40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 30:1-31 (Episode 256)

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

David and his men return home to find they have been raided and all their families are gone. God says they should pursue and take everything back, but they're going to need the help of a starving abandoned servant. 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 are over there. while you're over there you might want to sign up for the regional event in northwest arkansas it's just about uh filled up we're getting close to sold out so if you were thinking about going and you've been putting it off you need to jump on those tickets grab some so you can come hang out with chad me and a bunch of other people uh in bentonville chad we uh we left david in a spot where he's so disappointed that he is not going to get to go fight his countrymen uh he has uh he

was all geared up to go to battle with the philistine king and some of the other officers they were not into it they looked at the king and said uh do you realize that you got a bunch of hebrews over here and we saw a very interesting speech from the king where he explained that they weren't just any hebrews but they were david and his band of philistine slayers which did little to comfort the commanders of the philistine army and said no we don't really want to go into battle with those guys. So the king, after declaring that David is the most righteous and blameless of all of God's creation, like an angel of God, sends him back to his pseudo home in the land of the Philistines. Yeah, and you would think that after all that happens, then

David would come home and be welcomed home and be able to kind of chill for a while. But as it turns out. He didn't get to fight in the battle with the Philistines, but he is going to have to fight when he gets back home. So this is actually the, I don't know if people realize this, but this is the next to last chapter in 1 Samuel. So we are very close to the end. And it's a significant chapter. We learn a little bit more about David, David, the way he deals with, it's going to be the Amalekites in this situation. But also how he deals with people who are in need. We're going to have an episode where he stops to take care of an abandoned ill slave. And we'll also find out a little bit about the way he deals with his men when they're being greedy and wanting to keep a

bunch of the spoil back from some of the others. So anyway, some interesting material to get to. let's jump in with uh kind of the the stage setting the stage here this is it happened when david and his men came to ziklag remember that's the the city or town that the philistine king gave to david and his men when they came back to ziklag on the third day that the amalekites had made a raid on the negev and on ziklag and had overthrown ziklag and burned it with fire And they took captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great, without killing anyone, and carried them off, or I think the Hebrew would be better translated that, drove them away and went on their way. So, I mean, you put yourself in this situation, you can imagine or try to imagine what a just horrific feeling this would be. i mean just it'd be bad enough uh you know say you say you go on vacation or you're away for a

night whatever you come home and your house caught fire and just a smoldering pile of ashes i mean that would be bad enough to think well you've just you've lost everything but to come back and see this and at first not not know i mean are are your your wives and your children all all dead what you know, what's happened. So a shock on the part of David when he came back. And also, this is the group of people that we have heard about quite a bit over the years, the Amalekites. And this is actually pretty typical of this people group. We first meet the Amalekites after the Israelites have left Egypt, and they're working their way through the wilderness, and the Amalekites attack them, not like brave soldiers might, but they attack them like cowards might. They always attack

the very end of the procession, where the women are, or the children are, the people who just kind of can't keep up, the people who are most exposed and most vulnerable, those are the people that the Amalekites attacked. And after that, I think we've talked about this a couple of times, after that, God basically decrees that the Amalekites should be wiped out from the face the earth. And then we meet them again in 1 Samuel. You remember that was what led to all of the problems with Saul. He was supposed to completely annihilate the Amalekites, but he didn't. He kept the king. He kept a bunch of the spoils. And because of that, the kingdom was taken away from him. Now David is going to have to deal with these Amalekites again. And as it turns out,

they were once again taking advantage of the weak and the vulnerable. They waited until number one, David and his men were gone from Ziklag, and number two, they waited until a lot of the Philistine army had left for this great war against the Israelites, and then took advantage of this situation to attack not just Ziklag, but a bunch of the Philistine cities as well, and then to take all the spoil for themselves. Yeah, you realize that this time period is a time where if you leave your land ill defended or under under defended that this is a risk i mean what seems to be going on all the time is that different groups will come in and take your stuff these borders aren't well defined as far as um you know people don't care about sovereign sovereign

