In Friday's study we found David and his men being released from the Philistine army by King Achish, who reluctantly acknowledged that his commanders were not going to accept foreigners as their comrades-in-arms. He told David to go in peace and with his blessing back to Ziklag, the city he had generously awarded to David, to his men, and to all their wives and children.
David was offended by the attitude of the Philistine army and was indignant at being discharged but their rejection of him was for his own good: it kept him and his men from fighting against their own people, for the Philistines were about to attack the Israelites. In today's study we find David and his men making the journey back to Ziklag from the Philistine encampment at Aphek, which is three day's worth of all-day marching.
"David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way." (1 Samuel 30:1-2) They arrive home, exhausted and hungry and thirsty, expecting to be greeted by their loving families. Instead they are met with a horrifying sight. The city is a heap of smoking ash. Their belongings are gone. Their livestock is gone. Worst of all, their families are gone, and at this point they can't be certain whether everyone is still alive or not. But even if they are alive, David and the men with him have no clue where to even start looking for them. They don't even know, at first, who attacked the city and kidnapped all its people.
The Amalekites were the first people to make themselves the enemies of Israel when the Israelites came out of Egypt in the Exodus. In Exodus 17 we found the Amalekites attacking the Israelites, without provocation, at Rephidim. Because the Amalekites attacked them for no reason and cruelly laid hands on even the elderly and the infirm, the Lord said that once the Israelites were settled in the promised land they were to make a complete end of the Amalekites as a people: "Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land He is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!" (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)
As we've seen during our study of the Old Testament, after the Israelites began making new lives for themselves in the promised land, the Amalekites repeatedly invaded them and destroyed their crops. The Amalekites teamed up with other tribes of Canaan that hated the Israelites, such as the Ammonites and the Midianites and the Moabites, and invaded and attacked various settlements and cities of Israel. Earlier in the book of 1 Samuel we found King Saul presented with the opportunity to make a complete end of this enemy of Israel. The Lord lined everything up in such a way that His command to "blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven" could be fulfilled. But Saul did not fully obey the Lord's instructions. He could have delivered his people forever from this particular enemy but failed to do as he was told, causing the prophet Samuel to deliver to him this message from the Lord: "Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king." (1 Samuel 15:23b, 26b) It wasn't just for his own sake that Saul should have obeyed the Lord; it was for the sake of Israel as a whole. If Saul had done what he was told to do, he would have bestowed a great blessing upon the people of his nation. Never again would they have been invaded, attacked, or raided by an Amalekite. If Saul had done what he was told to do, we wouldn't be reading of the terrible thing that happened at Ziklag. The Amalekites would not have been able to burn the city and kidnap all its people---people who are Israelites and children of the Lord by faith.
We know David has six hundred soldiers with him but apparently, since the time these men joined up with him, they have brought not only their wives and children with them but other family members as well. Verse 2 told us that the Amalekites carried off everyone "young and old". I assume that some of the men's entire families came to live with them when they settled at Ziklag: their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and so on. This must be why there are senior citizens among their population. After the king of the Philistines awarded them a city, they considered it safe to invite their extended family members and their wives' extended family members to come and settle at Ziklag. It may have seemed a very prudent thing to do since they couldn't be sure whether King Saul might retaliate against the men who left Israel with David by doing harm to their relatives still living within his grasp.
David and his men are devastated when they find all their family members missing. "When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David's two wives had been captured---Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel." (1 Samuel 30:3-5) Their hearts are broken. They don't know who took their loved ones. They don't know where their loved ones are. They don't know how their loved ones are being treated at the moment or whether all of them are even still alive. They weep until their bodies are too dehydrated to produce another tear. They wail until their voices are almost gone. They barely have the will to keep living but there's one more thing they intend to do if they can muster enough strength to do it: they will kill the man they consider responsible for their predicament. They place all the blame at David's feet for having brought them to live among the Philistines and for having taken them out with the Philistine army, leaving their families unprotected at Ziklag. "David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters." (1 Samuel 30:6a)
At this point in David's life he's lost almost everything that matters to him. He's lost his home in Israel, his occupation as a soldier in Israel's army, his first wife, his freedom to go up to the house of God in Israel, his parents because he had to send them to Moab for their safety, his new home in Ziklag, all his earthly possessions, and now the respect and allegiance of his men. But note that I said he's almost lost everything---he has not lost the Lord. In spite of all the mistakes he's made in the past year while living among the enemies of Israel, he has not made the mistake of turning away from the Lord. He may not be living as closely to Him as he should be, and he may have gotten out of the Lord's will by living among heathen people, but he still loves the Lord and it is to the Lord he will appeal for help in tomorrow's passage. David has not have handled some of his previous crises in the proper manner but he will rise to the occasion during this current crisis and place all his hope in the Lord. He will consult the Lord, do what the Lord says to do, and win a great victory militarily and spiritually.
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