Saul enters the cave for the most ordinary of reasons, to relieve himself, with no idea that the man he has brought three thousand chosen men to hunt is sitting in its innermost parts, close enough to watch him. The Hebrew phrase behind Saul's errand appears in only one other place, Judges 3:24, where Eglon of Moab is caught in the same posture just before he is assassinated. A reader who knows that story expects a killing, and none comes.
David's men read the moment as the reader is tempted to. 4"Here is the day of which the LORD said to you, 'Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand.'" No such word from the LORD is recorded anywhere in the story. The men are filling in what God never said, because the circumstance matches what they want to be true. David does act, but not as they expect. He 4"stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe."
That is not as small as it sounds. A robe has meant a lot in this book, Samuel's torn as a sign that the kingdom was torn from Saul, and Jonathan's given freely to David as a sign of covenant. David understood the weight of the act the moment it was done. 5"David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe."
The sentence says more about David than almost anything else in the book. He has laid no hand on Saul, only cut a scrap of cloth, and his conscience convicts him anyway. Even that symbolic gesture treated Saul's kingship as something David had standing to touch. He says he will not put out his hand against the LORD's anointed, and the words repeat almost as if he needs to say them twice to hold himself to them. His restraint is reverence for what God has set apart, whatever that man has since become.
David then steps out of the cave and does something almost unthinkable. He calls after Saul and bows to the ground. His speech is careful and exact, with physical evidence in his hand and an appeal past Saul to the LORD as judge. 12"May the LORD judge between me and you," he says, and 12"my hand shall not be against you." He calls himself a dead dog and a flea. Beneath the humility sits a firm claim. I have done you no wrong, and I will let God decide what happens next.
Saul's answer is the most human moment he has in the book. 16"Is this your voice, my son David?" He weeps. 17"You are more righteous than I." 20"I know that you shall surely be king." For a moment everything is seen clearly, David's innocence and his own guilt. Then he asks for mercy for his descendants, and David swears it.
The tears do not last, and Saul's pursuit resumes soon enough. A king can weep and tell the truth about his guilt and still walk back into the sin he wept over. What holds David is his own settled reverence for what God has ordained, and a refusal to seize by force what God has promised to give in his own time. A greater son of David would refuse a larger temptation, offered every kingdom of the world, and wait for the Father's timing. Some things are never rightly seized. They are received.
Prayer
Father, give us David's conscience, tender enough to be struck even by what looks to everyone else like restraint. Keep us from seizing by our own hand what you alone have the right to give, and teach us to leave judgment and vindication to you. Thank you that your own Son refused every shortcut to the throne and waited for you to raise him up. In Jesus' name, amen.