nations or anything like that they will just march in if you are undermanned and enrich themselves And this is just sort of par for the course right here. So anytime that anyone leaves something behind or you take your entire army out somewhere, you are certainly leaving yourself open to someone coming and taking advantage of it. Yeah, that's a major mistake, just strategically, I think, that David makes here. As far as we know, he didn't leave anybody behind to defend Ziklag. you know maybe he thought everything would be okay what whatever or maybe even akish wanted him to bring all of his all of his men with him we're not exactly sure but strategically it was

a mistake because of what you what you just described you know i think if we could bring back we could bring like into into the here and now a person from back then and kind of show them around i think one of the things that would shock them uh when i for instance if i take them into san antonio say like here's here's what a modern city looks like one of the things they would say like where's the wall yeah how how do you defend yourself there's no wall here because of course walls were a major part of the defense of cities in the ancient world because you had this constant threat from raiding parties or from not just raiding parties but from you know other national armies coming in to uh to take your stuff away or to take ownership of your land or whatever

whatever it might be yeah it's one of it's one of the things that makes israel a little bit different too is that they do have less of a might makes right attitude about about all kinds of things whether that's personal property or you know uh land all that sort of stuff they're this at this time if you can take it then it's yours yeah yeah i mean that was kind of the that's kind of the ethos so uh and of course that's certainly the ethos of the amalekites they they raided and i mean they don't when it says they didn't kill anyone don't get the impression that uh they did this out of mercy like oh we're gonna spare everybody's life no they didn't kill anybody because they were gonna take the wives and the children and keep the ones

they wanted and then probably sell the rest into slavery that's that was that way this this worked so don't get the impression that oh they were they were kind and compassionate they spared everybody's life no i just they spared their lives so that they could do with them whatever whatever they wanted to so anyway david and his men they uh they get back and they see that the city has been uh has been burned and their wives and their sons and the daughters have been taken taken captive and uh not surprisingly verse four says that david and the people who were with him lifted their voices and wept until there was no strength in them to weep so at this scene of a great pathos where you have just lamentation and weeping because of because of they've basically

lost lost everything and it adds verse five that david's two wives had been taken captive Ahinom, the Jezreelitess, and Abigail, the widow of Nabal, the Carmelite. We've heard about the two of them before. Now, this situation, of course, was horrible, but it almost got a little bit worse because it says in verse 6 that David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him because all the people were embittered. Literally, they were bitter of soul, each one, because of sons and his daughters so this is a this is fascinating in a in a few different ways i looked this morning i was just curious because you know we haven't we haven't really heard about stoning anyone in a long time so i was just curious i was thinking did i did i forget about

a situation and i i didn't uh of course when we're when we were back in the torah there were there was more than one occasion where the people wanted to stone moses i had to get angry with him over something and so they'd want to stone him and then the last time that it occurred last time this the Hebrew verb for stone was used was in the Achan account back in Joshua I believe that's Joshua chapter 7 but all for the whole rest of Joshua the whole book of Judges and up till here we are in chapter 30 of 1 Samuel there's been no mention of anybody being stoned so this is the reason I bring that up is I think this is sort of an instance of David being in a sort of Moses kind of situation. In fact, the word for bitter of soul is a word that occurs more than

once in the Pentateuch to describe people back then who were angry and upset and bitter over the plight that they were in during the wilderness wanderings. So it's kind of an Exodus kind of situation for David. He's a Moses-like figure here, and he's greatly distressed, and that's another tie-in with what we have already seen. This is a great opportunity for us to contrast how David deals with the situation with how Saul dealt with the situation. So the Hebrew verb that is used for distressed, disarar, is not only distressed, but greatly distressed. That exact same language is used in chapter 28, verse 15, but it's not on the lips of David. It's on the lips of Saul. So this is when Saul has gone to the medium, the necromancer, and she has summoned

