1 Samuel 30

30 1 And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had made a raid upon the South, and upon Ziklag, and had smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire; and had taken captive the women and all that were therein, both small and great: they slew not any, but carried them off, and went their way. And when David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives. Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep. And David’s two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David strengthened himself in the LORD his God. 7 And David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David. And David inquired of the LORD, saying, If I pursue after this troop, shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and shalt without fail recover all. So David went, he and the six hundred men that were with him, and came to the brook Besor, where those that were left behind stayed. But David pursued, he and four hundred men: for two hundred stayed behind, which were so faint that they could not go over the brook Besor.

Verses 11-15. An Egyptian slave, abandoned to starve by an Amalekite master, guides David to the invaders.

16. And when he had brought him down, behold, they were spread abroad over all the ground, eating and drinking, and feasting, because of all the great spoil that they had taken out of the land of the Philistines, and out of the land of Judah. And David smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day: and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men, which rode upon camels and fled. And David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken: and David rescued his two wives. And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil, nor anything that they had taken to them: David brought back all. And David took all the flocks and the herds, which they drave before those other cattle, and said, This is David’s spoil. And David came to the two hundred men, which were so faint that they could not follow David, whom also they had made to abide at the brook Besor: and they went forth to meet David, and to meet the people that were with him: and when David came near to the people, he saluted them. Then answered all the wicked men and men of Belial, of those that went with David, and said, Because they went not with us, we will not give them aught of the spoil that we have recovered, save to every man his wife and his children, that they may lead them away, and depart. Then said David, Ye shall not do so, my brethren, with that which the LORD hath given unto us, who hath preserved us, and delivered the troop that came against us into our hand. And who will hearken unto you in this matter? for as his share is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his share be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall share alike. And it was so from that day forward, that he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel, unto this day.

Verses 26-31. David sends of the spoil to all places that had befriended him.

1,2. David’s return to Ziklag, and the expedition to recover his wives and his property, took place at or about the very time when Saul made his journey to Endor, and when the fatal battle of Gilboa was raging. We have seen that though David never, like Saul, threw off the authority of God, he had been following ways of his own, ways of deceit and unfaithfulness. He too had been exposing himself to the displeasure of God, and on him, as on Saul, some retribution behooved to fall. But in the two cases we see the difference between judgment and chastisement. In the case of Saul it was judgment that came down; his life and his career were terminated avowedly as the punishment of his offence. In the case of David the rod was lifted to correct, not to destroy; to bring him back, not to drive him forever away. There is every reason to believe that the disaster that befall David on his return to Ziklag was the means of restoring him to a trustful and truthful frame. It appears that, in the absence of David and his troop, severe reprisals had been taken by the Amalekites for the defeat and utter destruction which they had lately inflicted on a portion of their tribe. The opportunity of David’s absence was taken for invading Ziklag, for which purpose a large and well-equipped expedition had been got together; and as they met with no opposition, they carried everything before them. Happily, however, as they found no enemies they did not draw the sword; they counted it better policy to carry off all that could be transported, so as to make use of the goods, and sell the women and children into slavery, and as they had a great multitude of beasts of burden with them (verse 17), there could be no difficulty in carrying out this plan. W. G. B.

It was still the lot of Amalek to take Israel at all advantages. Upon their first coming out of Egypt, when they were weary, weak, and unarmed, then did Amalek assault them; and now, when one part of Israel was in the field against the Philistines, another was gone with the Philistines against Israel, the Amalekites set upon the coasts of both, and go away laden with the spoil: no other is to be expected of our spiritual adversaries, who are ever readiest to assail, when we are the unreadiest to defend.

3,4. It was a woful spectacle for David and his soldiers, upon their return, to find ruins and ashes instead of houses; and instead of their families, solitude. Their city was vanished into smoke, their households into captivity. They lifted up their voices and wept, till they could weep no more. Here was plenty of nothing but misery and sorrow. Bp. H.

5,6. The return of David and his party to this scene of smoking ruins and utter desolation—wives, children, cattle, no longer there—was a moment of overwhelming trial. David’s men seemed half maddened with grief. Surely, thought they, somebody must be to blame for this: it must be David. So “the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters.” How sublimely David rose above the depression, the distractions, the sadness of these surroundings is finely put in these words: “But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” Ah, he had no other friend who stood by him in this emergency; and fortunately he could endure without any other. It sufficed him that the infinite God stood by him, never more near and true; his manifested love never more consoling; his strong arm never more sustaining! Very rarely does David’s historian turn from his narration of David’s outer life to speak of his inner life—the sources of his hope, and courage, and strength; but this case is an exception. We are thankful to know that in this hour of sorest earthly trial David looked upward; and 15, God was near. H. C.

