David hears that the people of Keilah are being oppressed by
Plishtim, so he asks God if he should go to Keilah to save them.
When God answers in the affirmative, David’s men react with
shock—he is afraid of Shaul in territory where he feels relatively
at home, he is going to go pursue a war with Plishtim? David asks
Hashem again, and Hashem again responds affirmatively, so they go,
and win.
Before telling us the next part of the story, the Navi mentions
that when Evyatar had run away from Nov, the efod, which
probably means the Urim ve-Tumim, the breastplate through
which God would communicate with a kohen, had come down
with him.
When Shaul hears that David is in Keilah, he is thrilled,
thinking he now has David trapped in a walled city. [If Shaul were
to arrive at Keilah with David still inside, he could lay siege
and capture David]. David knows that Shaul continues to seek ways
of harming him, so he calls for Evyatar and the efod and
asks whether the people of Keilah would give him up to Shaul, and
whether Shaul would come to Keilah to try to get him.
Hashem replies that Shaul would come down to Keilah. David then
asks whether the people of Keilah would hand him over, and Hashem
replies that they will. David runs away, and Shaul then does not
bother to go to Keilah to find him. The navi notes that
Shaul was constantly seeking to catch David, but Hashem never let
it happen. David, however, knows that Shaul is seeking his demise,
and he was in Zif, in the forest.
At this point, Yehonatan comes to encourage David in his trust
in God. He tells David not to worry, that Shaul will never find
him, that he will rule over the Jewish people, that he (Yehonatan,
originally destined for the throne) will be his second, and that
Shaul knows that. They enact another covenant, and Yehonatan goes
home.
The people of Zif now come to Shaul and tell him that David is
in their midst, and that Shaul should come to get him if he so
wishes. He thanks them profusely, but also asks them to track
David’s movements carefully, since David is tricky. The Zifim go
ahead of Shaul, and give him exact enough information that Shaul
manages to get close to David, with Shaul on one side of a
mountain and David on the other, and David running quickly to
flee, and Shaul in hot pursuit.
At that moment, Shaul gets a message that Plishtim are
attacking and he needs to o fight them. He turns back, leaving the
rock where that happened to be called sela hamahlekot, the
rock of division, and David goes to Ein Gedi.
MARKS OF A KING
David’s conduct in the matter of Keilah surprises us, since it
is rare to see someone who is already in danger increase that risk
by going to engage a different enemy in battle. David’s even
thinking that maybe he should save the people of Keilah shows one
element of the kingship that is inside of him, the feeling of
responsibility for other Jews. Already, then, he is functioning in
some ways as a king, at least in fulfilling the king’s protective
role for his subjects. His consulting with God before going to
Keilah suggests that David is also learning (or has already
learnt) the proper balance a king needs to strike between acting
on his own and seeking Divine input before enacting a particular
plan.
His men, however, don’t see it David’s way. They rightly
recognize the level of danger involved, and protest David’s
leaving the insecurity of where they were to add another danger to
their lives. David’s reaction, to ask God a second time, seems
odd, as does his men’s accepting that. From David’s perspective,
isn’t he nudging God by asking again? (Rav Amital used to be
opposed to davening minha right after mussaf on Rosh
haShanah, saying "assur le-nadgez et haKadosh Barukh Hu, it
is prohibited to nudge God"). From the men’s perspective, if they
did not trust the first time, what changed the second time?
Again here, I would suggest that the incident reveals David’s
powers of leadership. He could easily have demanded obedience from
his men, and could have taken umbrage at their questioning the
information given by God. Instead, he asks again—this takes
seriously the issues the men raised, but also insists that God’s
answer will be the answer the group will follow. The men, I
suspect, would have wondered whether David misinterpreted the
first message from God, or perhaps thought that having made their
points, God might change the message (I’ll discuss the
philosophical side of that below).
When God reconfirms what He had said, both sides are satisfied,
proceed to Keilah and save the city. In defeating Plishtim, the
navi mentions that David took their livestock and struck them
a mighty blow. Aside from emphasizing how big a victory David won,
the verse also shows us the beginning of David’s amassing a
fortune, an important element of kingship as well.
