The Garden of Eden 20

The Garden of Eden 20

XXXVI

 

THE CAVE OF ADULLAM

 

 

When David fled for his life from the displeasure of King Saul, he

became an outlaw, like Robin Hood.

 

On the way he stopped at a village called Nob, where the Ark of God was

kept. And he asked the priest for bread and a sword. And the priest

said, “There is no bread here except that which is on the holy table.”

 

And David said, “Let me have that.” So the priest gave him five loaves.

And the priest said, “There is no sword here except that with which you

cut off the giant’s head. It is wrapped up in a cloth.”

 

And David said, “I am on the king’s business, and in great haste, and I

have no sword. There is none like that; give it to me.” So the priest

gave him the sword. But a man named Doeg, the king’s chief herdsman, saw

what was done, and told the king.

 

Then David went to Bethlehem to his father’s farm and told the bad news

of the anger of the king. “He has threatened to kill me. Indeed, he has

already tried twice to kill me, once with his own hand. You and mother

must go at once to a place of safety. Come, let me take you to our

cousins in Moab, the family of my great-grandmother Ruth.” So over they

went, across the Jordan, and put themselves under the protection of the

king of Moab.

 

As for David, he found a place of refuge in the Cave of Adullam. And

there men gathered about him.

 

The first to come was Abiathar. He had been a priest at Nob, and he told

David what had happened. Doeg had gone straight to Saul. “I saw the son

of Jesse coming to Nob,” he said, “and the chief priest gave him bread

from the holy table and the giant’s sword.” And Saul sent for the chief

priest, and the priest said, “Here am I.”

 

And Saul frowned upon him, and said, “Why have you conspired against me

with the son of Jesse, and have given him a sword to slay me?”

 

And the chief priest answered, “Who is so faithful among all your

servants as David, your son-in-law, and honorable in your house? I knew

nothing of any trouble between you and him.”

 

Then the king’s old madness came upon him, and he called for men to kill

not only the chief priest, but all the other priests. And at first,

nobody would do it. Not a man would lift his sword to strike those

unarmed, innocent men. Finally, Doeg did it. He fell upon them with such

fury that only one escaped. Abiathar escaped, and became one of David’s

band.

 

And others came, till there were six hundred men. Some had chosen the

outlaw life because they were in distress, some because they were in

debt, some because they were discontented and were weary of peace and

quiet and desirous of adventures. A wild and hardy life they had, among

the hills, under the stars, fighting the Philistines, chasing the

Amalekites, defending shepherds from the attacks of brigands, and making

rich sheepmasters pay for their protection.

 

There was Abishai, David’s nephew. One day David was fighting the

Philistines, and the army of the enemy lay about Bethlehem. And in the

midst of the battle, in the dust and heat, David was very thirsty; and

he looked across the valley over the heads of the struggling soldiers,

and there in the distance were the green trees of his native village.

And David said, “Oh, that one would give me drink of the waters of the

well of Bethlehem, that is by the gate.” And Abishai and two others who

stood by and heard these words started straight for Bethlehem. Running

and hiding and fighting, they made their way through the Philistine

army, and filled a cup with water and brought it back and gave it to

David. And David would not drink it. He said it was too sacred to drink,

gained as it was by the peril of men’s lives. He poured it solemnly upon

the ground. That was Abishai’s adventure.

 

There was Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada. One time, he went down into a

pit on a snowy day and single-handed fought a lion and killed him.

Another time he was attacked by an Egyptian, eight feet high, whose

spear was like a weaver’s beam. Benaiah had only a stick in his hand

when the Egyptian fell upon him; but he plucked the spear out of the

Egyptian’s hand, and slew him with his own spear. That is the sort of

man Benaiah was.

 

There was Jonathan, another of David’s nephews. He had a fight with a

Philistine, on each of whose hands were six fingers, and on each of his

feet six toes, and the man was big in proportion. But he was not big

enough to vanquish Jonathan.

 

There were eleven men of God, whose faces were like the faces of lions,

and their feet as swift as the wild roes on the mountains. Once in the

spring, when the water of the Jordan was in full flood, brimming from

bank to bank, they swam across and put to flight, some east and some

west, the people who lived on the other side.

