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2 Samuel 1:11 "Then David took hold of his clothes, and rent them; and so did all the men who were with him".*

 

An Amalekite has just approached David with the news that Saul and Jonathan are dead. David presses the man as to how he knows this, and the man says he had been on Mount Gilboa after Israel's battle with the Philistines. He saw Saul leaning upon his spear (after an apparently unsuccessful attempt to take his own life (1 Samuel 31:4)), and Saul asked the man to slay him. Being sure that Saul could not survive his wounds, the man complied, and brought Saul's crown and armlet to David. (2 Samuel 1:1-10).

 

In my last post, we saw that David had the opportunity to kill Saul, who had been pursuing David in order to kill him, but did not take it because David knew better than to slay Israel's anointed king. He instead trusted God to see His plan for David's kingship through. Today we see how Saul was meant to die in God's plan, and we see David receiving a not so subtle message from God, via this Amalekite's delivery to him of Saul's crown and armband, that he would now inherit the throne justly. 

 

Rather than dying at David's hand, despite there being more than one opportunity for David to take his life, Saul ended up wanting to die by his own hand. As the Philistines closed in on a wounded Saul, after killing Jonathan and Saul's other sons, Saul despaired. Fearing he would be made sport of by the Philistines before they took his life, Saul asked his armor-bearer to kill him, but the man refused, so Saul tried to do the job himself, falling upon his own sword. (1 Samuel 31:2-4). Interestingly, in the First Book of Samuel, Saul's death is presented solely as a suicide (1 Samuel 31:4-5), yet when we hear this Amalekite's story, we learn that Saul had not died in his attempt, and instead had to have someone else finish the job (a last little humiliation for Saul, apparently). God certainly gave Saul every possible chance to repent, I hope he did!

 

In the way this all played out, we can see how wrong it would have been if David had killed Saul in the cave, and how amazing God's plan is, revealing both His perfect justice and lessons for all of us when we let it play out. We cannot even begin to guess what would have happened if David killed Saul before this. But because he did not: Saul fought next to his sons, including Jonathan, David's friend, until the end; Saul's sons got to die in battle for Israel with their father at their side, rather than having David deprive them of their father, and Israel of her king, by taking their father's life surreptitiously; Saul got to finish his reign on his own terms, even if those terms were misguided, and got the justice he deserved in the end; and David gave the people no reason to resent him (not that some wouldn't anyway). 

 

David can now ascend to the throne without having wrongfully taken the king's life, something he knew to be so wrong that he had the Amalekite messenger killed for doing it, saying "How is it you were not afraid to put forth your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed?" (2 Samuel 1:14-15). David knew enough to have this fear, as we saw in the cave. So did Saul's armor-bearer. It is not fear for oneself, but fear of the Lord that kept them each from killing Saul. They both knew that Saul was God's anointed, entitled in a special way to be in God's hands alone.

 

In the poetic way that God has, Saul's ignoble attempted suicide shows how God's plan is perfectly just. It shows the folly and ultimate outcome of Saul's worst shortcoming: being more concerned with how he looked to others and with not seeming foolish than with the good of the kingdom or even the kingship. Thus, fearing being captured by the Philistines and possibly being made sport of, Saul chose to end his own life, denying Israel her king without a living successor (as far as Saul knew). The fact that he was unsuccessful at even this, and had to call over an Amalekite to finish the job, is the "chef's kiss" of God's justice.

 

We would not have had this lesson in justice, nor would David have had his righteous ascension to power, if David had killed Saul. We would have just had another run-of-the-mill, might-makes-right, power struggle story that would not have taught us anything of who God is, and what it looks like, and doesn't look like, to live a life in accordance with His law.
 

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*(These readings are random on my part, but I so often see the Holy Spirit at work in my choices. Today I read about David's reaction to Saul's death, when my last post was about David having the opportunity to be the instrument of Saul's death and forgoing it in favor of God's plan!)