And it shall come to pass, when the LORD shall have done to my lord according to all the good that he hath spoken concerning thee, and shall have appointed thee ruler over Israel;

That this shall be no grief unto thee, nor offence of heart unto my lord, either that thou hast shed blood causeless, or that my lord hath avenged himself but when the LORD shall have dealt well with my lord, then remember thine handmaid.

:

And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me :

And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.

For in very deed, as the LORD God of Israel liveth, which hath kept me back from hurting thee, except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning light any man of

his house.

So David received of her hand that which she had brought him, and said unto her, Go up in peace to thine house; see, I have hearkened to thy voice, and have accepted thy person.

And Abigail came to Nabal; and, behold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken: wherefore she told him nothing less or more, until the morning light.

But it came to pass in the morning, when the wine was gone out of Nabal, and his wife had told him these things, that his heart died within him, and he became as a stone.

And it came to pass about ten days after, that the LORD smote Nabal that he died.

And when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the LORD, that hath pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and hath kept his servant from evil: for the LORD hath returned the wickedness of Nabal upon his own head. And David sent and communed with Abigail, to take her to him to wife.

And when the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel, they spake unto her, saying, David sent us unto thee to take thee to him to wife. And she arose, and bowed herself on her face to the earth, and said, Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.

And Abigail hasted, and arose, and rode upon an ass, with five damsels of hers that went after her; and she went after the messengers of David, and became his wife.

David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they were also both of them his wives.

But Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Phalti the son of Laish, which was of Gallim.

COMMENT.—When our Lord, the true David, sends His poor to ask our alms, and they are denied, His wrath is kindled. He says: "I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat; thirsty, and ye gave me

no drink; naked, and ye clothed me not; a stranger, and ye took me not in," and the sentence is, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!" A shadow of this awful wrath of the Lamb we see in David. But as man is imperfect, David's wrath, though just, was passionate and violent, and he even swore a rash and cruel oath, more like a Bedouin chief than the anointed of the Lord. But intercession was on the way: just as the Church is always entreating for the fallen, for her enemies, persecutors and slanderers, so while Nabal was rioting without a thought of his danger, his wise and good wife had prepared her gifts, bread and wine, skins and sheep, and raisins and figs, and set forth with them to propitiate the outlaw. She met him, and threw herself on the ground before him, beseeching him to view the insult as proceeding from a weak, foolish creature, not worth his vengeance. It almost seems as if

Nabal might have been a nickname grown into a name, since it expresses his silliness. She goes on to entreat him to accept her gift as a tribute to one who was fighting the battles of the Lord, and who must prevail because no fault was in him. It is true that a man (she will not mention the King) is persecuting him, but in a curious Eastern phrase she declares that David's soul is bound up in the bundle of the living ones, whose life is in the Lord, precious and safe in His sight, while the souls of his enemies should be cast away like a stone from a sling. She represents what a comfort it would be, when he came to his greatness, not to have shed blood causelessly.

David perfectly owned it. His tender heart had recovered from his first rage; he knew his oath had been a sinful one, and he was most thankful that she had saved him from staining himself with a savage revenge. Nabal meanwhile feasted on, and was not sober enough to hear of his danger till morning. Then he became as a stone, but he repented not, and in ten days, like the rich fool in the Gospel, he was smitten and died; and David, when he heard it, gave the more thanks that it had not been his own hand that had returned evil on Nabal, but that he had left him to the Lord.

David's wife Michal had been given by her father Saul to another man. It is impossible not to wonder how much better it might have been for both, if Michal, as she surely might with Jonathan's

help, have held out against her father, and remained constant, or perhaps fled to join the husband of her youth. Then perhaps the lineage of Saul might still have continued on the throne, and she might have had her share in the promises to David, and David might have been saved from that fault, forbidden in the Book of Deuteronomy, the multiplying of wives on the king's part like other Eastern princes-the fault that was the cause of almost all the sins and troubles of his after-life. It seems to have been only on the tidings of Michal's having a new husband that he gave up his faithfulness to her, and married not only the wise and beautiful Abigail, but another woman, named Ahinoam.

LESSON LXXXI.

SAUL'S SPEAR.

I SAM. xxvi. 5—25.

B.C. 1059.-A second time did the treacherous men of Ziph send to inform Saul of David's being in their neighbourhood, and Saul set forth against him, accompanied by Abner, the captain of his army, and a troop of warriors.

And David arose, and came to the place where Saul had pitched and David beheld the place where Saul lay, and Abner the son of Ner, the captain of his host: and Saul lay in the trench,* and the people pitched round about him.