Samuel from the dead. And so Samuel says to Saul, I am greatly distressed because the Philistines of waging war against me so the same words there for greatly distressed are the same words that are used here to describe david's situation well how did saul deal with his great distress well he goes to you know a forbidden medium in order to call samuel back from the dead in order to inquire from him why because god wouldn't talk to saul he had he had shut off all communication with Saul, and because of that, Saul goes to this extreme of going to a medium. Now, what does David do in this situation? Well, he also is greatly distressed, and his life is in danger from his own people because they're so upset. And so what does he do? Well, at the end of verse 6, we're

told what he does. He strengthened himself in the Lord his God, and then it goes on to say exactly what that means. He called for Abiathar the priest, and he consulted the ephod to find out exactly what God wanted him to do. And then God answered David with a very clear answer as to, as to how he wanted him to proceed. So I think the, the narrative by using the same language in chapter 28 and then chapter 20, 20, uh, in chapter 30, the narrative sets up this pretty clear contrast between David and Saul and how God deals with, with each of them in different ways. And then how They seek God and seek his will, one by means of a necromancer and then one by means of the ephod that God has provided for them. And I think this shows you, too, that this was not a wise decision by David to take all the men out of there.

And you can tell that his army believes that. I mean, they blame him for this. So there is certainly more than implied in the text that they believe that this is David's fault, that David made a bad decision. They did what they were told, but what they were told to do was unwise. So now their kids are gone and their wives are gone. And David's the one to blame because he's the one who, in their mind, made the call to do that. And I mean, you could probably even understand. I mean, you might be like, man, they're going to stone him.

That seems extreme. Well, I don't know. get a couple hundred guys with their families together have one guy make a decision to have everyone leave and then they come back and all their families are gone and see how exactly do you think they are going to feel about that guy yeah yeah i don't want to be that guy i don't yeah i wouldn't want to be that guy either you yeah you've got a uh extremely dangerous situation keep in mind you know these guys these guys came from some pretty rough backgrounds too remember the people that gathered around david uh were people who were just kind of the

i don't want to i started to say kind of the leftovers but the people who'd been rejected they'd suffered they'd been uh oppressed so the reason they came to david was because he was kind of the champion of the underdog we might say and so a lot of these guys came from some pretty uh pretty rough rough backgrounds and so for them to in this kind of situation start grumbling And you know how it is You kind of get this mob mentality Going on too People are upset, they start complaining

And they're Not only angry But they're worried about their families And you could easily see how this would escalate To actually want to take him out Somebody has to pay for this, right? Yeah, somebody has to pay for it And it's going to be David

So David wisely goes to Abiathar the priest and tells him to bring the ephod he brings the ephod david inquired of the lord through this ephod remember this is the case of the the holy lots the urim and the fumim which can it's it's just they to provide a binary response to the yes or no and their response they gave was yes in fact uh we don't know exactly how uh the yes turned into this great emphatic statement But God said to him, pursue and you shall surely overtake them and you shall surely rescue all. In Hebrew, we talked before about how when that language wants to really emphasize something, it will use the verb twice.

It's what's called infinitive absolute. So it would be something like pursue and you shall overtakingly overtake them and you shall rescuingly rescue them. Something like that. so you shall surely overtake them you shall surely rescue them all and then of course this gave david the confidence he needed to be able to probably to reassure his men and then to be reassured himself that in one way or another it was all going to all going to work out now how it worked out or how it was going to work out he didn't know but we're going to find out in uh in the next section, which tells us that God used a very unusual and unexpected means to make this

happen. David went with his 600 men, and they came to a place called the Brook Besor. Some of the guys are going to be left behind at this moment. David took 400 men, but 200 guys who it says were too exhausted to cross the brook remain behind with the baggage these are all the dudes that are about 40 this is you and me chad we're like you're 40 i'm 50 can't do it anymore you guys gonna have to go this is the young men are gonna have to go take care of this yeah i'll say listen i'll take care of the baggage yeah yeah in fact uh uh the the hebrew for this is the the verb for exhausted is related to the verb for uh or not the verb the noun for like a corpse so probably the best way to translate this was they were dead tired i think that would idiomatically uh capture

