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the hands of God. And David conquered, as long afterwards his great Antitype
overcame the tempter, by steadfast adherence to God's known will and ordinance.
Stealthily crawling along, he cut off a corner from the robe which the king had laid
aside. That was all the vengeance he took. It was with some difficulty that David had
restrained his men. And now the king had left the cave to rejoin his followers. But
still David's conscience smote him, as if he had taken undue liberty with the Lord's
anointed. Climbing one of those rocks outside the cave, whence flight would have
been easy, his voice startled the king. Looking back into the wild solitude, Saul saw
behind him the man who, as his disordered passion had suggested, was seeking his
life. With humblest obeisance and in most dutiful language, David told what had just
happened. In sharp contrast with the calumnies of his enemies, he described the
king's danger, and how he had cast from him the suggestion of his murder. Then
bursting into the impassioned language of loyal affection, which had been so cruelly
wronged, he held up the piece of the king's mantle which he had cut off, as evidence
of the fact that he was innocent of that of which he was accused. But if so - if he had
refused to avenge himself even in the hour of his own great danger, leaving
judgment to God, and unwilling to put forth his own hand to wickedness, since, as
the common proverb had it, "wickedness proceedeth from the wicked" - then, what
was the meaning of the king's humiliating pursuit after him? Rather would he, in the
conscious innocence of his heart, now appeal to Jehovah, alike for judgment
between them two, and for personal deliverance, should these persecutions continue.
Words like these, of which the truth was so evident, could not but make their way
even to the heart of Saul. For a moment it seemed as if the dark clouds, which had
gathered around his soul and prevented the light penetrating it, were to be scattered.
Saul owned his wrong; he owned the justice of David's cause; he even owned the
lesson which the events of the past must have so clearly taught, which, indeed, his
own persecution of David had, all unconsciously to himself, prophetically indicated,
just as did the words of Caiaphas the real meaning of what was done to Jesus (John
11:49-52). He owned the future of David, and that in his hand the kingdom of Israel
would be established; and all this not in words only, but practically, by insisting on a
sworn promise that in that future which he foresaw, Oriental vengeance would not
be taken of his house.
And yet David himself was not secure against the temptation to personal vengeance
and to self-help, although he had resisted it on this occasion. The lesson of his own
weakness in that respect was all the more needed, that this was one of the most
obvious moral dangers to an ordinary Oriental ruler. But David was not to be such;
and when God in His good Providence restrained him as he had almost fallen, He
showed him the need of inward as well as of outward deliverance, and the
sufficiency of His grace to preserve him from spiritual as from temporal dangers.
This may have been one reason why the history of Nabal and Abigail is preserved in
(^)