40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 28:20-29:11 (Episode 255)

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

Saul has to be convinced to eat after receiving news from the raised Samuel. The Philistines gather to attack Israel and David is among them. Some Philistines commanders are uncomfortable with the Hebrews in their ranks. David is sent back but not before a very strange conversation with the king. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Northwest Arkansas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that we've got going on over there. And while you're over there, check out the events page because we've got an event coming up in northwest Arkansas. That's in Bentonville, April 16th and 17th. Chad will be there. I'll be there.

A whole bunch of other people will be there. Andy Gullahorn will be doing a whole concert. It's filling up, Chad. We have a limited amount of tickets because it's not a huge, huge venue that we're going to be in. So it looks like that is going to sell out. So if you want to go to that, you better get in there and grab one of those tickets. You can find all the information over at the website.

We sort of left Saul in an interesting spot. We left David in an interesting spot as well, both of them. We had this weird thing where we had a break in the action. So David has been out raiding villages and claiming that he was raiding villages in Israel. The king has decided it's time to go to war with Israel again and has informed David that he is expected to be there. In fact, you're going to be my bodyguard. Meanwhile, Saul is freaked out and has contacted a medium,

raised Samuel's spirit or himself, something from the dead, something has gone on. And Samuel has told Saul, yeah, I haven't got any war advice for you, but by the end of tomorrow, you and your sons will be with me. and that's that's how we left it yeah on that high and positive note yeah last time yeah and we discussed i mean you know um maybe kind of positive uh there's a positive way to look at it yeah that's true that's true i mean it's a whole lot i would if if sam were to appear to me and say hey chad tomorrow you're gonna be with me i'd a whole lot rather him say that than say hey chad tomorrow you're going to be not with me but in another bad in a bad place so yeah i mean i mean

relatively speaking it's pretty good news yeah you could say uh tomorrow you will die and you will never see me again that would be bad that would that would be bad that would make me freaked out for sure yeah so yeah it's uh it's some good news we're gonna wrap up that chapter we only have a few verses left. We're at 1 Samuel chapter 28, verse 20, and there's 25 verses. So we'll wrap up those five verses. And then we've got a short chapter coming up, but an interesting chapter in a number of ways where David does at least head toward the battle on the Philistine side. And the Philistines are getting ready for this major offensive against the Israelites. So we'll find out what happens to David. But let's wrap up the story of Saul first. So Samuel has

just disappeared. He's given his proclamation of not only Saul's impending death, but also Saul's son's impending deaths, as well as the defeat of Israel. So that is the final prophecy that Samuel utters. I can't say on this side of the grave, on the other side of the grave. Anyway, it's his final prophecy, period. Saul reacts to this, as you might expect, with shock and dismay. He falls down on the ground, says he's very afraid because of the words of Samuel. There's no strength in him because he had not eaten all day and all night. So either he's not eating because his stomach is so upset with worry that he can't eat, or he's fasting. You may remember from an earlier episode, we talked about how Saul had this strange idea that soldiers should fast

before this battle, which as we talked about then was sheer lunacy because you want people to be optimally physically prepared for combat, not walking around with an empty stomach. But perhaps that's kind of a thing with Saul. He likes to fast and maybe he's been fasting in preparation for this encounter with Samuel. But whatever it is, he's not only weakened physically by that, but he's weakened, we might say, emotionally or spiritually or just holistically by everything that he's experienced during this, I don't know what you want to call it, seance or something like that. Anyway, the woman comes to Saul, and Saul, he was terrified, and she says, look, I've done what you told me to do. I've taken my life in your hand

and I've listened to the words which you spoke to me. In other words, I did what you said. Now, verse 22, she says, now, why don't you do what I say? So I listened to you. Now you listen to me. I'm going to put some bread in front of you so that you can eat it and get some strength and be be on your way i'm thinking she probably is ready to get rid of this guy yeah yeah i don't know if this is like just a move of compassion like oh you seem really freaked out and really anxious you probably need to eat something here like you know like her motherly genes kicked in or something i don't think it's that i think it's like all right i'm gonna need you to eat that and get the heck out of here yeah yeah here's a here's a cliff bar for the road yeah chew that while

you're heading back to your camp. But actually, it doesn't work out that way for whatever reason. So he first of all refuses. He says, nope, I'm not going to eat. But together with the woman, the servants of Saul basically just kind of strong arm him, push him into finally eating. And so he does listen to them. He gets off the ground. He'd just been evidently lying there this whole time and he sat uh on her bed and the woman well she ends up giving him a lot more than a piece of bread she uh had a fattened calf in the house you may remember well i don't know if we've talked about this or not but you may know uh that yeah it was not unusual back in uh in this particular culture to have animals in the house with you i'm not talking about dogs and cats i'm