Then answered David and said to Ahimelech the Hittite, and to Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying, Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will go down with thee.

So David and Abishai came to the people by night: and, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster; but Abner and the people lay round about him.

Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not smite him the second time.

And David said to Abishai, Destroy him not; for who can stretch forth

his hand against the LORD'S anointed, and be guiltless?

David said furthermore, As the LORD liveth, the LORD shall smite him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and perish.

* Among the waggons.

The LORD forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the LORD'S anointed: but, I pray thee, take thou now the spear that is at his bolster, and the cruse* of water, and let us go.

So David took the spear and the cruse of water from Saul's bolster; and they gat them away, and no man saw it, nor knew it, neither awaked : for they were all asleep; because a deep sleep from the LORD was fallen upon them:

Then David went over to the other side, and stood on the top of an hill afar off; a great space being between them:

And David cried to the people, and to Abner the son of Ner, saying, Answerest thou not, Abner? Then Abner answered and said, Who art

thou that criest to the king?

And David said to Abner, Art not thou a valiant man? and who is like to thee in Israel? wherefore then hast thou not kept thy lord the king? for there came one of the people in to destroy the king thy lord. This thing is not good that thou hast done. As the LORD liveth, ye are worthy to die, because ye have not kept your master, the LORD's anointed. And now see where the king's spear is, and the cruse of water that was at his bolster.

And Saul knew David's voice, and said, Is this thy voice, my son David? And David said, It is my voice, my lord, O king.

And he said, Wherefore doth my lord thus pursue after his servant? for what have I done? or what evil is in mine hand?

Now therefore, I pray thee, let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If the LORD have stirred thee up against me, let him accept an offering but if they be the children of men, cursed be they before the LORD; for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the LORD, saying, Go, serve other gods.

Now therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth before the face of the LORD for the king of Israel is come out to seek a flea, as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains.

Then said Saul, I have sinned: return, my son David: for I will no more do thee harm, because my soult was precious in thine eyes this day : behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly.

And David answered and said, Behold the king's spear! and let one of the young men come over and fetch it.

The LORD render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness : for the LORD delivered thee into my hand to-day, but I would not stretch forth mine hand against the LORD's anointed.

And, behold, as thy life was much set by this day in mine eyes, so let my life be much set by in the eyes of the LORD, and let him deliver me out of all tribulation.

Then Saul said to David, Blessed be thou, my son David: thou shalt both do great things, and also shalt still prevail. So David went on his way, and Saul returned to his place.

COMMENT.-Saul and his army, unable as yet to find David, lay down to sleep in a narrow valley, with their waggons making an

* Jar.

+ Life.

VOL. II.

enclosure round them, as before at Elah, and as is still done in Arab encampments. The long spear planted in the ground marked where slept the chief-as indeed the spear seems to have been Saul's only sceptre, constantly in his hand. David, watching on the hill, observed how the buzz of voices and the clank of arms died into stillness, and proposed to his brave, swift-footed nephew, Abishai, the son of his sister Zeruiah, to come with him, as we should say to reconnoitre Saul's camp.

If watchers had

Through the rampart of waggons they went. been set by Abner, sleep had overpowered them. No one moved, and David and Abishai presently stood where Saul lay sleeping, with his tall spear beside him, and his jar of water at his bolster, ready to slake his thirst, and all around lay his mighty men, and Abner among them. Abishai thought of all the cruelty and injustice his uncle had suffered. He felt as if this were the moment God had appointed for revenge, and whispered that he would nail Saul to the ground with his own spear, and so surely that he would need no second blow!

66

But David still saw in Saul the Lord's anointed, and still held faithfully to his resolution that his hand should never be lifted against his father-in-law, nor would he slay a sleeping enemy. He only, with some pleasure at catching out his old captain Abner in keeping such bad watch, bade Abishai carry away the spear and water-jar, and then, safely passing out of the camp again, he made his way to the brow of the overhanging cliff, where he could not be reached, though his voice could be plainly heard in the camp below. Thence he shouted to Abner, calling him by name, and charging him with ill defending the King's person: for see," he said, "where is the King's spear and cruse of water." The call awoke Saul, and again the old feeling so far revived that he asked, Is this thy voice, my son David?" Then David again pled his cause. The meaning of his words seems to be, if it were for any sin of his own that God had stirred Saul up to persecute him, then he would offer sacrifice to atone for it; but if Saul were incited against him by slanderous men (such as Doeg and Cush), then they were incurring a curse from the Lord, for they were driving him out of the Land of Promise to dwell among the heathen, and be tempted to serve their gods. Once again Saul was touched, relented, and

66