1 Samuel 26:13 - Meaning and Application

David got safely out of Saul’s camp and took with him enough proof that he had been there. Then he placed himself where the men could hear him, but could not reach him (1 Samuel 26:13). From there he began to reason with them about what had happened. First, he spoke with sharp irony to Abner, and openly mocked him.

David knew very well that God’s mighty hand had put Abner and the rest of the guards into such a deep sleep. Still, he reproved Abner as one unfit to be captain of the king’s bodyguard, because he could sleep while the king his master was in such danger. This shows that God had held them in that deep sleep, because once David was safe, a very small thing woke them. Even David’s voice from far away roused them (1 Samuel 26:14). Abner got up, and we may suppose it was early on a summer morning, and asked who was calling and disturbing the king’s rest.

David answered, “It is I,” and then shamed him for sleeping when he should have been guarding the king. Perhaps Abner thought David was such a weak enemy that there was no real danger, and so he had not posted a watch. Even so, he himself should have been more alert. David then put him to shame in two ways. First, he said Abner had lost his honor (1 Samuel 26:15). “Are you not a man,” that is, a man in office, bound by your duty to watch over the soldiers? “Are you not known as a brave man? You would be thought a man of courage and skill, one like whom there is no other. But now you are disgraced forever. You, a general, sleeping like a sluggard.”

Second, David said Abner deserved to lose his life (1 Samuel 26:16). “All of you deserve death under military law, because you failed to guard the king while he was asleep in your midst. Look at this sign. See the king’s spear in the hand of the one whom the king himself calls his enemy. The one who took that could just as easily and safely have taken the king’s life. Now tell me who was truly the king’s best friend, you who neglected him and left him exposed, or I who protected him while he was exposed. You are pursuing me as one worthy of death, and you are stirring Saul against me, but who is worthy of death now?” Sometimes people who wrongly condemn others are justly left to face condemnation themselves.

Then David spoke more seriously and tenderly to Saul. By now Saul was awake enough to hear and recognize the voice (1 Samuel 26:17): “Is this your voice, my son David?” In the same way he had shown some softening before (1 Samuel 24:16). He had given his wife to another man, and yet he still called David “son.” He had longed for David’s blood, and yet was glad to hear his voice. Those are truly hard-hearted who never show any sign of conviction or ever speak good words sincerely.

Now David had as good a chance to reach Saul’s conscience as he had just had to take Saul’s life. He chose to use the chance to reason with him. He tried to persuade Saul to stop pursuing him and to be reconciled. First, he complained about the sad condition Saul’s hatred had brought him into. He lamented two things. One, he had been driven away from his master and from his work: “My lord is pursuing his servant” (1 Samuel 26:18). “How gladly I would serve you as before, if only you would accept my service. But instead of being received as a servant, I am pursued as a rebel. My lord has become my enemy, and the one I want to follow with honor forces me to flee.”

Two, he had been driven away from his God and from his religion, and that was a much greater loss than the first (1 Samuel 26:19). “They have driven me from the inheritance of the Lord,” he says, meaning they have made life in the land too dangerous, at least in the settled parts, and have forced me into the deserts and mountains, and soon may drive me out of the country entirely. What hurts me most is not that I am pushed from my own property, but that I am pushed from the Lord’s inheritance, the holy land.”

We should find more comfort in thinking of God’s claim on our possessions, and his use for them, than in thinking only of our own rights. It is better that our goods should honor him than merely support us. David was also troubled not so much by being made to live among strangers as by being made to live among people who worshiped false gods, which tempted him toward their idolatry. In effect, his enemies were sending him away “to serve other gods.” He may even have heard them speak that way about him. Those who keep us from God’s ordinances are doing what they can to estrange us from God and make us like unbelievers.

If David had not had unusual grace and firmness in his faith, the bad treatment he received from his own king and people, who were Israelites and worshipers of the true God, might have turned him against the religion they claimed to follow and pushed him toward idolaters. “If these are Israelites,” he might have said, “then let me live and die with the Philistines.” We have reason to count it the worst injury when someone exposes us to sin. David says of such people, “Cursed be they before the Lord.” Those who drive out people whom God receives, and send people toward the devil who are dear to God, bring a curse on themselves.

Then David insisted on his own innocence: “What have I done? What evil is in my hand?” (1 Samuel 26:18). His conscience testified that he had never done anything, and had never planned anything, against the person, honor, or rule of his prince, or against his country’s good. He had also recently received Saul’s own witness about him, “You are more righteous than I” (1 Samuel 24:17). It was both unreasonable and wicked for Saul to chase him as a criminal when no crime could be charged against him.

David also tried to show Saul that this pursuit was not only wrong, but low and beneath his dignity. “The king of Israel, whose honor is so great and who has so many other duties, has come out to hunt a flea, as one hunts a partridge in the mountains” (1 Samuel 26:20). That was poor sport for the king of Israel. David compares himself to a partridge, a harmless and innocent bird that flies away if it can, but does not fight back. Would Saul really bring the flower of his army into the field just to hunt one poor partridge? What a shame that would be to his honor. What a stain on his memory it would be to trample on such a weak, patient, and innocent enemy. “You have killed the just, and he does not resist you” (James 5:6).

Finally, David asks that the heart of the matter be examined closely and that some proper way be found to end the dispute (1 Samuel 26:19).

Saul himself could not honestly say that justice led him to persecute David, or that public safety required it. David would not say, though it was true, that Saul’s own envy and malice drove him to it. So David says the cause must be either God’s righteous judgment or the evil plans of wicked men.

If the Lord has stirred you up against me, David says, perhaps it is because he is displeased with me and is using this as a punishment for my sins, even though I have done nothing wrong to you. Or perhaps it is because you are under the power of that evil spirit from the Lord that troubles you. In either case, let him accept an offering from us both. Let us seek peace with God and be reconciled to him through sacrifice. Then, David hopes, the sin will be forgiven, whatever it is, and the trouble that hurts both of us will end. This is the right way to make peace: first make God your friend through Christ, the great sacrifice, and then other enmities will die away (Ephesians 2:16; Proverbs 16:7).

But if wicked men are pushing you into this, the men who stir you up against me, cursed be they before the Lord. That means they are very evil, and they should be treated as such and kept away from the king’s court and counsel. David speaks respectfully, but he places the blame on the evil advisers who pushed the king toward what was shameful and wrong. He asks that they be removed from Saul’s presence, as men cursed before the Lord, and then he hopes to receive his request, which comes in 1 Samuel 26:20: “Let not my blood fall to the earth,” meaning, do not let me be killed, “for it is before the face of the Lord,” who sees the wrong and will judge it. So David pleads earnestly for his life, and with that, for Saul to think well of him.