talking about sheep and goats and cattle a lot of homes were set up where there was an area downstairs where at least during the night when they needed to be protected from um whatever might get them uh from uh from predators they would be kept inside or maybe you know on days like well half the country's experiencing right now where it's like i'm here in south texas and it's i woke up to 10 degrees and i think it was like zero in arkansas yeah this morning yeah no degrees so if i if my wife and i had like a fattened calf that we usually kept in the backyard well that calf i guess would have been coming in the house with us uh because he wouldn't have made it through the night oh right i right before we got on here i was i was forcing the dog because

i was gonna be doing this i'm like yeah you gotta go do your business and she was not about it i mean like i opened that door and i had to like i had to get behind her and push her out the door we had so yesterday uh and i know this is an aside but it's funny so yesterday i had to get my snow shovel out and since i used to live where we actually get snow i actually own a snow shovel and i had to snow the the back porch and a portion of the grass so our little dachshund would uh actually be able to go outside he was not he was like your dog he was not loving this weather he hates it so but he he was forced to go outside and use the use the spot i cleared for him he wasn't he wasn't like interested in running around and it was just do it and then right back to the

door right oh yeah yeah yeah with it like a a scowl of hatred on his face the whole time we forced him to do this it's wild that the we had a snow this is a big aside but whatever we had a snow earlier this year it was one of those snows though that were it's like 27 degrees it snows a whole bunch my dog loved it like she wanted to be outside and she wanted to run around in it the difference between like 27 and zero is substantial oh yeah yeah yeah so it was uh not not very pleasant out there still it still is not in fact uh as we're recording we're hoping and praying that my electricity will stay on long enough for us to finish 40 minutes because we've been having rolling blackouts for the last uh last two days

so uh we shall we shall see what happens i will say this about the text uh it does seem that as saws offered this this food and then he refuses this sort of does make you believe that he is sort have been some kind of like wartime fast or something you know where people are like hey man you really need to eat and he's like look i'm not you know i'm i'm not doing that and that has to be convinced not just by her but by the people with him like you're not going to be any good in a battle dude like you have you have to eat and it is interesting that you know she was like here i'm gonna give you some bread but then turns around and says actually i'll go i'll go further than that like we'll get you we'll get you fed fed so you can get out of here yeah yeah she's

got this fattened calf in the house so she slaughters it uh and she makes some flour needs it make some unleavened bread i mean this could take a while it wasn't like she whipped this up and 30 minutes later she had uh some veal and a loaf of unleavened bread in front of saul this would have taken some time so they were probably there for several hours but anyway she He makes it, brings it to Saul, and they ate, and they arose and went away that night. It's a weird situation. I mean, the whole thing, this whole chapter is, of course, extremely strange. You got the king of Israel, who supposedly has driven out all these mediums and necromancers,

and then he has to find one, and he does find one, and goes to her. so this uh witch or whatever you want to call her i mean and then not only does he consult her but now he's uh he's having a meal yeah he's gonna have this nice feast in the in the home of a uh of a of a necromancer i mean it's just this whole this whole thing is kind of surreal it's got so many different strange dimensions to it but that's the way it wraps up with uh with this meal inside the home of the necromancer and then they leave okay so as you mentioned the beginning dan this is uh this whole beginning at chapter 28 the beginning of that where you have the the forces of the philistines getting together from 28 through 29 and then into a little bit into into

30 as well you've got several things that are not sequential so basically this is this is what happens. So you've got the Philistines that are gathering their forces at a place known as Afek. So they're gathering their forces there, and then they're going to move them to a place that is known as Shunem. So first of all, they're going to kind of mass together in Afek, which is on the northern side of the Philistine territory. And they're going to move from there to a place that's known as Shunem, and we hear about that back in chapter 28. All right, so that's going on, and that is when Saul really gets nervous. He sees all these forces. They've gathered at Aphek, and then they moved up to Shunem. Saul sees them all gathered together, so he goes to see

this witch, and in the next morning is when we're going to have the major battle. All right, so while all that is going on, to go back to David now, we're going to catch up with David at the beginning of chapter 29, when he is with his king, this Philistine king, Achish, and they're gathering together at Aphek, right? So we're kind of going back in time. So Saul is right now on the morning in which he's going to go out and fight against the Philistines. And David, we're kind of back in time where the philistines are just beginning to gather their forces okay so chapter 29 as i mentioned it's short 11 verses and this is where we find out if david is going to have to go against the his brothers the the israelites or not so the philistines gathered together all their armies to

