David runs away to some caves, where his family joins him, as
do a group of four hundred men who had problems with society.
David goes to Moav, where he prevails upon the king to watch his
family until his situation clears up, and the king agrees. At this
point, David was staying in a fortified area, but the prophet Gad
(who, along with Natan, would be David’s prophetic consultant
during his reign) told him that he could not stay there, but had
to go to Judea.
Shaul hears about these events and lambastes his advisers,
accusing them of being in cahoots with David, since none of them
had informed him of where he could track David. At this point Doeg
speaks up, mentioning that he had seen David at Nov, where he had
consulted with Ahimelekh the son of Ahituv, and had secured from
him both food and a sword. Shaul summons the priest, and asks him
why he had conspired against him with David, giving him food and a
sword. Ahimelekh responds with some surprise, that David is the
most faithful of Shaul’s servants, that he, Ahimelekh, has
consulted the Urim ve-Tumim on David’s behalf many times before,
and that he had no knowledge of any fallout between David and
Shaul.
Shaul tells Ahimelekh that he is going to die, with his entire
family. When he gives the order, however, his ordinary servants
are unwilling to fulfill it. Instead, Doeg kills them, and wipes
out the city of Nov. The only escapee was Evyatar, a son of
Ahimelekh’s, who made his way to David and told him of what had
transpired. David welcomed him, noting that he had seen Doeg in
Nov that day, and that he, David, felt some responsibility for
what had happened to Evyatar’s family. That sense of
responsibility led David to promise that Evyatar would be
completely safe with him, for David would guard Evyatar’s life
with his own.
DAVID BEGINS HIS NEW LIFE
Until now, we have only seen David begin the process of running
away from Shaul, but in this chapter he begins to settle in for
the long haul. His family joins him, although the text does not
explain why—is it an example of family solidarity? Of fear of
Shaul? I suspect a little of both.
In any case, David realizes they cannot join him for the
several months or years he will need to avoid Shaul, so he
deposits them for safekeeping with the king of Moav. Seeing this,
we are reminded that David already has international connections
at fairly high levels, from his time as Shaul’s general, so that
his growth into the monarchy will not involve as steep a learning
curve as we might ordinarily expect.
WHAT KIND OF FOLLOWING?
At the same time, others begin to join David as well. Although
the commentators debate the exact meaning of the adjectives used
to describe these people—Malbim thinks they were just people who
had not fit well into society, while Radak assumes they were
people with actual trouble, such as a creditor who was insistently
seeking repayment of a loan—they were clearly not from society’s
upper classes.
I find it interesting that David was only able to attract such
people at the beginning of his time as an outlaw. Having
repeatedly saved the Jewish people in their wars with Plishtim,
running away from a king who many people knew was a little crazy,
we might have hoped that more Jews would have left the comfort of
their homes to join their future king. (Indeed, this strikes me as
yet another example of a What If, where history might have gone
differently with different actions on the people’s part).
It reminds us that often it is those with the least who are
able to embrace change and the future most enthusiastically, since
they have no stake in the present. Perhaps emphasizing that point,
the Bar-Ilan CD-Rom notes that verse 2 is cited in the Midrash
Eliyahu Zuta, which has it at the end of a long discussion of the
value of poverty for the Jewish people. As far as that Midrash was
concerned, only poverty leads the Jews to various important and
positive steps, such as fear of God and acts of kindness. When we
have too much, the Midrash seems to say we tend to neglect what is
really important.
However, the Midrash interprets this verse’s reference to
matsok as being about talmidei hakhamim, which adds
another element to this same discussion. The peshat, again,
is that David gathered a bunch of social have-nots around him,
suggesting that it is they who are able to embrace the future by
virtue of their lack of a stake in the present.
The Midrash might be hinting that talmidei hakhamim
share this quality as well, not necessarily because of their
physical poverty, but because of their awareness of the need to be
on the lookout for possible positive futures that may present
themselves to us. In addition to the element of study, this
Midrash might be noting that being a Torah sage or student also
involves attitudes about the future and the present that tend to
escape the ordinary among us. It was the poor and the scholarly
who first recognized David’s bright future; would that we all
develop the ability and commitment to see such futures as they
present themselves.
THE ROLE OF FLIGHT
David seems to have found a safe spot in which to hide, but the
prophet Gad does not allow him to do so. His stepping in here
means that there is some Divine rhyme and reason behind the
current events in David’s life. It is not only that he has to wait
out the end of Shaul’s reign without getting killed, since then he
could have stayed in the fortress.
