1 Samuel 23:1–29

Original Meaning

David Saves Keilah (23:1–6)

THE PHILISTINE THREAT, which played a role in the rise of the monarchy itself, has receded into the background of the narrative tracing David’s rise to power. Now these people are once again threatening the borders of central Judah. The city of Keilah is located in the low-lying hills of the west, known as the Shephelah, approximately eight miles northwest of Hebron.1 Its location in the hills between Judah and Philistia make it particularly vulnerable to various raids, such as the one described here on the threshing floors. Such agricultural locations would not have been heavily defended, but the loss of grain would have created a burden for the inhabitants.

David’s reliance on the Lord is accented here. He uses Abiathar the priest to discern Yahweh’s will concerning whether he should go to Keilah or not. When his men balk because of Philistine superior strength in the area, David checks again in order to confirm the message from God. The technical phrase used here for discerning God’s will (NIV “inquired of the LORD,” 23:2, 4) becomes an important theme in this chapter and elsewhere in the David narratives. The phrase in Hebrew is literally to “ask of Yahweh” (the verb šʾl, used with the preposition be denoting the one being asked).2 This phrase is a technical expression for inquiring an oracle of God when a simple affirmative or negative response can be anticipated.3

The reference to Abiathar and the priestly ephod ties these events together with the previous episode (22:20–23) and presumably means David’s inquiries are answered by means of the sacred lots, the Urim and Thummim stored in the ephod (Ex. 28:30; Lev. 8:8; Num. 27:21). The specifics of how these worked is not clear, but they served as a form of divinely sanctioned lot-casting, which may have functioned something like our “heads” or “tails.”4 Since Abiathar is now with David permanently, he can easily inquire of the Lord before taking any serious action.

This important feature of David’s relationship with God is central in the contrast between Saul and him. Yahweh has long since stopped answering Saul’s inquiries, presumably because Saul has made up his mind before asking (14:36–37). This silence of Yahweh for Saul persists until the very end of his life (28:6). By contrast, Ahimelech earlier inquired of Yahweh on David’s behalf (22:10, 13, 15), which may be when David learned the value of such inquiries. Other narratives in David’s rise to kingship emphasize the importance he attaches to seeking such information from God (see, e.g., 30:8; 2 Sam. 2:1; 5:19, 23; 16:23).

In one important passage near the end of 1 Samuel, however, Saul becomes so desperate because Yahweh has refused to give any answer, either by dreams or Urim or prophets, that he contacts a medium (28:6, see comments). The contrast between Saul and David continues, as David consistently and faithfully inquires of Yahweh while Saul gets no answer.5 Saul may appear to have the upper hand politically, but David has God’s guidance.

David Escapes Keilah (23:7–14)

Bridging Contexts

THE NEED FOR DIVINE GUIDANCE. David here receives guidance about his actions through divine disclosure (Abiathar’s ephod) and human confirmation (Jonathan’s encouragement). Yahweh answers his queries through the approved priestly means, and Jonathan voluntarily confirms the larger picture of God’s plan for David’s life. Saul’s activities are recorded as a foil for the narrator’s ideal picture of David. In contrast to David, Saul relies on espionage and subterfuge, which leaves him helpless and vulnerable to attack by the Philistines. Saul fails to inquire of Yahweh until it is too late (28:6), and even then he is wrongly motivated and the means he uses are ill-advised (i.e., the medium of Endor).

The need for divine guidance is an undeniable link between believers of Bible times and today. The contrast in this text between David and Saul thus offers us timeless truths about reliance on God alone for the important decisions of life. Indeed, the Bible has much to say about receiving and acting on divine guidance.

The ancestral narratives of Genesis have many examples of hearing and receiving messages from God—from Abram’s original call (Gen. 12:1–4) to Jacob’s stairway dream (28:10–22). Though we can never be quite certain of the exact means of God’s communication to Abram (audible voice, inner impression, writing in the sky?), we know that his “promises” became central in the Abrahamic story, and indeed in the book of Genesis.11 There were many subsequent occasions when God repeated these promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even when we are not certain of how that ancestral “voice of God” was communicated, it is clear that God provided guidance and protection for his children.