DAVID IN KEILAH—A LESSON IN THE URIM VE-TUMIM
It is at this point that the navi mentions that Evyatar had
brought an efod with him. The efod here clearly
refers to the Urim ve-Tumim, the breastplate with stones
that the Kohen Gadol wore, since it was only that breastplate
through which the Jews could consult with God. As Ramban explains
in Shmot 28:30, the interpretation of the messages of this
hoshen was a skill of its own, approaching the level of
prophecy. It is at least reasonable, to return to our previous
questions for a moment, that the men could doubt that Evyatar had
understood the message correctly the first time around, and wanted
him to consult again before going to Keilah.
The navi’s mentioning the efod now, though, seems
out of place, since David has already consulted the efod
before this point in the chapter. I would suggest that the navi
leaves it until here, because it will fit well with the theme of
this part of the chapter, in which the issue of God’s being with
David will become more prominent.
Along those lines, both Radak and Malbim note that the verse
says that the efod yarad, went down, with Evyatar,
rather than saying that Evyatar brought it with him. They say that
that means that Evyatar did not intentionally take the efod,
but that it somehow got thrown in with the other stuff he was
taking with him. The efod’s being with David at all was
thus an act of hashgahah, of Divine Providence.
That Divine Providence is perhaps the point of the next
incident, in which Shaul assumes that David’s being in Keilah
presents an opportunity to trap him. David anticipates just such a
ruse, secures advice from God, and runs away. Shaul never ceases
seeking David, but the navi already tells us that God never
let him catch him. All the rest of the stories we will read about
the chase, then, are not meant to be cliffhangers, but are just
ways of showing how God works it that Shaul never manages to
apprehend David.
THE WORKINGS OF THE HOSHEN
To fully understand how the efod plays into the theme of
Divine Providence that I mentioned, we might note here a detail of
how it works, as noted by the gemara in Yoma. David’s first
question only gets a partial answer; he asks whether the residents
will turn him over to Shaul and whether Shaul will come at all.
Hashem answers yered, that he will come, and the gemara
notes that the hoshen would only answer one question at a
time, and here answered the prior issue first. David then asks the
second question and gets his answer.
The hoshen’s parsimonious handling of its
question/answer issues seems surprising. An omniscient God should
know how to give a two-part answer- yes, Shaul will come down, and
yes, the people of Keilah will give you up. I can think of two
reasons that the hoshen would work this way. First, as we
mentioned above, the process of consulting the hoshen was
one akin to prophecy, meaning that it took a great deal of
preparation and focus. While God could certainly handle a complex
issue, it might be that the person consulting the hoshen
would not be able to interpret a complex message clearly; to help
insure clarity, God restricted this form of communication to
one-part answers.
The other side of the issue perhaps depends on the importance
of people’s formulating good questions for the hoshen.
While prophecy involves listening for God’s messages, the
hoshen was a unique opportunity to hear answers from God to
specific questions. As such, formulating those questions
carefully, so as not to misunderstand the answer, would be vitally
important (there are numerous stories about people asking
questions, misunderstanding the answer, and then being
disappointed with the results). Perhaps the rules about one topic
answers were also to help people formulate questions whose answers
they could understand.
The combination of the stories of the efod’s being with
Evyatar, Shaul’s plan to come to Keilah, David’s finding out about
Shaul’s plan from the efod, and Shaul’s continuing futile
chase after David, might be meant to remind us of the elements of
Divine Providence in this entire story. God wanted David to have
to run away, perhaps, but was fully present even in David’s
apparent time of distress.
THE HOSHEN’S PREDICTION OF THE FUTURE
The Keilah story allows us to partially examine the vexing
question of how God can predict the future. Here, the hoshen
says that Shaul will come to Keilah and that the people of Keilah
will hand David over to Shaul. Neither event actually happens; was
the hoshen wrong? It seems more reasonable to say that the
hoshen was telling David what would happen if nothing else
changed. That suggests a general principle of God’s predictions of
the future, that they are actually only predictions of what will
happen given the present set of circumstances; changes in those
circumstances of a significant enough level could then change the
future. This is not to imply that God only knows what will
happen given this set of circumstances, but that He might only
predict in that restricted way. (Other, more general,
predictions, such as the eventual arrival of Messiah, might be
meant as happening at some point regardless of the choices
that are made, but that is a topic for another time). Given a
prediction from God, then, it could be that we are not meant to
simply accept it, but to see whether there are ways in which we
can change it for the better.
And, of course, how could we leave the Keilah story without
noting their remarkable fickleness. David comes to save them from
the Plishtim at great personal risk, and their gratitude does not
even extend to protecting David from Shaul! A lesson for the ages.
We will, be-ezrat Hashem, finish this chapter next week.
Shabbat Shalom.
