Mixed Motives

            David’s response to Saul and Jonathan’s deaths is mixed.  He executes the Amalekite messenger and he grieves deeply for Saul and Jonathan.  Those things are matters the text makes clear.  On the other hand, David’s motivations are ambiguous.  Some have suggested that David’s reluctance to slay Saul, ‘the Lord’s anointed,’ is self-serving.  After all, David himself is the Lord’s anointed, and he doesn’t want to set a dangerous precedent.  It wouldn’t do him any good if people had it in their heads that they could assassinate the king with impunity.  He needed to demonstrate that killing the king was an act against the Lord Himself.

            There may certainly be a streak of self-service in David, but the story of Samuel is an overwhelmingly positive portrait of David.  On the positive side, David is pretty clearly motivated by grief.  He had loved Jonathan as a brother, and, despite all the trouble between them, he seems to have carried a genuine affection for Saul with him, too.  His lament at the end of 2 Samuel 2 is one of the great poems of world literature and expresses his deep grief over the loss of his friend, his king, and the fortunes of his nation along with the king.

            Finally, and probably most importantly, we ought not lose sight of the fact that David is motivated by his own trust in the Lord and in his ways.  He’s been described as a man after God’s own heart.  So, his grief over the Lord’s anointed is not just self-serving or personal, but it is also a reflection of God’s own grief over the fact that Saul had rebelled against Him.  (God’s hope seems to spring eternal.  No matter how often the representatives of Israel fail to live up to his expectation, He always seems to hope that the next one will rise to the occasion.)

            On that last point, it’s important to see that God’s hope is focused not in the progression of failures.  God’s hope is focused in the One to whom all of Israel led—Jesus.  So, God’s is not just a sunny optimism about humanity’s better nature.  Instead, His hope moves determinedly forward to the Faithful Israelite.  In the same way, Christian hope is not just sunny optimism, but a determination to see the world in light of Jesus’ resurrection and all that that means for the future of the world.

            On other point of application:  if David’s motives are ambiguous, we probably shouldn’t be surprised if we can’t figure out why exactly we do the things that we do.  Sometimes we act out of self-preservation.  Sometimes we act out personal emotional engagement.  Sometimes we act out of faith in the Lord.  And most often we act out of all three at once.  So, for example, I have a hard time criticizing other pastors—first, because I know that if I criticize, I open myself to criticism; second, because I fear the further undermining of the Office; finally, because I know that I am called to speak for the building up of my brothers and sisters in Christ.