The whole city empties out behind David, and nearly everyone reveals what they are. Ittai the Gittite is the first surprise, a foreigner and a recent arrival owing David nothing beyond a mercenary's contract. David gives him every reason to leave: 20"shall I today make you wander about with us, since I go I know not where?" Ittai answers in terms close to Ruth's vow to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17): 21"wherever my lord the king shall be, whether for death or for life, there also will your servant be." A man with no blood claim on David offers the loyalty David's own son has betrayed.
At the Kidron the priests catch up carrying the ark, and David sends it back. Israel had learned once, disastrously, what happens when the ark is treated as a talisman to guarantee victory (1 Samuel 4:3-11). David will not repeat it, even running for his life, when the temptation to carry every advantage into exile must have been enormous. He will accept whatever the LORD judges good. The posture echoes Eli's at far worse news (1 Samuel 3:18), a trust that lays down any attempt to force God's hand and has nothing of despair in it.
Then David goes up the Mount of Olives, barefoot, head covered, weeping, and every person with him weeps the same way (verse 30). A king crossing the Kidron in tears, betrayed by those closest to him, still prays in his collapse: 31"O LORD, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness." Centuries later another anointed king would cross this valley toward a garden, betrayed by one of his own followers (John 18:1-5), in far greater anguish and more complete submission. David's tears are a shadow cast forward from that sorrow.
David's prayer against Ahithophel is answered almost before he finishes climbing. Hushai appears with his coat torn and dirt on his head, ready to help, and David sends him straight back into the enemy's camp to defeat the counsel he just prayed against (verses 32-34). Even fleeing, even weeping, David thinks clearly enough to build a plan, and trusting God with the outcome never meant refusing to act wisely in the meantime.
Not everyone matches David's posture. Ziba shows up with donkeys and provisions and a convenient story that Mephibosheth stayed behind hoping to be given back his father's kingdom (16:1-3). David has no time to question it, believes it, and rewards Ziba on the spot (verse 4). A king in flight is easy to deceive.
Then Shimei curses and throws stones all the way down from Bahurim, calling David a man of blood (16:5-8). Abishai wants to end it: 9"Let me go over and take off his head." David refuses, and his reasoning reaches past restraint: 10"If he is cursing because the LORD has said to him, 'Curse David,' who then shall say, 'Why have you done so?'" David cannot know whether the curse carries some deserved judgment, given what Nathan told him about the sword never leaving his house (2 Samuel 12:10), and he lets the one voice speak the uncomfortable possibility. He hopes that the LORD will look on the wrong done to him (verse 12).
By the end of this long day David and his people reach the Jordan weary, with nothing resolved and nothing avenged, and with a king who kept choosing, at every fork, to let God do what seemed good and to leave his own vindication in God's hands. It is a strange strength, and on the surface it looks like defeat.
Prayer
Father, thank you for David's example, refusing to manipulate your presence for advantage in his worst hour, and refusing to silence even an unjust curse that might carry a grain of your correction. Teach us that trust, letting you decide what seems good. And thank you for the greater king who crossed this valley toward deeper sorrow, entrusting himself to the Father who alone could raise him up. In Jesus' name, amen.