1 Samuel 18-19: The Persecution of David

"Save me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul." (Psalm 68:2)

There is a tradition that says David composed the 68th Psalm (or 69th according to the Hebrew numbering) during the events described in 1 Samuel 18-19.  It would make sense.  David is daily fearing for his life, as Saul conspires over and over again to have him killed.  "I am come into the depth of the sea: and a tempest hath overwhelmed me" (Psalm 68:3).  Imagine the horror of going from the serenity of the pasture tending sheep to the backstabbing and intrigue of the royal court.  David was plucked from a simple life, chosen by God to be king of all Israel, but before ascending the throne, he would have endure a life-threatening persecution by none other than the king himself.  He was thrown into quite a storm alright.  "Draw me out of the mire, that I may not stick fast: deliver me from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters" (Psalm 68:15).  David pleads in this psalm for deliverance.  David knows that Saul is trying to have him killed -- has even attempted to do so himself -- and day and night fears for his life.  He has to hide and run; he is remarkably helped by Saul's own children, Jonathan and his wife Michal.  It is all a heavy trial that David must bear.  "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just let them not be written" (Psalm 68:29).  So David says of his enemies, and principally among them must be King Saul himself.  And if God so answered David's prayers here, then we must shudder to think on Saul's fate. 

Of course, Psalm 68 has gone on to represent more than just David's trials.  It is a prayer for anyone being attacked and mercilessly persecuted.  A plea for God to aid us in our hour of need, especially when all hope seems lost.  And like so many of David's prayers, there are powerful prefigurings in Psalm 68 of Christ's sufferings.  Jesus, after all, is the supreme example of someone persecuted by jealous enemies.  But before that there was David, an example come alive in Sacred Scripture of someone whose very innocence lights the ire of prideful men who, motivated by evil, would seek to destroy heaven itself if it stood in their way. 

These chapters in the First Book of Samuel also seek to show how insignificant man's will is compared to God's Will.  What we want and desire, ultimately, means nothing.  Saul desires power and control and hates David because he is a threat to those things.  Saul's will is to have David killed, but over and over he fails, because it is God's Will that David be king, and in the end it is God's Will that will have the final say.