Feeding the Evil Dog
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father, evil surrounds all of us, including me. Give me the discernment to deal with it prudently.
Read 1 Samuel 22:1–23
David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. 2 All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him.
3 From there David went to Mizpah in Moab and said to the king of Moab, “Would you let my father and mother come and stay with you until I learn what God will do for me?” 4 So he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him as long as David was in the stronghold.
5 But the prophet Gad said to David, “Do not stay in the stronghold. Go into the land of Judah.” So David left and went to the forest of Hereth.
Saul Kills the Priests of Nob
6 Now Saul heard that David and his men had been discovered. And Saul was seated, spear in hand, under the tamarisk tree on the hill at Gibeah, with all his officials standing at his side. 7 He said to them, “Listen, men of Benjamin! Will the son of Jesse give all of you fields and vineyards? Will he make all of you commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds? 8 Is that why you have all conspired against me? No one tells me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse. None of you is concerned about me or tells me that my son has incited my servant to lie in wait for me, as he does today.”
9 But Doeg the Edomite, who was standing with Saul’s officials, said, “I saw the son of Jesse come to Ahimelek son of Ahitub at Nob. 10 Ahimelek inquired of the Lord for him; he also gave him provisions and the sword of Goliath the Philistine.”
11 Then the king sent for the priest Ahimelek son of Ahitub and all the men of his family, who were the priests at Nob, and they all came to the king. 12 Saul said, “Listen now, son of Ahitub.”
“Yes, my lord,” he answered.
13 Saul said to him, “Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, giving him bread and a sword and inquiring of God for him, so that he has rebelled against me and lies in wait for me, as he does today?”
14 Ahimelek answered the king, “Who of all your servants is as loyal as David, the king’s son-in-law, captain of your bodyguard and highly respected in your household? 15 Was that day the first time I inquired of God for him? Of course not! Let not the king accuse your servant or any of his father’s family, for your servant knows nothing at all about this whole affair.”
16 But the king said, “You will surely die, Ahimelek, you and your whole family.”
17 Then the king ordered the guards at his side: “Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because they too have sided with David. They knew he was fleeing, yet they did not tell me.”
But the king’s officials were unwilling to raise a hand to strike the priests of the Lord.
18 The king then ordered Doeg, “You turn and strike down the priests.” So Doeg the Edomite turned and struck them down. That day he killed eighty-five men who wore the linen ephod. 19 He also put to the sword Nob, the town of the priests, with its men and women, its children and infants, and its cattle, donkeys and sheep.
20 But one son of Ahimelek son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled to join David. 21 He told David that Saul had killed the priests of the Lord. 22 Then David said to Abiathar, “That day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, I knew he would be sure to tell Saul. I am responsible for the death of your whole family. 23 Stay with me; don’t be afraid. The man who wants to kill you is trying to kill me too. You will be safe with me.”
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
“If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7).
Think Further
Society’s outcasts recognize David as the Lord’s anointed, flocking to him as later outcasts did to Jesus, while a deteriorating king plots David’s death. In a horrifying act of blind retribution repeated often throughout history, this angry, frustrated and unbalanced leader, unable to kill his rival for the throne, vents his fury upon the innocent, ordering their execution. His own soldiers rightly refuse his order. Saul then turns to his hitman, Doeg, and his band of foreign mercenaries, to exterminate the priestly house of Eli, as if the priests were both his enemies and the enemies of the Lord.
An increasingly isolated Saul has become a dispirited, disillusioned man headed toward his own destruction. Though not an inherently evil man, he nevertheless nurses his obsessive desire to maintain power. It need not have been. In one version of the fable of two dogs, an Inuit grandfather tells his grandson that two dogs fight inside him, a white and a black dog. “Which one will win?” asks the boy. His grandfather replies, “The one you feed.” Indeed. Saul had fed his jealousy until it overcame him.
What can be said of such mindless madness? We want to scream in protest. We want God to do something. Events like this challenge a simplistic belief in God’s control of the affairs of humankind. Why would God let this happen? The hard truth of human freedom is that God does not stay the hand of evil. We may wish that God had intervened to prevent the holocaust or the genocidal wars and the ethnic cleansings of the past and today, and the terrible ongoing violence in the Middle East which daily fills our TV screens. God does not limit what Saul can do while in the grip of his own evil. The trust that God allows in human freedom means that our freedom can be used for good or evil.
Apply
As we are what we eat, we also act according to what we believe. When we believe what is false, we act in such a way as to harm those around us. What do you consume, and what do you believe?
Closing prayer
We pray, O God, for our political leaders as they respond to violence. Give them the grace to respond not in vengeance but with wisdom and self-control.
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