In 1 Sam 24.1-22 David gets a chance to kill Saul but he doesn’t. It will also be a picture of Yeshua at Golgotha. Saul is told that David is at En-gedi (“spring of the goat”). There are many caves in a canyon that runs westward from the Dead Sea, with waterfalls and many plants. It seems more like a garden than a desert. It was a great place for David to hide, to see the enemy approaching, and had plenty of water. Saul will be a picture of the natural man. But it is also a place where one could get comfortable and be susceptible to an ambush.
After Saul was done dealing with the Philistines, which God arranged to draw him away from David, he comes with three thousand men to some sheepfolds (large caves to pen the sheep and large enough to house David and his 600 men) that were on the way to where he thought David was, and there was a cave. Saul went in to relieve himself (literally “cover his feet”) and so he came alone, but David and his men were sitting in the inner parts of the cave. What are the chances that Saul chose the very cave that David and his men were in. But there are no coincidences in the Scriptures, this was by the hand of God to test David and to reveal his heart to Saul. A cave is seen as a place of death and the grave, and in this it was like Golgotha. David was there because of Saul (the natural man). Spiritually, we would like to think that our present victory will be the final victory, and our pursuers would give up and not bother us anymore, but that is not going to happen. Our enemies will keep coming back in this life so we need to be ready.
The men of David were excited to see that Saul had come into the cave alone and thought this was David’s chance to rid himself of his enemy, so they said to him that today God is going to give Saul into his hands. This is like the law of sin and death that urges the death of all transgressors. But David arose and cut off the “kanaf” (“corner”) of Saul’s robe where his tzitzit hung. He may have took his robe off in one part of the cave and went to another part to relieve himself. David did not have to get right next to Saul. You will remember that Saul did this to Samuel in 1 Sam 15.27 and he did this to illustrate Samuel’s words in 1 Sam 15.28. But afterward, David’s conscience (heart) bothered him. He had acted against the appointed authority that Yehovah had given Saul as king.
In this David is like the Messiah because he risked his life to prove his love for Saul, the natural man. David felt regret for doing this, however, because he should not have stretched out his hand against Saul like this. God anointed Saul as king and it was God’s job to remove him, so David was not going to sin by killing Saul. He would have to wait on the Lord. Yeshua refused Satan’s “offer” to win the kingship of the world. Yeshua was not going to sin by obeying Satan’s demand for worship (Matt 4.9). We also know that David did not harbor bitterness and resentment towards Saul, so David kept himself from sin, and persuaded his men not to do any harm to Saul. The Torah has two aspects to it, the Judicial aspect and the Educational aspect. The Judicial aspect of the Torah demands death as the result of sin, and Yeshua did not allow that to happen to those who believe to demonstrate his righteousness (Rom 3.25).
Saul arose and left the cave and went his way. David (a type of Messiah) arose and went out of the cave and he calls out to Saul. This alludes to Yeshua’s resurrection, calling man to repent (1 Sam 24.8-16). David calls out to Saul and tells him not to listen to the liars who say that David is out to kill him and take his throne, and these people are like the false teachers of today who misrepresent Yeshua (1 Tim 4.1). But David also knows that Saul’s hatred and fear came from Saul himself, and David tells him he could have killed him but he had mercy on Saul (v 10).
David then calls Saul “my father” because he was David’s father-in-law. David honored his parents and in-laws with acts of kindness. He showed Saul the tzitzit he had cut off as proof he could have killed him. The tzitzit symbolize authority, and by cutting off the tzitzit, David was showing that Saul’s authority as king has been cut off (1 Sam 15.27-28). But David did not kill him. He was going to let the Lord judge him, and David was going to trust the Lord to deliver him from Saul (1 Sam 24.12) and to fulfill his promises.
In the same way, Yeshua does not want man (pictured by Saul) to perish. He shows us the Torah (the tzitzit symbolize the Torah commandments) to show that he wants us to have life, not death. Yeshua went to the cross because of man, like David went to the cave because of Saul. He believed that God would deliver him from the hand of man (Saul).
Saul went home after hearing David words and knows the measure of David’s love for him. He says that David is more righteous than he is because of how he has dealt with him, while he was trying to kill David. Saul knows that it is unlikely that when a man finds his enemy that he will let him go safely. In the same way, we have symbols of God’s love for us like the Temple when it stood, the Torah, the promises, the Messiah, the adoption as sons and the glory of God.
Saul knows that David will be king because of how God has prospered him and protected him. He also saw the tzitzit in David’s hand. Man also knows that Yeshua will be king because he has raised him from the dead and how God has prospered his name and work over the centuries. Deep down in the heart of man he knows that Yeshua is the Messiah and will be king over the God’s kingdom.
Saul asks David to promise that he would not cut off his seed or destroy his name after he becomes king. This was done by evil kings and rulers, but David or Yeshua will not do that. David swore to Saul that he would not do that, and Saul went home. However, David did not naively think that all was well between them. He was not going to let Saul’s emotional reaction to what David did lull him into thinking Saul had changed, there had to be signs of teshuvah (repentance). As a result, David was not going to take any chances with his life or the lives of those with him, so he and his men went up to the stronghold in En-gedi (1 Sam 23.29).
We will pick up here in Part 20.
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