The winds of renewal will blow in toward the end of this week, but the dark clouds of trouble will linger for the first half. Let’s not speed through the darkness because it’s there that the Lord so often meets us. It was true for David, and I suspect it remains true for many of us today. But on the other side – yes, even of this week - there’s beauty worth beholding.
This week we’ll see the conflict between Saul and David escalate to the point of Saul’s paranoia and David’s continued blessing from God. It’s a tragic ending for Saul (and Jonathan) and David pens a beautifully heartfelt lament for them both. We’ll also benefit from several readings in the Psalms which give a bit of color commentary on David’s emotional experience during his conflict with Saul.
“You have put my tears in a bottle.” The Lord sees our distress and our grief. He is with us and he is for us. He will attend to our crying, our pain, our weaknesses. We can open to him the deepest parts of our soul. He will not flinch or recoil. He has not left us defenseless – indeed he has given us two advocates – Jesus Christ who sits at the Father’s right hand, and the Spirit who testifies to our own conscience.
The big theme in these chapters revolves around righteousness and unrighteousness – particularly in relation to the Lord’s anointed. There’s a big difference between the dispositions of Nabal and Abigail, Saul and David. These scenes remind me of Psalm 2 where the king of Israel is called God’s Son and the kings of the nations are warned in 2:12, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” This may feel pretty far removed from where we are today, but it’s not. We will all be judged by how we relate to the True King, Jesus. May we be blessed because we do not rage against the Lord’s anointed.
Is your treasure, your portion in life in this world? Or, like David, do you long to behold the Lord’s face in righteousness and in his likeness? When you make requests of the Lord, is your motive to “tell of his righteousness and of his praises all the day long”?
We come now to the end of Saul’s life. Bad goes to worse as he consults a medium in secret (which he himself had denounced earlier in his reign) and receives no new word other than what the Lord had already said to him. Meanwhile, the Lord continues to bless David and give him success in all his ventures. David blesses the Lord in Psalm 18 because of his great salvation and steadfast love God shows to his anointed. The concluding paragraphs of 1 Samuel are worth commenting on here, because David honors the actions of these men – who show loyalty to the Lord’s anointed, even in his awful death. “Sing praise among the nations … Great salvation God brings to his king … to David and his offspring forever.”
Most of these Psalms are Psalms of ascent, which the people would sing as they journeyed up into the hills toward Jerusalem. When you read “I lift my eyes to the hills” – they mean it literally. When you read “let Israel now say” – it’s like a call-and-response as they marched up to Zion. “Hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.”
Here in the first two chapters, David continues to do good to Saul. When the Amalekite (boo hiss!) comes spreading lies, David does what Adam should have done to the Serpent in the Garden – he cuts off his head. I love how Dale Ralph Davis says it:
“The sanctity of Yahweh’s anointed king had the status of dogma for David … The Amalekite had assumed that no scruples would stop David from seizing the kingship; David assumed that one fear should have stopped the Amalekite from destroying the king … That is the way all kingdom servants should live – controlled by fear grounded in love. Only Amalekites would call that pathological.”
In light of hearing of Saul’s death, grief interrupts the normal flow of life and David pens a beautifully personal lament.
There is so much beauty in these passages. Let me encourage you to linger long in one of these Psalms today – consider praying the psalm line-by-line, or perhaps listen to a song based on Psalm 8 or Psalm 16 or Psalm 19 (click for my suggestions). If you chose Psalm 16, check out its fulfillment in Acts 2:23-32.