With the provision of Moses and the Sinai covenant, God continued to offer guidance. Whether through a burning bush (Ex. 3–4), pillars of cloud and fire (13:21–22; Num. 9:15–23), or a theophany complete with thunder and lightning and trumpet blast (Ex. 19:16), God was clearly guiding his people. The covenant itself came complete with a written word from God, which included the Ten Commandments and many applications of the law (Ex. 24:4; Deut. 31:9, 24). This written expression of God’s will quickly became the primary means by which God communicated with his people, though he also made provisions for the priestly ephod with its Urim and Thummim for special occasions (as illustrated in this text).

The means of divine guidance changed as biblical revelation progressed. After the rise of Old Testament prophecy, God relied on specific, designated individuals in order to communicate with his people. In many situations, the prophets did not reveal something entirely new but rather interpreted the older written traditions for a current situation. The word of God revealed through the Sinai covenant needed interpretation for each new period of Israel’s history, so the prophets were mediators and enforcers of the old covenant for each new situation.12

During and after the Babylonian exile, the Jews turned more and more to the written word as God’s divinely approved means of guidance and direction. As “the people of the book,” they were the immediate predecessors of the earliest Christians, who likewise turned to the sacred pages of the Old Testament for divine guidance. Thus, the authors of the New Testament went to great lengths to base their message on the Old Testament, as is illustrated by the New Testament’s sheer mass of quotations of or allusions to the Old Testament.13

In the New Testament two passages are especially pertinent to the question of divine guidance. The apostle Paul emphasized the transformation of the Christian’s mind in contrast to conformity to the wisdom of the world. As a result, believers can discern God’s will, which is good and pleasing and perfect (Rom. 12:2). Similarly, James promises that anyone who lacks wisdom can ask of God, who gives generously to everyone, and it will be granted (James 1:5). In the tradition of the Old Testament, “wisdom” is knowledge that deepens one’s relationship with God and makes clear the course of action that is pleasing to God and life-sustaining for the believer. Here and elsewhere in the New Testament, it is assumed that the believer can know and perform God’s will for his or her life.

The result of the Bible’s emphasis on divine revelation is an expectation that God will indeed provide direction and guidance for his people. Whether through whirlwind (Job 38–41), human-like theophany (Josh. 5:13–15), a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:12), or a consistent prophetic voice, we can be assured that God desires to communicate with his people. But for most contemporary believers, this is precisely the problem! The conviction that God communicates with us leaves us with the question, Precisely how does God guide and direct today? How does he guide me in my Christian pilgrimage? Most Christians today struggle with this “not because they doubt that divine guidance is a fact, but because they are sure it is.”14 They are convinced that God has promised to guide every believer, but they are uncertain of their own receptiveness to the guidance of God. This leads us to the application of this text.

Contemporary Significance

THIS IS A TIMELESS TRUTH of Scripture: God speaks to his people and desires to guide them in their pilgrimage. The contrast between David and Saul in 1 Samuel 23 offers opportunities to modern believers to consider which character we are like. Are we sensitive to God’s guidance, like David, or are we presumptuous about God and dependent on human wisdom, like Saul?

Divine means of communication. Before we can address this question, we must consider a prior one. We can all agree that God is a speaking God and that he still speaks today to his people. The question becomes: Precisely how does God speak today? We no longer have David’s advantage of priestly ephod with its Urim and Thummim (though we would all admit to longing for such techniques at critical junctures of our lives). Nor do most of us today experience the means of God’s communication in days of old, such as cloud and fire, bush and mountain, whirlwind and audible voice. In the history of biblical revelation, such dramatic and obvious messages from God became more rare as prophecy became the primary means of revelation. As much as we might long for sensational messages from God written in the sky, the truth is for today’s believers, it is not always easy to discern God’s will. So what are the primary methods by which God communicates today?

Without denying a role for modern prophets or the possibility of audible voices or some other dramatic means of communication, we must begin by stating that God’s primary means of communication today is through Scripture. As we saw in the Bridging Contexts section, our identity as Christians means we are a people of the book—more specifically, sixty-six books divided into Old and New Testaments. The words that God inspired in these texts are not a dead letter, but they are alive and active, “sharper than any double-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12).

