, my son David?” And the king lifted up his voice and cried like a child, and said, “You are a better man than I am. You have paid me back with good, and I have paid you back with evil. If a man finds his enemy helpless and lets him go safely away, the Lord will pay him back for it. I know now that you will surely be king. Only swear to me that you will not wipe out my family when I am gone.” And David swore it. And Saul went home — and did not stay changed for long.

The second time, it was not a king David nearly killed. It was a farmer who had been rude to him — and it very nearly happened, and the only thing that stopped it was a woman with her head on straight. Out in the wilderness of Maon there was a rich man named Nabal with three thousand sheep, and a wife named Abigail who was clever and kind, while he was hard and mean and nobody could talk to him. All that season David’s men had camped near Nabal’s shepherds out in the open country, and they had not stolen so much as a lamb; they had been a wall around those shepherds night and day. So when it came to sheep-shearing time, which is a feasting time, David sent ten young men to ask politely for whatever Nabal could spare. And Nabal said, “Who is David? Who is this son of Jesse? There are plenty of servants running away from their masters these days. Am I to take my bread and my meat, that I killed for my own shearers, and give it to men I know nothing about?” And when the young men came back and told him, David said four words that had four hundred swords behind them: “Every man strap on his sword.” And they went up the hill, four hundred of them, and David was saying to himself as he rode: I guarded everything that man owned, out in the wilderness, and he has paid me back evil for good — and may God do worse to me if I leave one male of his household alive by morning. That was David. Not a wicked man; a good one, on his way to do something terrible, because he had been insulted and he was angry.

But one of Nabal’s young men had run to Abigail and told her everything. And Abigail did not waste a minute. She loaded donkeys with two hundred loaves of bread, and skins of wine, and five dressed sheep, and roasted grain, and raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and sent them on ahead, and rode after them herself — and she did not tell her husband. She met the four hundred coming down under the cover of the hill. And she got off her donkey and went down on her face in the road in front of David, and talked to him — and it was one of the bravest speeches anybody ever made, because she was one woman standing in front of an army. She said, “Let the blame be on me, my lord. Please do not pay any attention to this hard man — his name means Fool, and folly goes with him. I never even saw the young men you sent. And now, my lord — as the Lord lives, it is the Lord himself who has kept you back today from spilling blood that did not need spilling, and from getting yourself justice with your own hand. Take this food I have brought. And when the Lord has done all the good he has promised you, and made you leader over Israel, you will not have this on your conscience — a load of blood shed for nothing. My lord will not have to remember this day and be sorry.” And David sat there on his horse and listened to her — and then got down. And he said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you out today to meet me. And blessed be your good sense, and blessed are you — for you have kept me today from bloodshed, and from getting my own justice with my own hand. As surely as the Lord lives, if you had not come hurrying out to meet me, there would not have been one man of Nabal’s household left alive by morning.” And he took the food, and said, ‘Go home in peace. I have listened to your voice.’ And four hundred men turned round and went back down the hill. And Nabal, when he heard about it the next morning, had such a fright that his heart went hard in him like a stone, and about ten days later he died. And nobody had to kill him at all.

And the third time was the strangest of the three, because that time David walked into the middle of the enemy camp to do it. Saul came out hunting him again with the same three thousand men, and camped for the night on a hill. And that night David looked down at the camp and said to his men, “Who will come down into the camp with me, to Saul?” And a man named Abishai said, ‘I will.’ So the two of them walked down in the dark, right in among three thousand sleeping soldiers, and came to the middle of the camp — and there was Saul, fast asleep, with his spear stuck in the ground by his head, and his general Abner asleep beside him, and every man of the guard asleep in a ring around them. God had let a deep sleep fall on the whole camp. And Abishai whispered, “God has handed your enemy over to you tonight. Let me pin him to the ground with his own spear — one blow. I will not need a second.” And David whispered back, “Do not hurt him. Who can lift his hand against the Lord’s anointed one and be counted innocent? As the Lord lives, the Lord himself will deal with him — he will die in his own time, or fall in battle. But God forbid that I should be the one to lift my hand against him. Take the spear from beside his head, and the water jar, and let us go.” So they picked up the king’s spear and the king’s water jar and walked out again, and nobody woke, and nobody saw, and nobody knew.

And then David climbed the hill on the other side of the valley, a long way off and well out of reach, and shouted across the dark until he woke the whole camp up: “Abner! Are you not going to answer me? Are you not a great man — the greatest in Israel? Then why have you not been guarding your lord the king? Somebody came into the camp tonight to kill the king your lord. That was badly done. Look and see where the king’s spear is — and the water jar that was beside his head!” And Saul knew the voice, and said, “Is this your voice, my son David?” And David called back across the valley, “It is, my lord the king. Why is my lord chasing his servant? What have I done? What wrong is there in me? Do not let my blood fall to the ground far away from the Lord — for the king of Israel has come out to hunt for me the way a man hunts a bird in the mountains.” And Saul said, “I have sinned. Come back, my son David. I will not hurt you, because my life was precious in your eyes today. I have been a fool, and I have been wrong about a great many things.” And David said: here is the king’s spear — send one of your young men over to fetch it. And then he said this: “The Lord pays every man back for his own faithfulness. The Lord put you into my hand today — and I would not lift my hand against the Lord’s anointed one. And as your life was precious to me today, so may my life be precious to the Lord, and may he bring me out of every trouble.” And Saul said, ‘You are blessed, my son. You will do great things, and you will win.’ And each of them went his own way. And they never met again.

It ended on a mountain called Gilboa. The Philistines came up in force, and Israel broke and ran, and the archers found the king. Three of his sons were killed there that day — and one of them was Jonathan. And Saul, badly wounded and afraid of what his enemies would do to him if they took him alive, took his own sword and fell on it, and died on the mountain with his sons. The Philistines found the bodies the next day and hung them up on the wall of a town called Beth-shan, to crow over them. And when the men of Jabesh in Gilead heard about it, they remembered that Saul had saved their town when he was young and new and brave. So the bravest of them walked all night, and took the bodies down off that wall, and carried them home and buried them, and did not eat for seven days. And when the news reached David out in the wilderness, he did not cheer. The man who had hunted him for years was dead, and his throne was clear — and David tore his clothes and wept and would not eat until evening. And he made a song for Saul and for Jonathan, and had it taught to the people of Judah so that it would not be forgotten. In it he sang, ‘How the mighty have fallen’ — and about his friend, ‘Jonathan, my brother, you were very dear to me.’ Three times David could have killed Saul with his own hand. He never did. And when Saul died anyway, David sat down and cried for him.