exactly what the hebrew is suggesting here so it wasn't like they were i'm kind of you know i'm a little bit tired i need a nap no these guys were like done they were dead tired and so he leaves them behind and i realized this this morning it was actually pretty smart on david's part you know he he learned his lesson he he left the town undefended well look what happened well he's not going to leave all the baggage unattended so in a way this is david learning from his own mistakes he's like no no no listen these guys are tired that's fine we're gonna leave them plus we need somebody to guard the baggage there's a whole lot of stuff here and if it's left unprotected well who knows you know another band of raiders might come in and then we come back

all our stuff's gone so anyway they uh they take 400 men and the 200 are left behind and they proceed forward and it's at this point when lo and behold somebody unexpected enters into the narrative it's an egyptian so they're going along and they come upon this uh egyptian guy who's in a field and they bring him to david and he's in bad shape so they give him some bread and he eats and they provide him with some some water to drink and as if that's not quite enough it goes on to describe they gave him some a fig cake they gave him some two clusters of raisins i mean they're taking care of this guy he's extremely hungry so yeah and uh it says his spirit revived because he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and and three nights so i we're going to find out

you know how this guy helped them in just a minute but that this goes to show you that these guys i mean put yourself in the situation they're they're on the war path they're they're on the lookout for these uh amalekites but they stop to take care of this abandoned egyptian just out in the middle of field this is i think this is one way in which the story is is is setting up once more a contrast between two different groups we saw the contrast between saul and and david now there's a contrast between the amalekites and the way these israelites deal with someone who is in need and keep in mind too this is this guy's an egyptian he's not a fellow israelite he's he's an egyptian Don't you think David, he gets this emphatic message that,

oh yeah, you're going to find him. You're going to overtake him. You're going to rescue everyone. And David is a guy who knows that God works in weird ways. If you're David, you're like, yeah, I bet you this doesn't go exactly the way I think it's going to go. It never goes the way that you think it would go when God says, I'm going to give you this victory.

it never is it's never just like a standard like go down there engage in combat and you win like it's never it's never like that and so uh as as they leave 200 guys behind and they're in this pursuit and then they see this lone egyptian guy i have to believe that david's like i'm guessing that this is part of what god is going to do yeah yeah which would as you as you say would which would perfectly fit with the way that god ordinarily works yeah this guy is part of the plan i think at least or at least he may be so i'm gonna not david's probably got his eyes open trying to figure out how has god how has god mean to do this and if you just see a random guy wandering around if you're david you're probably thinking don't know for sure but that might be

part of the plan yeah yeah and the bible does this several times where uh you'll have somebody introduced and you're not even told their name you know there's some person some seemingly random person shows up and they're like the critical link in the whole story yeah you don't even know their name i mean usually they're like a servant such as this guy is uh but they're the the instrument that god uses to bring about some great redemption or some great victory or whatever whatever it might be so back to this guy he once he's you know filled his stomach he had quite a bit to eat there he uh he's feeling alive again and then we begin to find out more about him david says to him who do you belong to and where are you from and the guy says well i am a i'm a

young man of egypt and i'm a servant of an amalekite you know that at that point as soon as David heard that word, his ears perked up. He's like, ah, thank you, God. I know that you're behind this. And he says, my master left me behind when I fell sick three days ago. We made

a raid on the Negev of the Karathites and on that which belongs to Judah and on the Negev of Caleb, and we burned Ziklag with fire. So, I mean, certainly by the end, David was like, okay, all right, now I definitely know that God