afek while the israelites were camped by the spring which is in jezreel and the lords of the philistines were proceeding on by hundreds and by thousands and david and his men were proceeding on in the rear with akish so you remember that akish had said to david you're going with me i know you've been living for you know 16 months whatever whatever it was yeah 16 months i know you've been living for 16 months in zig lag and i know that you've been doing these raids against uh judah or at least he thought david was well now we're going to go in this major offensive against israelites and i want you to be with me and david somewhat coyly said oh i'll show you what i can do yeah yeah definitely show you what i could do which akish is uh naively naively believes that

david is is saying i'll show you what i can do against the israelites david is really just kind of leaving this wide open he's just saying he's he's saying i'll show you what kind of guy i am yeah nothing more right you'll find out just hide and watch and and by the way this is uh shaping up not to be like just kind of uh some like squirmish or something i mean there's a lot of there's a lot of guys here so i mean when it says that they're sort of gathering together for this major offensive like this is a this is gonna be a big battle this isn't the philistines were doing something over here and you know david or saul got some guys together and they went and drove them out or anything like that this is line up your guys and let's do this kind of kind of battle and we're

ever told why they did this, but I wonder, just kind of following this story, if the Philistines have not realized that Saul is extremely weak. He doesn't have the support of his followers anymore. David is no longer in the picture, and so maybe they're thinking to themselves, you know what? This is our chance. Let's get everybody together, and this will be our opportunity to finally take out the Israelites once and for all. So like I said, we're not told, but at least I wonder if that maybe was the reason for this major offensive at this time. But whatever it was, David is with his Philistine benefactor, I guess we'd call him, Akish. And Akish has said to David, you're going to be literally my head guard, my bodyguard. You're going to take care of me. So

So that's, of course, why David is sticking pretty close to Achish. Now, they come up there. So we don't know exactly how the Philistines realized these weren't like fellow Philistines. Maybe it's by the way they dressed or something else. But the commanders of the Philistines are like, this is verse 3, what are these Hebrews doing here? this this by the way happens to be uh the way that a lot of non-israelites address or refer to israelites they call them hebrews so maybe it actually might even be kind of a pejorative term

like you know what are these guys what are these hebrews doing here it might not have been just a kind of a neutral term but instead a negative term in the mouths of the philistines you can understand you're like what what the heck are you doing what why are you bringing hebrews to battle because you do realize we're just about to go against the hebrews yeah this makes no sense now you gotta love akish and this and it didn't hit me until uh until this morning when i was looking over this but i think one of the reasons that david of all the places of all the philistine places he could have gone that he went to the city of akish i think the reason he did this is because he realized that akish wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed that he was possibly the uh most

gullible easily duped of the philistine leaders because listen to the way that akish explains who this is and you know why he brought him this is the way uh he starts out he says to commanders of the philistines well isn't this david the servant of saul the king of israel who's been with me these many days or rather these years and i have found no fault in him from the day that he deserted to me to this day now i don't know about you but if i'm about to make my case for why these hebrews are with me the last thing that i want to do is begin by introducing this guy as david quote the servant of saul the king of israel yeah no doesn't seem smart to me no no it's almost like the the philistine commanders are like what's with all

these hebrews and he says no these aren't just any hebrews these this is david don't you understand you know david he killed a bunch of us i don't know how this is helpful i don't know how this helpful either no he didn't even you're right it's not like they looked over there they're like isn't that david no they're like no they just know it's a bunch of hebrews all he had to say would have been like oh yeah well don't worry about these guys are mercenaries they've been working for me for a while no big deal but no he's gotta not only identify david but he's he's gonna define him as the servant of saul the king of israel you know the the guy that we're going to do do battle against it's david renowned philistine philistine slayer yeah that of course

is why we've uh we have him here so he claims you know that of course david has deserted to him and he's been with him days and years and well a little bit of exaggeration there on the years part he's been with him for not even with him he's been in his territory for 16 months anyway the commanders of philistines are having nothing to do with this they're mad they're angry and they say to akish make the man go back that he may return to his place where you have assigned him and do not let him go down to battle with us lest in the battle he become an adversary to us for with what could this man make himself acceptable to his lord would it not be with the heads of these men and then once more we've heard this multiple times in david's story