It seems that Hashem wants David to be in the area of Judea,
for one of two possible reasons. First, God might want David to
begin being a force in the people’s lives, so they will be ready
for his rule when the time comes. Alternatively, God may have seen
some value in David’s having to flee. Perhaps, for example, the
time of flight will instill in David a deep awareness of his
reliance on God, an awareness that will stand him well in his time
as king. A character-building experience is actually a
God-relationship building one.
MEANWHILE, SHAUL’S DECLINE CONTINUES
Back in Shaul’s realm, he accuses his servants of betraying
him, since they do not reveal to him where David is. Note that we
no longer hear of Shaul’s making these comments when a ruah
ra`ah plagues him; they now seem to be simply part of who he
is. Without straying too far into the areas of mental health, I
suspect that there are at least some situations of mental illness
where the person so afflicted still has some choice as to how to
respond to his/her affliction. As in all else in life, however,
each day’s choice conditions, to at least some extent, the choices
of the next day. That Shaul gave in to his ruah ra`ah
enough to cast David out of his palace, then to berate Yehonatan
for his support of David, has contributed to his now being caught
by an obsession with David independent of specific mental moods.
His servants, in not feeding Shaul information, are apparently
resisting Shaul’s baser instincts. Without openly rebelling, they
are also not colluding with a sick man’s delusions. Shaul, it
seems, senses this, and interprets it as their having gone over to
the side of David. Doeg, however, decides to play along with
Shaul’s focus, informing him that he had seen David at Nov.
In the way Doeg tells the story, it seems that he is hoping to
lure Shaul into an inappropriate activity. He does not mention,
for example, David’s having claimed that he was on a mission from
Shaul, highly relevant to how Shaul should interpret Ahimelekh’s
actions. Too, when Shaul decides to kill Ahimelekh and his family,
none of Shaul’s other servants were willing to follow his order,
but Doeg was. I don’t know that we have enough background on Doeg
to judge why he was interested in doing this, but his actions
suggest someone who was interested in currying favor with Shaul,
without regard for the consequences.
HOW WRONG WAS THE KILLING OF NOV?
Radak notes that Tanakh never seems to blame Shaul for the
killing of Nov; even when a verse in II Samuel, 22:1 refers to his
house as beit hadamim, the house of blood, it means his
killing of the Givonim, not of Nov. Hazal do note this incident in
their application of Kohelet 7:16 to Shaul’s life. The verse
reminds us not to be excessively righteous nor excessively evil.
In Yoma 22b, Hazal suggest that when Shaul neglected to kill the
women, children, and sheep of Amalek, a Divine voice called out
the first part of the verse; when, here, he ordered the deaths of
the men, women, and children of Nov, the Voice reminded him of the
second part. In that view, Shaul’s encounters with the killing of
civilians got tangled up in his own warped view of right and
wrong, when he should have simply followed God’s dictates on the
issue.
That important point about morality aside, however, Radak is
left with little to say about the text’s lack of a moral protest
of the killing of Nov. Radak suggests that these priests were in
some way liable for death, for reasons Tanakh chooses not to tell
us. Malbim suggests that since Shaul thought they were rebels (by
having helped David), he had the right to kill them. That
assumes—somewhat unbelievably, in my view—that a king’s mistaken
assumption that someone was rebelling gives him the right to kill
the rebel himself and his entire family, with no protest from God.
Further, the text does blame Shaul for the death of the
people of Givon, who (at least according to Hazal) used to supply
water and other necessities to the people of Nov, and were then
caught up in what happened to them. The consequences of the act,
then, were blameworthy; it was only the deaths of these priests
that were ignored.
That last piece of information supports Radak’s view that there
is a hidden culpability of the people of Nov, but still leaves us
perplexed as to what they did wrong. I do not have a definitive
answer to that question, so I will leave it for now. I would,
however, like to note that Shaul’s other advisers were willing to
refuse an order they saw as wrong, without fearing that Shaul
would brand them rebels (or, perhaps, despite fearing that Shaul
would brand them as rebels). This at least opens the possibility
that the Jewish king does not have the right to demand absolute
obedience, and that those who simply obey the king are not
fulfilling their responsibilities, either towards him or towards
themselves.
In coming weeks, we will continue to track how Shaul’s chasing
of David twists and turns, with Shaul almost continually declining
and David ascending to the heights of the paradigmatic king he
would one day become. Shabbat Shalom