In seeking the guidance of God we should never separate the work of the Holy Spirit from the role of Scripture, because the Bible is “the sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17). The texts of the Old and New Testaments comprise the primary weapon the Holy Spirit uses to accomplish his purposes in our lives. Through these ancient texts, God speaks to our contemporary world. “He speaks through what he has spoken.”15

Like David or like Saul? We can now return to this question. In answering it, we should consider present Christians corporately and individually. Corporately, the church today tends to be much more like Saul than we care to admit. Most mainline denominations make unwarranted assumptions about God’s will and rely too often on human wisdom. Consequently, many churches today have ambivalent records on important moral and social issues such as poverty, abortion, ecology, violence, and homosexuality. The pressures of our age and the changing opinions of human “experts” have swayed many into changing long-held social principles of Christianity. For the most part, mainline churches do not hold Scripture in high enough esteem to refute the changing values of our society. Like Saul we seem unconcerned with seeking God’s will and more enamored with human perceptions.

Unfortunately, the record of evangelical denominations has also been more like Saul than David. In the heat of the greatest moral crisis of our generation—the civil rights movement of the 1960s—most evangelicals chose to sit on the sidelines.16 And evangelicals have not typically been at the vanguard of social change regarding poverty or matters of race relations.

With regard to individual application of this text, it is helpful to distinguish between the general and the particular will of God.17 (1) The general will of God is the desire he has for all his people everywhere and at all times. In this sense his will has been revealed to us in Scripture and cannot be missed by thinking readers. God wants us to “be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom. 8:29), to become Christlike in all our behavior. Most of us are painfully aware of our failures here, and we can only strive to allow the Holy Spirit’s work to bring to completion what he has begun in us (Phil. 1:6; 1 Thess. 5:23–24).

(2) The particular will of God has more to do with the important “vocational” choices we must all make in life: choices of occupation, of spouse, of church, of the best use of time and energy, and so on. Individual Christians certainly desire to be like David in this regard: to discern God’s will and to obey it quickly. But we often fail because of a mistaken notion about the nature of “divine guidance.” Since our vocational questions, for example, cannot be settled by a simple recourse to Scripture, many Christians are guilty of believing that guidance is essentially an inward prompting of the Holy Spirit apart from the written Word. They are more prone to rely on subjective impulses or vague “impressions” rather than probing the biblical text for principles of divine direction.18

Yet even in these issues where we are left without explicit biblical mandate, the basic method in which God guides and directs us is through a rational understanding of the principles of Scripture. These principles establish the parameters in which we then must seek to discern the specifics of his will. “The Spirit leads within the limits which the Word sets, not beyond them.”19 Having thus committed ourselves to God’s Word, we then may become his sheep, who know only his voice and follow wherever he leads (John 10:3–5).

Original Meaning

David Escapes Keilah (23:7–14)

SAUL SHOULD HAVE REJOICED in the deliverance of Keilah from the Philistines. But his only thoughts are of how much easier it will be to trap David in a city “with gates and bars” than in the open country. David is still painfully aware of his role in the tragic deaths of the citizens of Nob (22:6–23), and he fears the same will happen now at Keilah, as his prayer reveals (23:10): “Saul plans to come to Keilah and destroy the town on account of me.” It is a shocking fact that Saul is mustering his troops to capture David rather than to take advantage of the victory to pursue the Philistines further.6 The citizens of Keilah would be anxious to avoid the same fate as Nob, regardless of how grateful they may be to David. They would be compelled to surrender David to Saul. In order to avoid more innocent bloodshed, David and his men escape into the desert of Ziph, a city of Judah approximately five miles southeast of Hebron.7

As Saul’s hostility against David intensifies, the narrator informs us that “God did not give David into his hands.” This reminder keeps before us the question of royal authority in Israel. While the two anointed ones, Saul and David, are trudging through these military and political circumstances, playing their deadly game of hide-and-seek, Yahweh, the true king of Israel, is in charge, and ultimately his plan will be accomplished.

Jonathan Reassures David (23:15–18)