but once more we hear the two-line song that the girls made up years ago about david isn't it david of whom they sing and the dances saying saul has slain his thousands and david his tens of thousands that song just comes back to haunt david over and over yeah i mean this is a pretty good argument by the commanders here they're like oh yeah listen uh let me let me explain to you how this could work say there's a guy and he is on out on the outs with his lord with it with the king now there's one way you could get in the good on the good side of the king and that would be if you went down to battle with us and all of a sudden turned on us and brought a bunch of our heads to the king this would be a good way to do that i don't know i don't know if you've thought this

through or not but if you're on the outs that's a way to get in the ends yeah they're akisha's not been thinking clearly but obviously uh his fellow commanders are thinking very clearly i mean yeah it's it's and you know in their in their defense not that not that they need defending but in their defense i think that's exactly what david was planning on doing the thing is we're never told exactly what David's plan was. Yeah, we weren't told about his plan, but there we have no reason to think he was going to actually fight against Israel.

Well, for one thing, it would have been immoral, of course. He's going against his fellow Israelites. But it also would have been, just on the political side, political suicide. Yeah. I mean, he knows he's supposed to be king. He probably knows that it's getting closer, getting pretty close, in fact.

so to think that he could go against his fellow israelites with the philistines and then later assume the throne of israel and be supported by his fellow israelites nah i mean you are talking about a guy who would not kill saul yes right i don't think he's probably going to go out and kill you know hundreds and hundreds of israelites i don't think he's going to do that no this uh i mean we don't know if david ever wanted to be in this situation but Now that he has found himself in this situation, then he's, of course, he's thinking three steps ahead of everybody else, as he almost always does. So he had his plan. And the Philistines, at least the Philistines besides Akish, they had this figured out themselves.

So Akish turns to David and he says to him something very odd. I had not noticed this until I was reviewing this text this morning. He swears by the name of Yahweh. which is just an odd thing for a Philistine to do. He says, as the Lord lives, as Yahweh lives, you have been upright and you're going out and you're coming in with me and the army are pleasing in my sight.

For I have not found evil in you from the day of your coming to me to this day. Nevertheless, you are not pleasing in the sight of the lords. So go back, go in peace that you may not be, so that you may not displease the lords of the Philistines. So I don't know quite what to make of this. Is Akish sort of trying to work both sides of the theological fence here? Is he worshiping the God of the Philistines as well as Yahweh now?

Or is he just kind of bending over backwards to try and make up with David and using the name of David's God in this oath to him? It's really, we can't tell. But it is very strange to hear from the lips of a Philistine as Yahweh lives. Not something that we would have expected. Yeah, I think David has successfully manipulated his way into the heart of the king here. And, you know, you could tell that the king is kind of proud that David's his guy now. And that's clouding his judgment, obviously. and so it seems that what he's doing is is kind of saying like hey we're still good man like like

everything's fine i have no reason not to trust you like that other people though they don't they don't know the way i do you know so they're a little skeptical so you just go back i'll be home for dinner you know that kind of thing but this this king has like a like a bro crush on david and He really likes the idea that David is someone that he now considers like part of his little, you know, his little squad. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Given all of that, you really have to you have to listen to David's words and be impressed with his his theatrical ability. I mean, David is he's an actor. He's he's shown this multiple times.

So he pretends as if he is just very deeply offended by what has just happened So verse 8, David says to Akish But what have I done? And what have you found in your servant from this day when I came before you to this day? That I may not go and fight against the enemies of my Lord, the King all right once more we have ambiguity so earlier akish had said hey you're going to battle with me and david's like oh yeah i'll show you what i can do just you just watch i'll show you and now he says uh well first of all you know of course he pretends to be offended what have i done you

know why can't i go out because i wanted to go out and fight against quote the enemies of my lord the king well so here's the deal multiple times in this narrative david has used those exact words except the referent of my lord the king was saul yeah so akish is going to hear this as if david of course is talking to him as if akish is david's lord and king but from the lips of david you know exactly what he's talking about hey i was you know i was ready i was ready willing to go out and fight against the enemies of my lord the king yeah i mean go read the book of psalms i mean the the david is after all a poet a man with a vocabulary uh he's got he does have a wave of words you ever heard you know the psalm 23 you ever recited that thing it's kind of beautiful yeah david david wrote

