There’s a hair’s breadth between obsession and madness. Saul was like a kitten chasing a laser light.
All anyone had to do to set Saul off was to say, “David is in the Wilderness of En Gedi” (1 Sam 24:1). As you head south along the western shore of the Dead Sea, to your right loom the forbidding cliffs leading up to the Judean Wilderness. These cliffs are honeycombed with caves, including the famed Qumran Caves. But the tawny cliffs are suddenly broken by a curtain of rich green foliage. This is the result of the cascading Spring of the Wild Goats, En Gedi. Here David and his men found refuge, that is, until Saul marshalled “three thousand chosen men from all Israel” (v 2) to go hunting. At one point, Saul’s troops halted so he could “attend to his needs.” He entered a cave for this purpose, and, as it happened, “David and his men were staying in the recesses of the cave” (v 3). Yes, that very same cave! Saul, distracted, didn’t notice David quietly slip up behind him with his knife drawn. Deftly, the knife did its work—cutting a slice off the hem of Saul’s garment! This is hardly what David’s men had in mind when they whispered, “This is the day of which the Lord said to you, ‘Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand’” (v 4). But even this was too much for his sensitive conscience, so intense was his reverence for God. “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed” (v 6), he said. Afterwards, in confronting Saul, he made his point well. When he had the chance to kill him, he didn’t. This kindness was so shocking to Saul that it actually caused him a moment of sanity (vv 17-20). Besides, said David, “Whom do you pursue? A dead dog? A flea?” (v 14). Kings hunt big game, said the man after God’s heart in true humility. Clearly David had been fully restored from the fear of man to faith in the Lord.