But God punishes him on the spot. When he comes back to his town, it is burnt with fire, utterly desolate, a heap of blackened ruins, without a living soul therein. And now the end is coming, though David thinks not of it. He had committed his cause to God. He had said, when Saul lay sleeping at his feet, and Abishai would have smitten him through, “Who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed. As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite him, or he shall come to die, or he shall go down into battle and perish.”
And on the third day a man—a heathen Amalekite—comes to Ziklag to David with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head. Israel has been defeated in
Mount Gilboa with a great slaughter. The people far and wide have fled from Hermon across the plain, and the Philistines have taken possession, cutting the land of Israel in two. And Saul and Jonathan, his son, are dead. The Amalekite has proof of it. There is the crown which was on Saul’s head, and the bracelet that was on his arm. He has brought them to David to curry favour with him. Saul, he says, was wounded, and asked him to kill him (2 Sam. i. 6-10). It is a lie. Saul had killed himself, falling on his own sword, to escape torture and insult from the Philistines, and the Amalekite is caught in his own trap. Out of his own mouth will David judge him. How dare he stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed? Let one of the young men fall on him, and kill him. And so the wretch dies.
And then bursts forth all the nobleness of David’s heart. He thinks of Saul no longer as the tyrant who has hunted him for years, who has put on him the last and worst insult of taking away his wife, and giving her to another man. He thinks of him only as his master, his king, the grand and terrible warrior, the terror of Ammonites, Amalekites, and Philistines, the deliverer of his country in many a bloody fight, and he bursts out into that fine old lamentation over Saul and Jonathan, sentences of which have been proverbs in the mouths of men to this day. “How are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away,
the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman. How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” (2 Sam. i. 19-27).
Let each and every one of us, my friends, imitate David’s loyalty, and be true to our duty, true to our masters, true to our country and true to our queen, through whatever trials and temptations. Above all, let us learn from David to obey; and remember that to obey we need not become cringing and slavish, or give up independence and high spirit. David did neither. Unless you learn to obey, as David did, you will never learn to rule. Imitate David—and so you will imitate David’s greater son, even our Lord Jesus Christ. For herein David is a type of Christ.
One might say truly that David’s spirit was in Christ—if the very opposite was not the fact, that the spirit of Christ was in David, even the spirit of loyalty and obedience, toward God and man. The spirit which made our Lord fulfil the whole law of Moses—though quite unnecessary, of course, for him—simply because
He had chosen to be born a Jew, under Moses’ law; the spirit which made Him obedient to the ordinance of the country in which He was born, made Him even pay tribute to Cæsar, the heathen conqueror, because the powers that ruled, were ordained of God. And yet that same spirit kept Him lofty and independent, high-minded and pure-minded. He could tell the people to observe and to do all that the scribes and Pharisees told them to do, because they sat in Moses’ seat, and yet He could call those very scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, who made the law of no effect, and were bringing on themselves utter destruction.
That spirit, too, made Him loyal and obedient to God His Father in heaven. Doing not His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him. Of Him it is written, that though He were a Son, yet learned He “obedience by the things which He suffered;” and that He received the perfect reward of perfect loyalty, because He had humbled and emptied Himself, and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross. Therefore God highly exalted Him, and gave Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, of things in the earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that He is Lord and God, to the glory of God the Father.
This is a great mystery! How can we understand it? How can we understand the Divine and eternal bond between Father and Son? But this at least we can understand, that loyalty and obedience are Divine virtues, part of the likeness of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, and therefore divine graces, the gift of God’s holy Spirit.