that and this is this is the sort of stuff that david can do uh he could he's quick uh with the tongue and it takes a certain amount of of hubris to have been raiding villages of philistines and killing everyone in those villages for for like a year and then saying to the king what do you mean i can't what have i done i mean this is this is this is crazy amounts of confidence have i done have i done anything to make you not trust me yeah dude i mean you've been doing stuff the entire time you've been here that if you got found out you'd be getting blasted but no he's got he's got to keep this act going and act as though i guess i won't go if that's what my lord the king doesn't want but this is this hurts me yeah this hurts me deeply i mean i was just i could not wait

to go out and fight and if you didn't think that this king has a bro crush on david before you just wait till you hear his next words yeah so he's now at this point he's defended david to his fellow commanders and he's defended david to david saying yeah man i know you you're innocent well now he's going to take he's going to up his game even more so after david is protesting and saying what have i done then akish says to him verse this is verse nine i know that you are as blameless in my sight are you ready for this as an angel of god i mean this is crazy over the top i know that you i mean i've never said this to a person in my life nor will i ever say this to a person of my life and this is from a philistine david i know that you are as blameless in my eyes as an

angel of god wow nevertheless he says the commanders of the philistines hey they say you gotta go you shall not go to battle with us it's not me it's them it's not me it's them listen if i had my way you'd be by my side we'd be killing israelites from dawn to dusk and i know that because of your angelic innocence that i can trust you implicitly but hey uh it's you know it's not me it's not you it's them so you got to go home now uh interestingly as far as i know and i'm pretty sure this is the case as far as i know no one else in the entire bible no other regular person i should say in the entire bible is is called or compared to an angel of god besides David. And it doesn't just happen here. It happens on two other occasions as well. We're

going to get to those. One is in 2 Samuel 14, and the one is in 2 Samuel 19. So three different people on three different occasions compare David or David's integrity or David's innocence uh to an angelic kind of status which is interesting uh it you know my mind of course goes uh in multiple directions here on the one hand it's just kind of silly on the mouth of from the mouth of akish yeah come on nobody's that innocent but then when you look at these other two occurrences it's like hmm now what is it about david makes people want to compare him to an angel of God. Possibly, if we wanted to look at this in the big perspective, we could say, well, after all, the son of David is the Malak Yahweh. He is the messenger of the Lord or the

quote-unquote angel of God, and here we have David compared similarly. I would have nothing against that. I don't know if we can fully make that exegetical argument, but it certainly is intriguing to me anyway i'll leave it at that but the only person in the bible who's compared to this angel of god is david and it happens three times and it just so happens that the son of david is also the uh not compared to but called the messenger of messenger of god it seems to me that this might just be here i don't know i don't think there's probably anyone in this in the bible that is able to sort of bend the affections of people and gain the applause of people the way that David is.

It seems like it might just be a way of people saying, you're different. Yeah. And David just excels at this sort of thing. I mean, he's got girls doing dances and singing songs in the streets that the Philistines know. Yeah. It's how widespread this stuff is.

I mean, he... They didn't hear this on the radio. They weren't tuned in to the Israelite radio station and picked up these girls singing this. I mean, for a song to make its way from one culture to another, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean, you're talking about a guy that almost everybody loves,

with the exception of a key figure, Saul, who hates him because everybody loves him. I mean, I don't think it's something that is only natural for david i mean david make oh he's just so likable and stuff that might be part of it but david also knows how to work this whole thing uh he knows how to to draw people to himself that's what that's what he's done done here i mean with with this day with david who is who is you know i don't play with words he's a poet and he rattles off some stuff this king just tries to join in the flowery language with him and is like you're as blameless as an angel i mean

you're getting ready for a battle dude like who talks like this yeah first person to angel swears by the name of his god yeah uh defends him against the his fellow philistines this guy's got it bad for david man it's kind of sad yeah it is i you know i will say this and i think i maybe mentioned this an episode or two ago but uh throughout our time in first samuel well ever since david was introduced uh you know my my my overall view of him has slightly altered i mean of course we all know about david you know we've all read his his stories and whatnot but spending this much time with him and diving this deep into his stories and kind of his personality and his psychology and all that kind of stuff uh yeah it's it's it's impossible for me not to like him

but at the same time i'm also like pulling back a little bit just because anybody who's this slick and this just amazing when it comes to uh convincing people of whatever he wants to convince him of is slightly dangerous or maybe greatly dangerous uh so my i'll say that i think i have a much more well-rounded opinion of him now is he still like a hero type figure well of course yeah i mean it's impossible for him not to be but there's also this uh kind of flip side of him that uh makes me a little nervous yeah well david's the kind of guy that you look at and i think you see this because of just certain aspects of his life, but David's the sort of guy that it's a very good thing that he was a man after God's own heart, that God has said this of him. That's