has placed you placed you in my path it's a good thing it's a good thing david's talking to this guy and not some just one of the husbands of uh one of the one of the just random warriors yeah they probably would have taken this guy out you know they're looking for anybody uh who's going to be the the scapegoat to this situation so this guy would have been a perfect candidate for that so and what about these amalekites too good people you know oh we get a sick servant we'll just drop him in the desert let him die no water guys out there for three days no food no water so yeah i'm sure he was just about about near death i mean bad enough he was healthy but if he was sick and abandoned in the desert uh three days and three it's a wonder

he it's a wonder he lived so this this guy of course is a perfect candidate who's going to be able to to help them out so david says to him you gotta kind of admire david there's he doesn't even use the imperative he asked him a question he's like you know would you mind doing something for us which would you will you bring me down to this this band to this army and uh the guy says yeah if you won't kill me if you swear to me by god that you will not kill me or deliver me back into the hands of my master who was evidently uh a sorry excuse for a human being and then i'll bring you down to the span so don't kill me and don't get me back don't don't get me back into slavery and i'll yeah i'll do anything yeah he's basically saying uh i'll do it but uh you can't

kill me and you have to keep me yeah right right yeah please take care of me uh and of course you David is more than willing to do that. So God uses a lone, unnamed Egyptian as the crucial figure in this whole story. So he leads them to where they're at. And when he had brought him down, that is to say, when the servant had led David and his men to where the Amalekites were, here's what they find. they don't find uh this very organized uh group of soldiers who are ready for combat because they're

thinking that the enemy might attack them at any moment now they more or less come on a a huge drunken party is more or less what's going on here so you can kind of picture david as men they're like you know crawling on their hands and knees up this hill and they're looking over and what do they see they were well you can either translate this as spread over all the land i like another translation they were sprawled i think that probably captured this better because the the verb means like uh abandoned so like they were sort of in this abandoned pose in other words they were just sprawled all over the place why because they had been eating and drinking and dancing because of the great spoil they had taken from the land of the philistines and from the land

of judah so you just yeah you've got just all these amalekites are all probably drunk they're partying they're having a good time this is why the amalekites never really amounted to like something incredible it's true yeah right they yeah they just they get a victory they get of victory they can't contain themselves yeah yeah they are uh man they're gonna be they're not gonna be in good shape for fighting let's put it that way no there's there's a there's a possibility there's kind of a hint here of uh of a connection to the whole scene back in exodus 32 with the golden calf dude because the verb that is translated as dancing is uh also used many times for like a uh a religious celebration so maybe

they're also and probably they were also giving thanks to their amalekite god for giving them this this great victory but either way yeah they're they're sprawled out everywhere they're drunk they're feasting on the spoils that they've taken from their their enemies and then verse 17 says uh what david did david smote them or as my translation has it slaughtered them from twilight into the evening of the next day and not a man of them escaped except 400 young men who rode on camels and fled yeah this is a weird thing so david goes down there and kills the malachites all day and you're not sure how many guys there are except for this that's you know that there's a lot of guys you would assume and it says no one escaped except for 400 you're right well 400 is

how many guys david has so i don't know how many i don't know how many amalekites are down here but if 400 is not a significant part of the of the number you know if that's not half uh or something you're talking about a lot of guys of course they are killing them all day long apparently yeah this is a crazy scene apparently these guys are in no shape for fighting because if 400 guys escape and that's barely worth noting that's not a man survived except for those 400 you have to assume that there's a quite this is quite a big group of guys and i would assume so yeah and they must just be trashed man because somehow these 400 dudes of david just slaughter them all day long yeah well you know anyone who's ever had a hangover

knows that when you wake up in the morning you probably don't want to get into a fight right away and these guys were probably not just hung over they probably woke up drunk yeah still so they are in no shape at all for uh for combat and david's men on the other hand are not only good fighters but yeah you can imagine how well they fought that day they're i mean they are they are looking for they're not just fighting they're fighting for revenge so i'm sure this was a uh an extremely bloody slaughter that they that they had it's interesting too i mean so the amalekites they capture all these people they're gonna keep some sell some of the slavery whatever they don't kill anybody uh when david gets in there they kill

