Scripture Daily

Context No. 602 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

Context · Reflection

1 Samuel 21:7-15: in context

7Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the LORD; and his name was Doeg the Edomite, the best of the herdsmen who belonged to Saul. 8David said to Ahimelech, “Isn’t there here under your hand spear or sword? For I haven’t brought my sword or my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.” 9The priest said, “Behold, the sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah, is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you would like to take that, take it, for there is no other except that here.” David said, “There is none like that. Give it to me.” 10David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath. 11The servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David the king of the land? Didn’t they sing to one another about him in dances, saying, ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” 12David laid up these words in his heart, and was very afraid of Achish the king of Gath. 13He changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands, and scribbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard. 14Then Achish said to his servants, “Look, you see the man is insane. Why then have you brought him to me? 15Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Should this fellow come into my house?”

David is on the run from Saul, alone and unarmed, and he flees to Gath, a Philistine city, of all places, the hometown of the giant he had killed. It is a desperate move, and it goes wrong immediately. The servants of King Achish recognize him: is this not David, they say, the one they sing about, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands? And David, the anointed future king, the giant-slayer, the man of remarkable faith, is gripped by raw terror. He was very afraid of Achish, the text says plainly. And so he does something undignified and pathetic: he pretends to be insane, scratching at the doors of the gate and letting spit run down his beard, until Achish dismisses him as a madman and he escapes.

It is not a heroic picture. The great David, reduced to drooling and scrabbling at a gate in fear for his life, scheming his way out with a humiliating act rather than any bold trust. And Scripture does not hide it. It is honest that even David, the man after God's own heart, had moments of naked fear where he scrambled and deceived and looked nothing like the confident hero of the Goliath story. Faith, even great faith, is not the absence of terror or a life of unbroken trust; it has its low, frightened, undignified moments too. And here is the remarkable thing: tradition places two of David's psalms at exactly this episode, songs in which he later turns even this fearful, humiliating moment into praise, I sought the LORD, and he delivered me from all my fears.

That is a strange comfort. I am quick to condemn myself for the moments when fear gets the better of me, when I scramble and scheme instead of trusting, when I look nothing like the person of faith I want to be. David had such moments, drooling in a gateway in terror, and God did not discard him for it; David even brought that low point to God and made a song of trust out of it. When fear gets the better of me and I scramble in ways I am ashamed of, do I condemn myself and hide it, or can I bring even that, as David did, to the God who delivers from all our fears?

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