David petitioned a wealthy Calebite to give his men some supplies, citing the good treatment this guy had received from David’s men at some earlier time. The Calebite tells David’s men to get lost. Several things all happen after that in rapid succession.
First, The Calebite’s wife, Abigail, heard about what had happened, correctly surmised that David was going to swoop in and wipe them all out, and started frantically scrambling to collect bread and oil to run out and give to his army. Next, David’s messenger’s return with the news from the wealthy Calebite and David immediately rounds up four hundred men to go stomp on this guy. Abigail and David end up meeting partway, but not until after David had just sworn something along the lines of “May God deal with me however harshly He sees fit if even one male is left of his by morning.” Of course then Abigail shows up and smooths everything over and it would be pretty ridiculous for David to go wipe out Abigail’s family after that. It seems for a moment like David has really put his foot in his mout. He’s sworn this oath to God, but he did it in ignorance, and now there’s no way for him to do what’s right and still uphold his word to God. Remember what happened to Saul’s army after Saul’s son Jonathan broke that stupid vow that he didn’t even know about. He just ate some honey off the ground after Saul had sworn that no one would eat anything, and God allowed the Philistine army to escape annihilation at the hands of Israel because of it.
David doesn’t even seem to register this problem though, and merrily goes back to his camp with Abigail’s supplies.
As always, God has David’s back on this one though. When Abigail returns to her husband, he is very drunk and the news of what had happened that day stopped his heart. Vow fulfilled, David sends word that he would like to take Abigail as his wife. She accepts.
David has another encounter with Saul, much like the last one. Saul catches wind of David’s camp and takes an army to go catch him. David sneaks in with a couple other guys during the night and steals Saul’s water jug and his spear from right next to his head as he’s asleep. His men try to get David to kill Saul, but he’s still not okay with killing ‘God’s anointed’ so he just leaves and then comes back in the morning to tell Saul about how he could have killed him again, but didn’t. Saul again admits David’s superiority in all things and then leaves.
At this point, it’s pretty clear that Saul’s not going to stop being a problem any time soon to David goes to live among the Philistines. King Achish gave him and his men a small town to call their own an they spent the next year and four months raiding the country side from there. They would go into a town and be sure to kill everyone in it before looting all their goods and animals. That way, when the king asked where they had gone raiding, David could lie to him and say they went out into the Negev somewhere. David told Achish that he was going into Israel a lot to raid the towns there, which he was pretty happy with. He figured that with David stirring up all this trouble among the Israelites, they would all hate him forever and he would have to stay and be a loyal subject forever.
Oh, also, Samuel died.
Oh, also, Samuel died.
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