1 SAMUEL 18
Read 1 Samuel 18:1-30
David made quite an impact when he killed Goliath. King Saul’s son, Jonathan, who we met earlier and saw was a brave warrior, made a covenant with David. This was a kind of formal pact of friendship and loyalty to one another. The fact that Jonathan initiated the covenant and made a gift to David of his tunic, robe, belt, sword and bow shows that Jonathan (the king’s son, remember) regarded David as an equal. David’s fame had gone out into the community as well and songs were made of him and his exploits which compared him favourably to the king (v7). Everyone loved David. Jonathan loved David, Saul’s daughter Michal loved David (v20), the public loved David, all Israel and Judah loved him (v16). Saul, however, became jealous of David and started to make his life difficult.
The key to this passage is the favour of Lord. We have seen in earlier chapters that Saul disobeyed the Lord; that he overstepped his authority and took on the role of priest. And even though he was king, he was not entitled to do that. From that moment on the Lord withdrew his Spirit from Saul and sent him an evil spirit. David, on the hand, was successful and popular because the Lord was with him (v12, v14, v28) and the Lord protected him against Saul’s schemes.
Whatever plan Saul came up with David (because the Lord was with him) survived. Saul became more and more afraid of David’s success (v29) and David became more and more famous throughout the land (v30). We see Saul here being eaten up with jealousy and we see the destructive effect of sin. Feelings like jealousy feed off themselves and build and build and eat away at a person until they become destructive. That is the nature of sin. And this is exactly what was happening with Saul. Up to now his feelings against David had been well concealed but from now on Saul’s hatred and desire to kill David came out into the open.
In this and the following chapters we also see God’s protection upon his chosen one, David. He had already had Samuel anoint David as the next king; he wasn’t going to allow Saul to kill David and stop him becoming king. God is sovereign and what he wills is inevitably going to happen despite man’s best efforts to change things. There are several instances in the Bible of people trying to force God’s hand one way or another – sometimes with good motives, and we might think of Abraham and Sarah trying to make God’s promise of a child for Abraham come true by arranging for Abraham to have a child with his maidservant Hagar (Genesis 16). This only caused heartache for all concerned and did not change God’s plans at all – God is sovereign and his will inevitably will be done.