An Amalekite arrives at Ziklag with a story built to please. His clothes are torn and there is dirt on his head, and underneath the grief is a calculation. David has hunted Saul for years, so news of Saul's death should earn a reward. 10"I stood beside him and killed him," he says, and he lays Saul's crown and armlet before David. The Amalekite has never met the man David actually is.
What he gets is grief, unmixed and immediate. 11"David took hold of his clothes and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him." 12"they mourned and wept and fasted until evening." This is the man who twice refused to lift a hand against Saul. Now he is undone by news that should, by every human calculation, have set him free, with no audience to perform for. His loyalty to what God has ordained is tested one more time, costing him nothing strategically, and it holds.
Then David asks the one question that exposes everything. 14"How is it you were not afraid to put out your hand to destroy the LORD's anointed?" The man has confessed to killing a king, hoping for a reward, and receives the verdict David's own restraint always implied. 16"Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you."
Then David writes a song and commands that it be taught to the people of Judah. Nowhere in the lament does he mention the throne now standing open. He names Saul's glory and strength, and Saul and Jonathan 23"beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided." He suppresses every memory of a thrown spear and remembers a king Israel truly lost something in losing. It is the most generous act of memory in the book.
The refrain returns like a bell that will not stop tolling: 19"How the mighty have fallen!" It carries astonishment, without gloating or relief, that such strength could end on a mountain. Then near the end David's voice narrows to something his own. 26"I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary." It is covenant language, spoken over the friend who gave away his throne so that David could have it.
David inherits a kingdom in this chapter and grieves as though he has lost everything. He never wanted the throne badly enough to want Saul dead to get it. There is something of the greater son of David here, who would weep over a city that had rejected him (Luke 19:41).
Is there an enemy whose fall you have been quietly glad about? Ask God for a heart that mourns it. The measure of a person's character is often what they feel when a rival falls, and David's grief tells us what kind of king he would be.
Prayer
Father, give us David's kind of grief, honest enough to mourn even those who wronged us and generous enough to remember what was good in them. Keep us from rejoicing over any fallen enemy, and teach us to feel the weight of what is lost when the mighty fall. Thank you that Christ, greater than David, never let his own victory cost him his capacity to weep. In Jesus' name, amen.