We Have Met the Enemy and He Is... (2 Samuel 1:17-21)

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In 1813, American Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry had just finished fighting a naval battle on Lake Erie, defeating the British. In his report to his commander, he wrote these words:  

We have met the enemy, and he is ours.  

Saul would have got that. Saul was a warrior king.  

For decades he'd been at war with the nation of Philistia—with the Philistine army. There had been wins and losses on both sides, but this battle today... Saul did not know it would be different.  

This battle happened on the slopes of Gilboa, a mountain ridge that runs 12 kilometres, north to south. It slopes down over 6 kilometres toward the Jordan River, providing a watershed from the mountain to the river. The land is green and fertile, a place where barley grows and wheat is harvested. Where fig trees bloom and grow fruit, and where olives can be picked from the trees. On that beautiful, green, luscious plain the armies clashed, as armies do. And Saul and Jonathan, father and son, who had been fighting together, leading Israel's army side-by-side for nearly 20 years... on this day, Saul and Jonathan died in battle.  

A few days later, David, who was nearly 100 miles away in a town called Ziklag in the land of Philistia, had just finished a battle of his own when a messenger stumbled into town, exhausted and filthy and torn. He came to find David in the town. He threw himself on the ground in honour and submission to David.  

He gasped up to David, “I have escaped from the Israelite camp.” 

That word ‘escaped’ must have hit David like a ton of bricks. “What do you mean escaped? What happened?” 

“The troops fled from the battle,” he replied. “Many of them fell and died. And Saul and his son Jonathan are also dead.” (2 Samuel 1:4) 

You can imagine the silence that falls on receiving that kind of news.  

You shake your head and you say, “What? No. What?” 

Into that silence you can hear David whispering... almost growling... “How do you know? How do you know that they're dead?”  

The messenger produced a mix of truth and fiction, telling a story that made himself sound heroic. He pulled something out of the bag he carried. He said to David, “The king was wearing these.” He raised to David Saul's kingly crown that he’d worn into battle. Saul's warrior-chief armband that he’d worn when he led the army. 

David and all of his men recognized Saul's emblems of office. They knew these things. 

Then David took hold of his own clothes and tore them, and all the men who were with him did the same. (2 Samuel 1:11) 

They began to grieve, as the writer tells us, for “...the army of the Lord, and for the nation of Israel.”  

But first in that list, first in the list of things that they had lost, first in the place of importance is: 

...Saul and his son Jonathan. (2 Samuel 1:12) 

When I was reading this passage, searching for what I can learn from these words, I gotta tell you I didn't expect that.  

I can understand why David's heart would be broken over Jonathan, why he would grieve the death of his beloved friend. But the emphasis that the writer puts into the text, the emphasis that David focuses on, the first name in the list is Saul: “Saul and his son Jonathan.”  

David grieved for “Saul and his son Jonathan,” and I have to ask myself... Why? Why would David grieve for Saul?  

This was the news that David had been waiting for, for decades. This was what he wanted. Wasn't it?  

______ 

The city of Ziklag where David was living was a long, long way, and most of a lifetime, from where David had grown up in Jesse's sheep pastures outside Bethlehem. 

David had grown up as a farmer's kid out in the fields caring for the family’s sheep.  

But then there had been that one really weird day when he was very young. When he'd been called to come home from the fields because ‘you're not going to believe this, David, but the prophet Samuel is at your house and he's actually waiting for you! He wants to have lunch, but he won't eat until you get there.’  

That was mind blowing.  

David ran home from the pastures and walked into the dining room where everybody was sitting around the table waiting for lunch, waiting for him. Every eye turned to look at him as he walked in the room all sweaty and dusty and smelling like sheep. His feet were sore and he just wanted to sit down.  

But before he had a chance, Samuel looked at him. Samuel stared at him. Samuel shook his head and looked surprised. He sighed, stood up from where he was sitting, pulled out his horn of holy anointing oil, and poured it over David's dusty, sweaty head. 

The whole family was like, “Did that just happen? Was David just anointed? By the prophet Samuel?” 

David had been anointed and they didn't know why. Samuel did not say. They most likely assumed that it was because David would become Samuel's successor as the next prophet of Israel, but he did not take David with him when he left. 

David went back to the sheep the same as he had been before, except that... 

...the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. (1 Samuel 16:13) 

Then there were days and days and years and years of watching the sheep. Sitting in the field. Eating his lunch out of a bag. Singing songs to Yahweh God.  

David eventually left the fields to go live in the palace, because the reputation of his songs, his music had travelled up the chain to the king. King Saul needed comfort. He needed the music that David was able to produce through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. No more sheep! David lived in the palace! With the king! With Saul as a sort of patron of David’s art. 

Until one day—another very weird day—Saul picked up his spear and threw it at David. Nearly killed him. Things only went downhill from there to the point where David had to run for his life like a rabbit being chased by a hound. Except the hound was the king; the king of Israel was chasing David over the countryside up and down hills and through valleys. The king actually killed people for helping David.  

This went on for 12 years: 12 years of David running for his life from Saul, with the memory in the back of his mind of that day of his anointing, still not truly understanding what that meant.  

Over the course of those 12 years, two times David stood over Saul unaware, with a weapon in his hand. Two times in those 12 years, David could have in an instant ended Saul's life. Two times in those 12 years David chose not to do that.  

Eventually—with all of this running and danger and threat and violence—David decided he would actually be better off living with the Philistines, so he moved to Ziklag, where at least he didn't have to be looking over his shoulder all the time.  

______ 

And today... today he got the news that Saul was dead.  

It was over.  

All of that was over. David's family was safe. He could take them home. He could take his family to Bethlehem and show them his farm.  

Wasn't this what he had waited for?  

So why, I have to ask myself, why...  

Now that David was free...  

Now that he was out from under that threat and that danger...  

Now that his family was out from under that threat...  

Now that the people who supported him and cared for him were out from under that threat...  

Why?  

Why did he grieve the death of the man who had chosen to be his enemy? The death of the man who had made a career of making David's life a misery for 12 years? 

I would suggest that David was able to grieve Saul because David knew who the enemy really was.  

David had met the enemy...  

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