everybody so they're not interested in taking slaves or taking servants or taking people that they can sell to other people to make a profit this is uh an absolute act of retribution yeah yeah he's gonna take out as many as many as he can so some escape and uh david recovers all that the amalekites had taken and and rescued his his two wives nothing of theirs was missing whether the smaller great sons or daughters, spoiled or anything that they had taken for themselves. So David brought it all back, which is pretty, I mean, it was pretty amazing

that he was able to recapture everything that had been taken and that no one was harmed when all the fighting was going on. He does get some sheep and some herds, though. He's not interested in taking any prisoners, but he'll take the livestock. Yeah, I'm thinking David and his men,

they were on the run for so long. kind of living off of everybody else's charity that they were probably going to make sure they had plenty of flocks to, uh, to make sure they never went hungry again. So they capture all the sheep and the cattle, they drive them on ahead. And the people said of the spoil, this is, this is David's. Now we have a tent scene. You know, you'd think everything was going to be fine after, after all this went down, but now we have another, uh, argument that breaks out between David and his men. When David came to the 200 men who were too exhausted, the dead, tired guys, to follow David, who had been left at that brook, they went out to meet David and to meet the people

who were with him. And David approached the people and greeted them. Sure, he was telling them about the victory. Then it says, verse 22, all the wicked and worthless men, that's our favorite Hebrew phrase, the sons of Baaliel. Again, got a lot of Baaliel men in 1 Samuel. So these good-for-nothings, these sons of Baaliel, among those who went with David, so this is among the 400 men, they say, look, these guys didn't go with us, and so we're not going to give them any of the spoil that we've recovered. The only thing we're going to give, we'll give them their their wives and their children and they can take those and they can leave this is very generous we'll let you have your wife and your kids you know but uh you get nothing else

and i think this is really fascinating because i think that you could maybe believe that david has you know this sort of band of like really noble brave uh and they might be brave uh but this sort of honorable group of guys but among them is a not insignificant amount of guys that they will call worthless apparently there's some dudes that like are he's got some bad dudes uh in his posse and that would literally say to these other guys like yeah we're not gonna give you anything and in fact and they can and it's not just as simple as them saying here's your wife here's your kids look we got we got some spoil here you're not gonna get that because you didn't You didn't go. It's not just that. They're like, get out of here.

Yeah. They want them to leave. Yes. David had his hands full. I mean, trying to be the leader of this group would be an ongoing challenge. And we see an example of that here. So take your wives and kids and leave. David steps in and says, no, no, that's not the way this is going to work. You must not do so, my brothers, with what the Lord has given us.

So David is going to get theological here, as he rightly should. Listen, God has kept us and delivered into our hands the ban that came against us. In other words, remember, you might be good soldiers. I mean, I'm not saying that you're not. You're good soldiers. You're brave men. You're very capable of fighting. But don't forget that the only reason we found this group and the only reason we were able to be victorious is because of God.

Yeah, David knows this, that someone's like, if you were to say, we really defeated our foe today, David knows better than that, and will certainly say, no, we did not. Yeah, right. It's like, Paul, work out your salvation, knowing that God is at work in you. It's a very clear reminder that, as Isaiah says, the Lord does all our works for us. yeah these guys are essentially taking credit for yourself yeah these guys are essentially saying look these guys didn't do anything so they don't get anything and david is saying you didn't do as much as you think you did right not to mention the fact that these guys were also engaged in important task right they were they were guarding the baggage they weren't sitting around eating and drinking and and enjoying themselves while we were gone they were taking care of the baggage

So he says, here's what we're going to do. Those who go down to the battle and those who stay with the baggage will have the same share. They will share alike in the spoils of war. and this is actually in accordance with the way that the torah has set everything up if you go back into numbers chapter 31 verse 27 it talks about how the spoils of war are to be divided and it's not like just the the soldiers who went out to fight are those who are able to share in the spoils of war no they are to be distributed to to everyone and this reminds me a lot of the the parable the workers in the vineyard who are you know the guys who worked all day are upset because they're getting paid the same amount as the guys who worked for an hour at the end.

