The Historians' History of the World 02

He therefore tried a middle course and sent to a rich man, Nabal of Carmel, who possessed three thousand sheep and one thousand goats, and who was a descendant of that Caleb who had here once founded a lordship for himself with the sword. David sent to say that he had taken nothing from Nabal’s flocks, and to ask if the latter would not, therefore, send him and his the means of subsistence. But Nabal answered David’s messenger: “Who is David and who is the son of Jesse; there be many servants nowadays that break away every man from his master.” Then David set out, by night, to fall on Nabal’s house and flocks. On the way he was met by Nabal’s wife Abigail, who, in her dread of the freebooters, had had some asses laden with slaughtered sheep, bread, jars of wine, figs, and raisin cakes, to take secretly to David’s camp. “Blessed be thy advice, woman,” said David, “for as the Lord God of Israel liveth, hadst thou not met me, surely by the morning light there had been none left of Nabal and his house.” Nabal miraculously died ten days after this incident. David reflected that so rich a possession in this region could not but be useful. Saul’s daughter was lost to him, so he sent some servants to Abigail at Carmel. They said: “David sent us unto thee, to take thee to him to wife.” And Abigail arose and bowed herself on her face to the earth and said, ‘Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.’ Then she arose with five of her maidens, and went after the messengers of David and became his wife. In fact, this marriage seems to have been of great assistance to David’s enterprise. The southern towns of Judah—Aroer, Hormah, Ramoth, Jattir, Eshtemoa, even Hebron itself, declared for him. From here David endeavoured to press forward to the north and made himself master of the fortified city of Keilah.

When Saul was informed of this, he said: “God hath delivered him into mine hand, for he is shut in by entering into a town that hath gates and bars.” As Saul approached, David bade Abiathar the priest, who had fled to him from Nob with the image of Jehovah, to bring the image. David inquired of it: “Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hands of Saul; O Lord God of Israel, I beseech thee tell thy servant.” And Jehovah said, “They will deliver thee up.” Then David despaired of holding the town and fled to Ziph and Maon in the wilderness by the Dead Sea. But Saul followed and overtook him: nothing but a mountain now divided David’s band from the king. David was already surrounded and lost—when a message reached Saul: “The Philistines have invaded the land.”

It was probably an expedition that the Philistines had undertaken in aid of the hard-pressed rebels. Saul immediately abandoned the pursuit and marched against the foreigner. But David named the rock the Rock of Escapes. After the king had beaten the Philistines he took three thousand men from the army that he might completely quell the rebellion. David had retreated farther east, on the border of the Dead Sea in the neighbourhood of Engedi, “upon the rocks of the wild goats,” and here Saul reduced him to such straits that he despaired of maintaining himself in Judah and got away to the Philistines with his following. The rising was at an end.

David’s attempt to induce the tribe of Judah to secede from Saul, had completely failed. Driven from the soil on which he had raised the standard of revolt, he no longer hesitated to formally enter the service of the Philistines, and the latter welcomed the support of a brave and clever rebel, knowing that though once their enemy, he had already given much trouble in Judah to the arms of Saul, whose force they had so often felt and who had snatched from them their dominion over Israel, and aware that his resentment against his benefactor and master might prove of the greatest service to them, King Achish of Gath, to whom David had a second time fled, declared: “He hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant forever.” And he gave him and his band of freebooters the town of Ziklag as a dwelling-place. David was now established at Ziklag as a vassal of Achish. At the latter’s command he had to march to battle and also to deliver up a share of the booty taken, and from Ziklag in the territory of the Philistines he and his small army, still recruited from the discontented of Israel who fled to David across the frontier, conducted a guerilla warfare against Saul and his native country. In these expeditions David was shrewd enough to spare his former adherents in Judah, the towns which had once declared for him, and to direct his attacks solely against the followers of Saul; he even secretly maintained relations with his party in Judah, and out of the booty derived from his warlike and plundering raids he sent presents to the elders of those towns which were well-disposed towards him.