David is
now full-time in service to the king, where he proves to be very successful at
killing Philistines. Actually, too successful – Saul hears people praising
David for killing more Philistines than Saul, and starts getting jealous.
“1 Sam 18:10 The next day a harmful spirit from God rushed upon
Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre, as he did
day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand. 11 And Saul hurled the spear, for he thought ‘I will pin David to
the wall.’ But David evaded him twice.”
Apparently
even with that jealousy Saul wasn’t quite the murderous dick God wanted him to
be, so he sent a spirit to goad him further into just randomly attacking David.
You see how free will is clearly of paramount importance to Yahweh.
Anyway,
unable to kill David himself, Saul decided to put him in charge of a bunch of
men and keep sending him out to battle in the hopes that the Philistines would
kill him instead. But the only result was that David kept having more success
in war, which only made him more popular. So then Saul came up with the
brilliant scheme to take David down by… ummm… marrying him to his daughter?
Because somehow this would make the Philistines more likely to kill him. Erm… I
think I mentioned in an earlier post that Saul is pretty clearly losing his
mind.
But then
for no apparent reason, Saul married his daughter off to someone else. However,
he had another daughter Michal who was all smitten with David and he decided
he’d offer her to him instead. He set the bride price at the foreskins of a
hundred dead Philistines in the hopes that the ensuing hunt for penile trophies
would piss the Philistines off enough to finally kill David for him. No such
luck; David the overachiever managed to secure double the requested number of
foreskins without ending up on the tip of anyone’s spear. So Saul had no choice
but to let him marry his daughter.
Then
there’s more war with the Philistines, bringing more success and popularity to
David. So Saul gathers Jonathan and all his servants up and orders them to kill
David. Jonathan talks him out of it, though, and Saul swears to his son that he
won’t put David to death. But God can’t have any of that “being reasonable”
shit going on in his kingdom, so he once again sends that harmful spirit to goad
Saul into trying to stab David with a spear.
David
finally tips to the fact that maybe Saul doesn’t have his best interests at
heart, and flees to his house. Saul sends servants to arrest him, but David’s
wife Michal (Saul’s daughter) helps him sneak out of the house and does the
“pillows under the blanket” trick to fool the servants into thinking David is
sick in bed. When Saul discovers the deception and demands to know why Michal
tricked him, she throws her husband under the bus by claiming he had threatened
to kill her. But I guess if Saul was determined to kill him anyway, what’s a
little extra slander?
David
flees to live with Samuel for a bit, but Saul hears about it and sends people
to arrest him. The men he sends come across Samuel presiding over a group of
prophets, and are overcome by the Spirit of God and start prophesying instead
of arresting David. So Saul sends another group, and they start prophesying as
well. So Saul goes in person, and the Spirit of God comes over him so that he ends
up stripping himself naked and prophesying as well.
Meanwhile,
David goes to Jonathan to ask him why Saul wants him dead so badly. Jonathan
refuses at first to believe that his dad wants to kill his boyfriend, but
agrees to put the king to a test. For some odd reason (insanity?), despite
Saul’s repeated attempts to murder David everyone still expects David to show
up to dinner with him on the evening of the new moon. Jonathan agrees to tell
Saul that he had given David permission to go home to Bethlehem instead for
some religious ceremony (he’s actually hiding out nearby) to see if that
provokes a reaction.
Well,
Saul completely loses his shit. After screaming insults about Jonathan’s
mother, he demands that Jonathan bring David to him to be killed. When Jonathan
refuses, Saul chucks a spear at him (but missed).
So the
next day Jonathan goes to meet David under the guise of doing some archery
practice. When he’s done shooting, he sends his servant boy back home ahead of
him with his bow so the boy wouldn’t see him meet with David.
“1 Sam 20:41 And as soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside
the stone heap and fell on his face and bowed three times. And they kissed one
another and wept with one another, David weeping the most.”
Yeah…
the “gay David” argument is gaining a little traction there.
Our two
young maybe-not-lovers separate then, and David flees to Gath after making a
quick stop at Nob to con the priests into giving him some food (that they would
only give him if he promised he hadn’t touched any women recently, because it
was holy bread and pretty much any point in a Biblical story is a good point to
throw in some gratuitous sexism) and Goliath’s sword (which they happened to
have lying around). He accomplishes the con by lying to them to say he was on
his way to perform a secret mission for the king; eighty of the priests would
later be executed on Saul’s orders for believing David’s lies and helping him.
When
David arrives at Gath, he finds the king there has mistaken him for the king of
Israel and isn’t happy about it, so David pretends to be a madman instead so
that they’d just let him get about his business. That business consists of
going to hide out in some caves, where he is later joined by his father’s
family and a ragtag group of about four hundred malcontents.
For a
bit, David plays peekaboo with Saul, who starts pursuing him all over the
place. The Bible spends some time on the game of cat and mouse, but the details
seem largely unimportant until one day when Saul is getting close to catching
up. David is hiding out in a cave when Saul shows up with his army. But Saul
doesn’t realize David is in that exact cave, and goes into it on his own for
some privacy to take a dump. David’s men urge him to kill the king while he’s
alone and, erm… caught with his pants down. But David just sneaks up on Saul in
the dark and cuts off a corner of his robe while the man is in the middle of
relieving himself. Saul doesn’t even notice, and when he’s done he leaves the
cave.
At this
point David follows him out and makes a show about how he totally could have
killed Saul if he’d wanted to, showing off the corner of the robe he’d taken as
proof that he’d had Saul unawares and had chosen to spare him. At this point
Saul declares that David is the more righteous man, and that he’ll surely be
the next king. Then they part ways in peace… for now.
Which
seems as good a place as any to call it a day for now. Catch you next time, and
until then be well!
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