And the master says, basically, hey, can I not do with mine what I want? Or do you begrudge my generosity? This is David's ploy as well. Do you begrudge the generosity of God? Listen, he gives to everyone. So don't complain about what you receive. Yeah, and I like how it says that

And, you know, he made it a statute or a rule for Israel from that day forward to this day, the day that this was written. In other words, this was the end of that conversation for the rest of time. This was this is the way it was going forward. Yep. Yeah. So he made a Torah more or less. This is the way this is the way it's going to be when you have spoils to divide. but david being uh not only a good leader and of course a very uh apt warrior is also a very astute politician as we as we learn from the way this chapter closes out so they get back to uh they get back to ziklag and they have of course a lot of spoils of war they have these sheep and

and cattle and everything they were captured from the from the amalekites which by the way would would partly have been the spoils from the philistine cities so this wasn't all the stuff they had wasn't just from ziklag they'd been raiding all over so they probably had a bunch of stuff so what does david do david gathers some of the spoil and he sends it to the elders of judah to his friends saying look here is a gift in the hebrew it's a barakah it's a blessing so a present or a gift or a blessing for you from the spoil of the enemies of the Lord. And he sends it, and we have a list from verse 27 through 31. It's nothing more than place names like Bethel and Ramoth and Jatir

and a bunch of other places, 13 either cities or locations in Judah where David sends the spoils of war to his friends. And the last of these mentioned is Hebron. And Hebron ends up being the headquarters of David's reign during the early years. It's a place that's going to be proclaimed king. So what happened was David and his men, when they were on the run, they used to kind of move around to these different places, as it says in verse 31. These were the places where his men were accustomed to go.

So these cities and the people in these cities, they took care of David and his men. And in doing so, they risked their own life because, of course, Saul was looking for David. And so David wants not only to repay them for their kindness, but also to kind of, you know, get things ready for what is going to happen in the future. So it's a wise political move on David's part. Yeah, this is timed well, as we come up on the last chapter of 1 Samuel. It's almost as if David knows that there is a great transition that is going to be taking place very soon. yeah i mean it will it will we'll find out in the next chapter that uh we have finally reached the end of the end of saul and second samuel will of course take us into the opening opening years of

david's reign i mean this is a this this chapter and the one after it are are pivotal chapters for the great transition that's that's coming up you kind of have the uh what you might think of as the death of Saul and the resurrection of David. This is the beginning of when David will take his seat and begin to reign. Yeah, because David is in an exile of sorts. He is somewhat self-imposed, but also driven out. I mean, he's been driven out, and so we will see the end. As Saul's reign comes to an end, there is certainly not just that, you know, it's not

as though there was a guy living in the palace that stepped in and took over this guy has to come out of the land of the philistines yeah yeah and in that way uh we see a lot of these kind of theological themes that that bleed over into the new testament coming to focus here when you have the end of an exodus and you have an entering into the promised land of david you have the same theme of exile and return with the son of david you have the the the end of the one that the lord has rejected and you have the beginning of this one that the lord has has raised up the son of david so you have this kind of death and resurrection uh and then you have the yeah the beginning of a of a new creation of sorts where david will take the reign and uh

presage in that way the reign of the of the son of david well it's almost it's almost like david being driven into a foreign land uh by a king who wants to kill him is very similar to jesus being driven into egypt uh by a king who wants to kill him before he can uh come back so david and the son of david of course uh have a lot of similarities so i'm sure we'll talk about that more next week as we uh we certainly wrap up first samuel so i'll see you then chad all right we'll see you then