Attempt #1
Attempt #2
After Saul's failed spearing
attempt, v13-16 records:
13 Therefore
Saul removed him from him, and made him his captain over a thousand; and he
went out and came in before the people.
14 And
David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and the Lord was with him.
15 Wherefore
when Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely, he was afraid of him.
16 But
all Israel and Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them.
What this tells us is Saul
put David over a thousand men in the army and David went out on military
missions set by Saul. Can we
imagine Saul giving David easy stuff to do? No. He would
give David the dirtiest, most dangerous missions in hopes of getting him
killed.
Do you think David was blind
to what was being done to him? I
doubt it. I think he had a feeling
he was being treated like cannon fodder.
He could have complained, but it doesn’t seem like he did, and instead
he just did his best. That
uncomplaining obedience may be what the text means when it says he behaved
himself wisely.
The result was that Saul’s
attempt failed. God kept David
safe, and David kept his mouth shut, and he ended up more loved by the people
than before, which was the opposite of what Saul wanted. Perhaps Saul hoped David would turn out
to be an ineffective leader and was trying to “promote to discredit.” Instead, God used it to increase
David’s talents and made good come of it.
Attempt #3
In Saul’s next attempt, he
tries to praise and incentive-ize David into doing something exceptionally
foolish to get him killed.
And
Saul said to David, Behold my elder daughter Merab, her will I give thee to
wife: only be thou valiant for me, and fight the Lord’s
battles. For Saul said, Let not mine hand be upon him, but let the hand of the
Philistines be upon him. (v17)
Notice Saul gives this
incentive—marriage to his eldest daughter—and his instructions are “only be
thou valiant for me; and fight the Lord’s battles.” That’s like saying, “Your only job is to be brave and fight.”
But… war takes more than
just bravery and fighting, and in asking David to do that, Saul was attempting
to discourage David from being smart
about how he fought, hoping he would take stupid risks and get himself
killed. (As an aside, I’ve
recently been reading a sci fi space opera series that has as a major plot
point a space fleet’s tendency to suffer terrible losses because bravery was
higher priority than discipline and strategy. It gave this verse much greater significance than it
would have had otherwise.)
How does David respond? He refuses to take the bait and says
that he and his family are nobodies and the last people to become connected by
marriage to the king. He’s okay with
not being famous or connected to the king’s family. His humility saves him.
Attempts #4 & 5
This is a two-parter.
20 And
Michal Saul’s daughter loved David: and they told Saul, and the thing pleased
him.
21 And
Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him, and that the
hand of the Philistines may be against him. Wherefore Saul said to David, Thou
shalt this day be my son in law in the one of the twain….
25 And
Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not any dowry, but an
hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies. But
Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. (v20-21, 25)
Saul intends Michal to be a
snare to David and of course he also requires David to pay a dowry of 100
Philistine foreskins to marry her, and we know he hoped David would get killed
trying to fulfill that requirement.
But how did Saul intend
Michal to be a snare? I had to
think about this one and read more about Michal to figure this out. I have a feeling that Saul meant it in
the same sense that the Lord told the Israelites the Canaanites would be a
snare to them and the same way the Moabite women were a snare in Numbers 25. Michal may have been idolatrous. I Samuel 19:13,16 tells that she put an
image in David’s bed as a decoy so that David could escape Saul’s
servants. But what was an image doing in their house when there is
that commandment in the Law of Moses to not have any graven images? This was a full-sized statue and it was
moveable. David was a man after
God’s heart, so it had to be Michal’s.
So Michal was idolatrous.
It seems Saul hoped that
Michal’s idolatry would begin to pull David down once he was married to
her. Saul hoped to destroy David’s
righteousness and favor with God in a manner strikingly similar to what Balaam
taught the Moabites to do to the Israelites.
No, David! Don’t marry her! It’s a trap!
Yet David does obtain the
100 Philistine foreskins with God’s protection. (Note: v27 says he brought back 200 foreskins, but 2 Samuel 3:14 says it was 100.) And he does
marry Michal. (At this point
we should holding our heads and yelling “Oh noooooooo!”)
But… instead of Michal
becoming a snare to David, the Lord uses Michal as a means of delivering David. Remember when Saul sent his men to kill
David, Michal warned him of his danger and helped him escape. Then, she took the image she worshipped
and put it in service as a decoy.
The very things that Saul meant to
destroy David became the means by which the Lord saved him. How’s that for showing the Lord’s great
power to bring good out of evil?
It’s really a sad thing
reading about all the ways Saul planned to try to get rid of David. Yet, we get a great lesson from David. As we see all the ways that the Lord
brought good out of evil for him, we can gain greater faith that the Lord does
the same thing for us today.
If we try to be as faithful to the Lord as David was (at this time in
his life), the Lord can similarly take the bad things and turn them to our
good. To use an airplane
analogy, if we keep our wings tilted up, the winds of opposition will lift us
higher.
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