(Just a short post today)
Saul makes David a commander in the army. David and Jonathan hit it off and are best bros.
David and everything he does is blessed by the Lord. It’s kind of like how Jospeh was blessed and everything he did was blessed even when he was a slave and in prison. Perhaps we’re meant to compare the two men. 🤔
Saul is gets progressively more jealous because David has “gone viral,” or as close to that as one could get in the ancient world. The ladies all have the hots for him 😍 and are making up songs him. It’s like when there’s a new hit song and every time you turn on the radio, it’s playing. 🤦♀️
Saul’s mental state is getting worse. He attempts to kill David with a spear and finally assigns him to a lowly post over only 1000 men. But it does not diminish David or his success.
The promised reward for killing Goliath had been the hand of the king’s daughter in marriage and lifetime tax exemption.
“One day Saul said to David, “I am ready to give you my older daughter, Merab, as your wife. But first you must prove yourself to be a real warrior by fighting the Lord’s battles.” For Saul thought, “I’ll send him out against the Philistines and let them kill him rather than doing it myself.”
1 Samuel 18:17 NLT
Hmmm… Putting a top soldier in a dangerous position for the purpose of getting him killed by the enemy so you don’t have to exactly do it yourself….
Now, why does that sound familiar? 🤔
If you know, you know. If this is a new one for ya, just wait. You’ll see.
David is sent on many campaigns but comes back unscathed every time because Yahweh is with him. But Saul gives his eldest daughter away to another man anyway. Which is just fine by her younger sister, Michal, who is very much in love 🥰 with David.
But David cannot afford the bride price for a king’s daughter so Saul cooks up a scheme that sounds like one of the 12 labors of Hercules: “Bring back 100 Philistine foreskins.” 😳
If you enjoy funny old family-friendly movies, you should watch The Incredible Rocky Mountain Race. It’s a western adventure comedy film from 1977 with old school, Giligan’s Island kind of comedy. In the story, the city council of St. Joseph Missouri concocts a race to get Mark Twain and Mike Fink out of town. The two men keep brawling and tearing the place apart and the citizens have had enough. The council comes up with a list of nearly impossible things for the men to collect as they race all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It includes things like the moccasins of Chief Crazy Horse, a Pony Express mail pouch and a conductor’s cap from an army payroll train. The council hopes that Twain and Fink will get themselves shot trying to procure them.
That’s the trope here with Saul.
“He (Saul) told them, ‘Tell David that all I want for the bride price is 100 Philistine foreskins! Vengeance on my enemies is all I really want.’ But what Saul had in mind was that David would be killed in the fight.”
1 Samuel 18:25 NLT
But David brings back 200 foreskins and so Saul gives Michal to David.
(That is SUCH an awkward thing for a dowery. 🤦♀️ How do you even tell people in polite conversation that your husband gave your father 200 enemy foreskins for you?)
🫣
Saul’s popularity is waning and David is a rising star. And there’s nothing Saul can do about it except to hate David and keep trying to do him in. And that’s about to become the story of David’s life for the next several years.
To The Reader 