1 Samuel 27:1–7

And David said in his heart, “Now I shall perish someday by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape to the land of the Philistines; and Saul will despair of me, to seek me anymore in any part of Israel. So I shall escape out of his hand.” Then David arose and went over with the six hundred men who were with him to Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath. So David dwelt with Achish at Gath, he and his men, each man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the Carmelitess, Nabal’s widow. And it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath; so he sought him no more.

Then David said to Achish, “If I have now found favor in your eyes, let them give me a place in some town in the country, that I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?” So Achish gave him Ziklag that day. Therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. Now the time that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was one full year and four months.

If David believed what Saul had just said, all this wouldn’t be necessary. But he doesn’t. Saul’s pronouncements, even his blessings, are worthless.

David knows that Saul won’t last forever, so he decides to wait it out somewhere safe. The text mentions that David and his men have their families with them. That’s to show the things that David had to weigh in his decision to go the safe route. With their families at risk, this decision isn’t cowardly; it’s prudent.

David still has the same courage he had when he charged at Goliath.

Having just demonstrated his courage for the N’th time to Saul and his men, David isn’t worrying about what other people think of him. There’s an important lesson in that.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis depicts human traits from a devil’s point of view. It’s a series of letters from a senior “tempter” (Screwtape) to a junior “tempter” about how to tempt and mislead his “patient.” In letter 12, he mocks how a patient can care too much about what other people think of him.

“On your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. … Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust. The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence what other people say about it, is by that very fact fore-armed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the “best” people, the “right” food, the “important” books. I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions.”

Screwtape is pointing out that our caring “twopence” about what other people think about us is a point of vulnerability. It’s one thing to seek the advice of others. It’s quite another to crave their approval.

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These weekday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. The Saturday ones are written by Matt Richardson. To subscribe to the DEEP click here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/community

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.