The King's Robe and the Hand That Wouldn't Strike

Saul's spear had missed David more than once, and Jonathan's arrows had told him to run. So now David lived in the wilderness with six hundred men, and King Saul hunted him from hill to hill.

One day a messenger came running. "David is in the desert of En Gedi!" Saul picked three thousand of his best soldiers and marched after him. (That is five soldiers for every one of David's men.)

Beside the road stood some stone sheep pens, and next to them, a cave. David and his men were hiding inside, far in the back, where the dark was thickest.

Footsteps. A shape filled the bright doorway. It was Saul himself, alone, and he had stepped in to go to the bathroom. (Three thousand soldiers were out searching, and the king walked into David's hiding place all by himself.)

David's men could hardly keep still. "This is the day!" they whispered. "The LORD said he would hand your enemy over to you!"

David slid forward through the dark, his knife in his hand. The edge of the king's robe lay spread on the cave floor, close enough to touch.

Snick. David cut off a corner of the robe and crept away.

Back in the dark, his heart began to pound. Even that scrap of cloth felt wrong. "The LORD forbid that I should do this to my master," he told his men. "God chose Saul to be king. I will not lift my hand against him." And he would not let one of them go near Saul.

Saul walked back out into the sunshine. (He never noticed the hole in his hem.)

Then David stepped out too. "My lord the king!"

Saul spun around. There was David, the man who had married Saul's own daughter, bowing with his face to the ground.

"Today the LORD put you in my hands in that cave," David called. "Some told me to kill you, but I spared you. Look, my father! Look at this piece of your robe!" He held it up. "Who is the king of Israel chasing? A dead dog? A flea? Let the LORD judge between us. My hand will never touch you."

For a long moment nobody moved. Then Saul's voice came back, shaking. "Is that your voice, David my son?" And the king who had come to kill him wept aloud.

"You are a better man than I am," Saul said. "You have been good to me, and I have been cruel to you. I know now that you will be king. Promise you will not wipe out my family."

David promised, and Saul went home.

But Saul's tears dried fast, and before long he was hunting David again. David had spared Saul's life, and Saul's heart stayed as hard as the walls of that cave.

David became king at last, and more kings came after him, and even the best of them kept a sword close by. God's people waited for a king whose mercy could win his enemies over for good.

Long afterward, one night in a garden, soldiers came with swords and clubs for a descendant of David. One of his friends cut off a servant's ear. "Put your sword away," said the one they had come to arrest, and he healed the ear. He could have called thousands of angels. Instead he let soldiers gamble for his robe and nail his hands to a cross, and he prayed, "Father, forgive them."

He was Jesus, and he died for the very people who hunted him, so that his enemies could become his friends.