April 1, 2022: Day 70 – I Samuel 21-25 and Psalm 34 and 54

The story gets more and more interesting as David continues to flee from the king of Israel, Saul, who seeks his life and has allies scattered throughout the territories that are reporting back to him to track the whereabouts of David.  We begin in 21 with David who arrives with his men at Nob which is a city of priests led by Ahimelech, and he receives help from the priest there who gives him food and the sword of Goliath.  He then flees from there once it is discovered that he is hiding in Nob, and goes to Gath where the people recognize him so he pretends to have lost his mind.  Our reading in Psalm 34 reflects that the Psalm is written at the time when this happens.  There is great overlap here.

David then teams up with the king of Moab and asks if his parents could find refuge with him, and he agrees.  King Saul calls Ahimelech and asks an account of why he allowed David to find refuge with him.  Ahimelech speaks to David’s loyalty but King Saul tells his men to kill Ahimelech and all the priests of Nob.  They all refuse, I’m surprise more time isn’t given to this.  But they all refuse to kill the priests until he asks a foreigner, Doeg the Edomite, to do the deed, and he does, and he kills over 80 priests.  One escapes and tells David what happened.

David continues to fight the Philistines who are his arch enemy, even though his men hesitate, they eventually go and win the battle.  Then David hides out in En-gedi and Saul follows him there.  This last time that we went to Israel we were able to go through the rocks of En-gedi.  It was beautiful, but it was also the first time that I had ever been there.  We weren’t able to make it to the top where David and Saul “met” each other while Saul was relieving himself.  As a result of David sparing Saul there is a short, very short, détente which takes us to 25.  

In this chapter we see David’s eventual wife, Abigail, sabotage her then husband by going behind his back and greeting David to make up for her husband’s uncouthness.  The end result is that Nabal dies and Abigail becomes David’s wife.