7,8. The first result of the restored feeling of trust in David was his giving honor to God’s appointed ordinance by asking counsel of Him, through Abiathar the priest, as to the course he should follow. It is the first time we read of his doing so since he left his own country. At first one wonders how he could have discontinued so precious a means of ascertaining the will of God and the path of duty. But the truth is, when a man is left to himself he cares for no advice or direction but his own inclination. W. G. B.—If we thus, in all our ways, acknowledge God, we may expect that he will direct our steps, as he did David’s here, answering him above what he asked, with an assurance that he should recover all. H.

Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake. At the time when this answer was given, the accomplishment of it was highly improbable; for the Amalekites were greatly superior in number to David’s forces: the route which they had taken was uncertain, and the chance of recovering the booty they had taken very small; still the oracle was positive, full, and express, and the success was answerable. Chandler.—9, 10. David asked the Lord whether he should pursue; and receiving the Divine command to do so, he addressed himself at once to the pursuit, and obtained a splendid success. Such is the energetic action of revived faith. Difficulties go down before its resolutions, and lost things come back to him who boldly pursues. Tears of defeat are turned into songs of victory. The troubles that afflict the people of God are to a large extent chastisements for unbelief or unfaithfulness. D. F.

11-20. They soon came on the track of the Amalekites. They had found an Egyptian slave, whom his inhuman master had, on the hasty retreat from Ziklag, left by the wayside to starve rather than hamper himself with the care of a sick man. Food soon revived him; and, on promise of safety and freedom, he offered to be the guide of the party to the place which, as he knew, the Amalekites had fixed upon as sufficiently far from Ziklag to permit them to feast in safety on their booty. A short-lived security theirs. It was the twilight—the beginning, no doubt, of a night of orgies—when David surprised them, “lying about on the ground,” “eating and drinking, and dancing.” No watch had been set; no weapon was in any man’s hands; no danger was apprehended. We can picture to ourselves the scene: how David probably surrounded the camping-place; and with what shouts of vengeance the infuriated Hebrews fell on those who could neither resist nor flee. All night long, all the next day the carnage lasted. Only four hundred servant-lads, who had charge of the camels, escaped. Everything that had been taken by the Amalekites was recovered, besides the flocks and herds of the enemy, which were given to David as his share of the spoil. Best of all, the women and children were safe and unhurt. A. E.—In all likelihood, one self-same day saw David a victor over the Amalekites, and Saul discomfited by the Philistines. How should it be otherwise? David consulted with God, and prevailed; Saul with the Witch of Endor, and perisheth. The end is commonly answerable to the way. Bp. H.

21-25. Many of the men having been from weariness unable to pursue the march, had been left on the way by the brook Besor, and it was suggested that these had no right to any of this spoil, but only to have their own property and families restored to them. But David decided that they should all share alike; and this thenceforth became established as a law in the Hebrew army, and has been adopted into the practice of modern warfare. Kit.—The equity of this law appears from hence—that by common consent these two hundred men were left behind to look after the baggage; were part of the same body of men, linked together in the same common society; hindered by mere weariness from going to fight, which otherwise they would have done; their will was accepted for the deed; and they were in the same common danger, for if the four hundred had been routed their enemies would have soon cut them off. Patrick.—Every post of service is not alike a post of honor; yet those that are any way serviceable to the common interest, though in a meaner station, ought to share in the common advantages; as, in the natural body, every member has its use, and therefore has its share of the nourishment. Thus he settled the matter for time to come, made it a statute of his kingdom (a statute of distributions), an ordinance of war, that as his part is that goes down to the battle, and jeopards his life in the high places of the field, so shall his be that guards the carriages. H.

Incapacity for rendering conspicuous service is compatible with quiet yet important service. Those who by Providence are hindered from fighting in the high places of the field have good work to do in a quieter form. Missionaries, popular preachers, diligent pastors, and men of high literary culture may be in the forefront; but the mothers who train children in the fear of God, fathers who live godly lives in the world, quiet, wise men who conduct religious movements, widows who cast in their mite, and even sick and weary ones who in the solitude of their chamber offer daily prayers for the hosts of God—render most valuable service in the common enterprise. Where there is loyalty in service, whatever its lowly form, there is to be honorable recognition. In Christ’s kingdom there is to be, after his great example in the case of the widow’s mite and the hosannas of children, a recognition by all of the need and value of services apparently insignificant. Chapman.

