David’s decision at Ziklag—to use the ephod as mediated by the priest Abiathar to choose between keeping his multiple covenants with the House of Saul or else rescuing the families of his men—was the result of a double-bind dilemma. He got himself into an ethical predicament by making an alliance with the Philistines. He then treated the king, Achish, with contempt. He manipulated Achish’s trust and pretended to raid his own people while actually raiding enemies and leaving no survivors who could report his duplicity back to Achish. No wonder the Amalekite attack against Ziklag happened. David was not only leaving a power void, he’d already wiped out some Amalekite strongholds. He was a threat that needed to be eliminated in a retaliatory raid.
Now to understand the faithline here, we need to look a little further back in David’s life. At one time, he’d been on the run from Saul and had fled to Gath, the city ruled by Achish. When the Philistines realised he was there, he pretended to be mad—drooling and clawing a doorpost.
Achish had him thrown him out. We might wonder why he didn’t have him executed—after all, this was the giant-killer, the slayer of Goliath. But, like Samson in Gaza in an earlier age, the Philistines were obviously people of integrity when it came to threshold covenant. If hospitality had been offered and accepted, it would have been dishonourable to breach its rules of protection while the guest was still in town. Once he left, different matter.
So David would have known Achish was an honourable man. That’s not to say he wasn’t in danger while in Gath, but he’d factored in additional protection by pretending to be insane and thus spirit-possessed. He wrote Psalm 34 as a song of praise for the Lord’s deliverance after escaping from Gath. And the psalm was titled, ‘Of David. When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left.’
Here is the clue we need about the faithline that David has inherited: Abimelech.
The first time we hear of someone named Abimelech is when Abraham goes to Gerar and asks Sarah to agree to a deception—to say that she’s his sister and to conceal that she’s also his wife. It’s not the first time Abraham had behaved like this. He did it once before, in Egypt, and there many people died as a result. So, in perpetrating the same deceit in Gerar, Abraham shows himself willing to buy his own safety with the death of innocent strangers.
When David returns to Gath (which is in the same general locality as Gerar) proposing to ally himself with Achish (whom he called Abimelech), he is not meant to follow the pattern of Abraham into deception (and, by the way, Isaac after him) but to heal history and repair the rips in Abraham’s mantle. Yes, David’s mantle is Abraham’s mantle—and David is called to do what all inheritors are appointed by God to undertake: heal the mistakes of the past and advance the assignment within the mantle towards completion.
When David is given the resource of Ziklag (just as Abraham was once resourced by the earlier Abimelech, but with sheep and cattle and slaves), he not only fails to cleanse the stains on the mantle, he makes matters far worse. Abraham intended to save himself by sacrificing others, David actually does so. He buys his own safety at Ziklag through massacre—making sure that there are absolutely no survivors left after any raid so no one can report his treachery back to Achish.
Abraham made a covenant with the first Abimelech, as did Isaac. Perhaps this covenant was no longer in operation in the time of David, but it would be strange if it were not—because covenants outlive those who pledge them. Irrespective, God wants the outcome of the story to change—He wants integrity to prevail, not deception, and for honour to triumph, not duplicity.
David also fails in another respect when it comes to Abraham’s mantle. Abraham was, according to some commentators, effectively a regional warlord with his own band of 318 trained household warriors. When rescuing Lot, these men took on five armies. David, by contrast, had about 400 malcontents gathered around him with 30 mighty men amongst them. They too were effectively a warband.
Both these men who were so powerful in battle were nonetheless completely passive when it came to dealing with abuse. Abraham did nothing when Sarah so brutally abused Hagar that she fled from the intolerable cruelty. David did nothing when Amnon, the crown prince and heir to the throne, raped his half-sister Tamar. He did nothing to discipline Amnon and nothing to comfort Tamar. He abandoned her, much as Abraham abandoned Hagar. The long-term consequences for David were civil war. And the long-term consequences for Abraham are still playing out in our own day with the wars and carnage in the Middle East.
Now, just as an aside, let me mention that David’s mantle was held, in between his own era and that of Abraham, by Gideon’s son, Abimelech. Of course! What other name would he have? Abimelech was the first king in Israel, rather than of Israel. He was crowned king of a single tribe rather than of the whole confederation.
And it is in the very place that Abimelech, Gideon’s son, was anointed king after murdering all but one of his seventy brothers that Jesus came to hand over half of David’s mantle to a person we’d never dream has any right to inherit it. Not only is she a woman, but she’s also a foreigner. The other half is granted shortly afterwards to someone just as surprising—another foreigner.
In the world’s view of things, God has gifted a royal legacy to a pair of nameless nobodies. And that, perhaps, has much greater significance as a verdict on David’s reign than we realise. Until next time…
This is Grace Drops and I’m Anne Hamilton. May your safety be solely in Yeshua haMashiach’s hands.
Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.
Elijah’s mantle is discussed in The Elijah Tapestry: John 1 and 21: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #1.
Joseph’s mantle is featured The Summoning of Time: John 2 and 20: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #2.
Moses’ mantle—and Reuben’s mantle—will be featured in The Lustral Waters: John 3 and 19: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #3. Available late 2024.
David’s mantle will be covered in The Inviolable Kingdom: John 4 and 18: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #4. Available 2025.
Please get in touch through the contact form at Armour Books if you are in the US, UK or Australia and there are availability/price issues at the retailer for any of these volumes.