Sloppy Trust: Daily Thoughts from 1 Samuel (1 Samuel 21)

David is on the run from Saul and in great danger of being killed. How would you react in such a situation? What would you do to avoid capture? David has to make some choices that we, sitting in our comfortable seat and safe home, might not judge to be on the up and up.

Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the LORD, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.

Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the LORD. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s herdsmen.

Then David said to Ahimelech, “Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.” And the priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it, for there is none but that here.” And David said, “There is none like that; give it to me.”

And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”

And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?” (1 Samuel 21, ESV)

Here we have two instances of David not representing the truth. In the first case, if he were to tell Ahimelech the priest what he was really doing it is likely that Ahimelech would not help him or, if he did, make himself guilty before king Saul. Jesus refers to this episode in David’s life (Matthew 12:1-8) as a justification for knowing how to apply the rules of the Sabbath and, in this case, the use of the bread of the Presence. When someone’s well-being is at stake, doing some labor on the Sabbath or eating something normally dedicated to Yahweh is actually within the purview of the law, which is designed for the well-being of God’s people.

In the second case, David is saved from death at the hands of Achish by pretending to be insane, a rescue he attributes to God in Psalms 34 and 56. He references this as a time when he trusted Yahweh for deliverance from his enemies. His hope, of course, had been that the Philistines would take him in, seeing him as now an enemy of Saul and so an ally of theirs. To say that David is desperate is an understatement. David is being sought by the most powerful person in the land, whose reach is extensive.

We may not endorse entirely David’s tactics here, but despite some weaknesses that we might point out, still in the midst of this he is seeking to trust God. Sometimes our trust in God is sloppy and weak, but nevertheless alive. God is gracious to reply in grace to our faith.