 

David also had his share of danger. Once he ventured into a Philistine

city and entered the service of the Philistine king. And the Philistines

found out who he was. “This,” they said, “is the man who killed our

champion the giant.” And they proposed to make an end of him. And David

pretended to be crazy. He opened his mouth so that his spittle fell down

upon his beard; he scrabbled on the doors of the gate; so that the king

said, “See, the fellow is mad.” Thus he escaped.

 

In such adventures David and his men of Adullam passed their days.

 

 

 

 

XXXVII

 

THE OUTLAW AND THE SHEEPMASTER

 

 

There lived in the land of Israel, among the southern hills, a man named

Nabal, with Abigail his wife. Nabal had three thousand sheep and a

thousand goats, and his pastures reached farther than the eye could see;

but he had a stingy and sullen temper. Abigail, however, was as generous

as she was beautiful.

 

They were shearing sheep, one day, on Nabal’s farm, and there were good

things to eat and drink, and the shepherds were all very merry, when

suddenly they saw ten men coming up along the dusty road. One was

Abishai, and one was Jonathan, and one was Benaiah the son of Jehoiada,

and the other seven were lusty outlaws, and they came with a message

from their captain, David. “Peace,” they said, “be to thee and to thy

house, and unto all thy great possessions. We have protected thy

shepherds in the fields, as they will tell thee. We have driven off the

Amalekites who came to steal the sheep. Remember us, now, and send a

gift to David the son of Jesse.”

 

And Nabal was very angry. “Who,” he said, “is David, and who is the son

of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays that break away every man from

his master. Shall I take my bread and my water, and my flesh that I have

killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they

be?”

 

To this the ten men listened in grim silence, and straightway turned

about and went away, and Nabal and his shepherds watched them till they

were lost to sight over the top of the hill.

 

But one of the shepherds ran in and told Abigail. “Mistress Abigail,” he

cried, “an evil thing has happened. David sent men to salute our master,

and he railed on them, and sent them away empty. But, indeed, David and

his band were very good to us shepherds. We were not hurt, neither

missed we anything, as long as we were in the fields. They were a wall

to us, both by night and by day. What shall we do? You know the might of

David; he will come and destroy us all. And not one of us dares say a

word to Nabal.”

 

Then Abigail made haste, and took two hundred loaves of bread, and two

skin bottles of wine, and five sheep dressed for roasting, and five

baskets of parched corn, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two

hundred cakes of figs. These she packed on the backs of asses, and said

to her servants: “Go on with these before me. I will come after you.”

And without a word to Nabal she hurried to meet David.

 

Thus they climbed the hill, the servants and the mistress, and there at

the bottom was a cloud of flying dust, and under the cloud was David

with his men, hastening with all speed to punish Nabal.

 

And when Abigail saw David she alighted and bowed down to the ground

before him. “Let not my lord,” she said, “regard my husband, who is a

foolish person. See, here is a present, all that you can wish. Do not

shed blood without a cause. I know that the Lord will certainly make my

lord victorious over all the land, because my lord fights the battles of

the Lord and does no evil. And the enemies of my lord shall the Lord

sling out as from the middle of a sling. And it shall come to pass, when

the Lord shall have made thee ruler over Israel, thou wilt be glad to

remember that thou hast shed no blood without a cause, or in revenge.”

 

And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which

sent thee this day to meet me, and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be

thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from

avenging myself with my own hand. For in very deed, as the Lord God of

Israel liveth, except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me, surely by

the morning light both Nabal and all that belong to him should have

perished miserably.”

 

Then David received her gift, and said to her, “Go up in peace to thy

house. See, I have harkened to thy voice and have accepted thy person.”

So Abigail turned about and went one way, and David turned about and

went the other way.

 

Nabal’s men were eating and drinking, as Abigail came home, sitting at a

feast fit for a king. Nabal was drunken, and merry with the foolish

merriment of drink. So she told him nothing, either less or more, until

the morning light.

 

Then she said, “Nabal, yesterday your life was in great danger, and I

saved you. David was on his way here with four hundred men, and I met

him and turned him back.”

 

And Nabal was so filled with terror that his heart, for the moment,

ceased to beat: as if he had been walking in his sleep and had waked to

find himself on the very edge of a steep cliff. And his fright and the

liquor he had drunk brought on a sudden sickness. He went to bed, and

never got up again: and in ten days he was dead.