Scripture Daily

Context No. 840 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

Context · Reflection

1 Samuel 18:24-30: in context

24The servants of Saul told him, saying, “David spoke like this.” 25Saul said, “Tell David, ‘The king desires no dowry except one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies.’” Now Saul thought he would make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. 26When his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son-in-law. Before the deadline, 27David arose and went, he and his men, and killed two hundred men of the Philistines. Then David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full number to the king, that he might be the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him Michal his daughter as wife. 28Saul saw and knew that the LORD was with David; and Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him. 29Saul was even more afraid of David; and Saul was David’s enemy continually. 30Then the princes of the Philistines went out; and as often as they went out, David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was highly esteemed.

Saul's jealousy has curdled into a plan to have David killed, but he is too shrewd to do it openly. So he wraps the trap in an honor. He offers David his daughter Michal in marriage, but he sets the bride-price as a hundred Philistine foreskins, sending David out to fight Israel's most dangerous enemy, hoping, the text tells us plainly, that David will fall by the hand of the Philistines. It is a death sentence disguised as a wedding gift. David, who wants nothing more than to become the king's son-in-law, takes the offer at face value and goes.

And the trap springs backward. David does not die; he doubles the assignment, killing two hundred Philistines, brings the full price to the king, and marries Michal. Every snare Saul sets only lifts David higher, because, as the narrator keeps repeating, the LORD was with David. Saul watches his own scheme turn into David's triumph and his own daughter's love, and it makes him more afraid, not less. This is the strange arithmetic that runs through David's whole rise: the plots meant to destroy him become the occasions of his advancement. Saul aims a death-trap, and God turns it into a marriage and a victory and a growing reputation. When God is with someone, even the schemes of an enemy can end up serving the very person they were meant to ruin.

Saul's plot to get David killed only lifted him higher, because the LORD was with him. When a scheme is set against me, can I trust that God, if he is with me, may turn the very trap into the thing that advances me?

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