Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 160 · June 9
At Ziklag
“And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.”
Ziklag, a town on the southern edge of Philistine territory, handed to David by a Philistine king who thought he had acquired a defector. David lived there a full year and four months.
How he came to be there is on record in his own words, with no prayer anywhere near them. David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines. From that base he raided, leaving neither man nor woman alive so that no witness could reach Gath, and told Achish he had been attacking his own people. Achish believed David, saying, He hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him.
Then the sixteen months ended. The men came back from a three-day march to a burned town and no families in it. They lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep. Then the men who had followed him since the cave turned: the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. The catastrophe landed in the middle of his own arrangement.
But David encouraged himself in the LORD his God. The sentence is famous standing alone, which makes it sound like a mood he generated. The next verse shows it from outside. I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. He sends for Abiathar the priest, puts a question, Shall I pursue after this troop? and gets an answer. There is a man in it, an object, and a sentence.
The story ends well. David recovered all, and nothing was lacking to them, neither small nor great. Take the warning underneath the recovery. The question he asked at Ziklag is the one he did not ask at the border sixteen months earlier, and asking it late cost a year and a half of lying, a burned town, and a night when his own men discussed killing him. Encouraging yourself in the LORD is available inside a mess of your own construction. It has never been a method for not building one.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 160 is Removed Completely (Psalm 103:12).