a good way to put it. Because if he were not, a man with his particular skill set is incredibly dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Just imagine if the Philistines had had a David. Right. What, you know, what he would have been able to do. Yeah. And he's always been like this, by the way, too. I mean, I think people are like, oh, he was the runt out and tending the sheep and stuff like that. David was actually different than Saul, who Saul sort of actually had this sort of, I don't know if it was a piousness, but there was a sort of simpleness about Saul, a sort of naiveness about him. I mean, David from the jump is like, I'll kill anybody. I mean, I'll kill a bear, I'll kill a lion, I'll kill a giant, I don't care.

David has never been this guy that, I mean, I don't think David's knees have ever knocked. I don't think they ever have. Or remember, I mean, when we were first really introduced to him, besides his coronation or his secret anointing, he doesn't just go out onto the battlefield and kill Goliath. No, he takes advantage of the opportunity to deliver this rather long and eloquent speech. And it's a great speech, especially for a teenager. He's clear, he's forthright, he's eloquent, and he's highly theological already at that point. And of course, his speaking ability, his rhetorical ability just continues to sharpen over time.

And, of course, we see this in the case of his ability to pull the wool over Akish's eyes so that he thinks David is of angelic innocence, more or less. Yeah, David's got all the speech going on. Most of the time, his speech is the opposite of the other famous type of speech, which is like the Spartan speech of one-liners, famous stuff. Like when you roll in and say, hey, drop all your weapons and we can be at peace. And you say, come and take them. this is david is normally the opposite of that he's more flowery and like his longer speeches but every once in a while like we have seen david uh when he'll say something like you're you you will see what i can do that's that's that's a little bit that's a little spartan s so he can

yeah yeah he can he can go both uh both routes yeah so uh and we're we're near the end of of this chapter of chapter 29. And, and speaking of which, I mean, we are, we are not far. I don't know if people realize this, but we are not far from the end of the end of first Samuel. We got chapter 30 and we got chapter, we got chapter 31. So we are coming close to a major division in the life of, in the life of David. You know, one thing I wanted to, to put out here just to kind of pull this whole,

this whole chapter together is I was doing some looking this morning about the parallels that are suggestive between what happens here between Akish and David and then what happens later on with Pontius Pilate and Jesus. I mean, it's nothing that I'd want to push too far and be like, yeah, this is definitive.

But it is, I do find it intriguing. You got, in both cases, you've got, of course, David and then you have the Messiah, you have the son of David. and you have two rulers, two leaders. You've got, they're both non-Israelite. You've got Akish, who's a Philistine king.

You've got Pilate, who is a Roman ruler of sorts, a political appointee who's in charge of this particular area of the Roman empire. And the major parallel between these two is in both cases, there is a threefold defense of the innocence of the one who was accused. so three different times akish defends the innocence of david and then on three different occasions for certainly certainly in the gospel of luke pilate defends the innocence of jesus

he says basically look i've i've examined him i find no guilt in this man and he repeats this on three different occasions and in both cases you kind of have this ironic uh background here because they're both more or less accused of being uh seditious you know causing causing some either either causing or at least potentially causing some some breakup in the kingdom and in both cases the charges are both untrue as well as true if you know what i mean like yeah i mean sure uh uh it what jesus was doing and what david was doing what was going to undermine the kingdom there's no doubt about it because they were about another kingdom about god's about god's kingdom though they were innocent of course jesus in a way different than david still there was a certain

truth to the charge even though the charge itself was not uh was not worthy of course of what what happened to our lord but anyway it's a kind of a fascinating parallel here and some commentators have actually suggested that the way that the whole scene with pilot is structured was built off this this predecessor in first samuel 29 so uh anyway just a interesting way to kind of wrap up that uh wrap up that chapter possible foreshadowing here what's going to happen going to happen later on so what we'll find out in chapter 30 what happens next and it's quite a surprise while david and his men are on their way presumably to fight and find out they're not going to fight well turns out when they go back home the next morning they go home to a surprise not

not the good kind of surprise either while they were while they were away some of the enemy the Amalekites, you'll recognize those names they decided to take advantage of this this situation where there were no fighting men left behind to defend Ziklag to make a raid and so we're going to have a pretty

tense scene when David and his men arrive back in Ziklag and we'll see what happens from there Sounds good, yeah, we will tackle David's journey back to his sort of home his temporary home next week i'll see you then chad all right see you then