26-31. A considerable portion of the spoil fell to the share of the commander; and this he, with his usual open-handed liberality, employed in sending presents to the elders of various towns and villages in Judah, and to all the places where he had received encouragement and support during his wanderings. This came to them with the message—“Behold a present for you of the spoil of the enemies of the Lord.” The natural effect of his success, of his discreet liberality, and of the admiration in which he was held, was, that men came over to him in great numbers. “From that time,” says the writer of Chronicles (12 : 22), “day by day there came to David to help him, until it was a great host, like the host of God.” Kit.—It was David’s desire to recognize God in connection with this spoil, both to show that he had not made his onslaught on the Amalekites for personal ends, and to acknowledge, in royal style, the goodness which God had shown him. W. G. B.—He was fit to be a king, who thus showed the bounty and liberality of a king. Munificence recommends a man more than magnificence. The Ziphites had none of his presents, nor the men of Keilah; and thus he showed that, though he was such a saint as not to revenge affronts, yet he was not such a fool as not to take notice of them. H.

When things are at the worst, as the common proverb says, they must mend. And they mended with David from that hour. And this was not because things were then at the worst with him, but because being at the worst, he fought that great fight of affliction well. “HE ENCOURAGED HIMSELF IN THE LORD HIS GOD;” and he found that his encouragements in God exceeded beyond all measure his discouragements in man, although friends combined with enemies to discourage him then. From that moment, when he believingly cast all his dependence upon the Lord his God only, whom he had found faithful in all his promises, and whose providence had never failed him in his deepest dangers—from that moment he was safe—from that moment he was prosperous. “God loves (as David knew),” says an old writer, “to reserve his holy hand for a dead lift in behalf of his servants in covenant with him, when there is a damp upon their hopes, and a death upon their helps.” (Ness.)

Now that the time of change was come, all things went well with him, and his prosperity increased like a river, gathering strength and fulness in its course, until, long after, a great crime stayed its course, and overwhelmed him with tides of trouble and grief, compared with which the trials of his early days were light. This Ziklag is laid in ashes—but no sooner is he left shelterless than God provides him a better city, even Hebron, a city of refuge, and most truly a refuge to him. Saul even dies at this time to give him room. “Now doth David find the comfort,” says Bishop Hall, “that his extremity sought in the Lord his God. Now are his clouds for a time passed over, and the sun breaks gloriously forth. David shall reign after his sufferings. So shall we, if we endure to the end, find a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give us at that day.” Kit.

Review of David’s Life as an Outlaw.

At first he took refuge with Samuel in the prophetic school at Ramah. But a final test proved that reconciliation with Saul was impossible, and he fled by way of Nob to the court of Achish. Here his stay was brief and perilous: he soon escaped, and gathered a band of men about him in the cave of Adullam. For a time he seems to have crossed over into Moab, but returning to the land of Judah by Gad’s direction, he wandered up and down, hunted from time to time by Saul. There is no continuous history of his life at this period; only a series of scenes which illustrate his providential escapes from the hand of his pursuer, his pious regard for the anointed king, the Divine control which restrained him from hasty revenge. Driven at length to flee the country, he established a miniature kingdom at Ziklag, where he practised himself and his men in the arts of war and peace. Once more God’s care was manifested in extricating him from the perplexing dilemma into which his own conduct had brought him. This period of his life and the First Book of Samuel close simultaneously with the death of Saul and his sons on Mount Gilboa. All that concerns his reign belongs to the Second Book. This long and varied discipline was designed to fit David for the duties of the throne. His residence at Gibeah, surrounded by envious courtiers, developed his prudence: Saul’s persecution tested his generosity and self-control: the perils of his wanderings strengthened his sense of dependence upon God. His position as an outlaw chief trained him in knowledge and government of men: familiarity with the victims of Saul’s misgovernment taught the future ruler to know the heart of his subjects, their sorrows, their wrongs, their crimes: even the residence in Moab and Philistia contributed to nurture larger sympathies which might fit him for his wider mission as king of Israel. A. F. K.