But a small pebble from David's sling hit him right in the eye.Stunned by the blow,Goliath stumbled and fell and dropped his weapon.
Quick as lightning,David was upon him.
He grabbed the giant's sword.
He hacked at him with unexpected violence.
With a single blow he cut off the monstrous head.
He picked it up and carried it back to the jubilant soldiers.
The Philistines fled and David was hailed as the Saviour of the Country.
After such an exploit,even Saul was forced to take some public notice of the national hero.He asked David to come and visit him,but he never could overcome his old suspicion.His dislike grew into open hatred when he noticed the friendship which sprang up between his son Jonathan and the shepherd from Bethlehem as soon as the two had met.
To make matters worse,his daughter Michal fell in love with the handsome red-haired David.Saul told David that he might marry her if he first destroyed a hundred Philistines.A hundred,of course,was a very large number and Saul no doubt counted upon David being killed before he had accomplished his task.
But David was successful in this as in all other things and so he married Michal and the two rival kings were now in the relation of father-in-law and son-in-law.
It is no wonder that Saul's old fits of melancholia returned worse than before and when his doctors were at their wits’end,they once more suggested a concert.This time,however,the performance was almost fatal to the unfortunate harpist.
As soon as he had struck a few chords,Saul fell into a violent rage.
He took his spear and he threw it at David.David saved himself by jumping out of the room.He did not care to meet the King again.He left the royal tents and ran away.
Then Saul's wrath turned against Jonathan and he tried to kill his own son.But his followers held his hands and prevented the murder.Jonathan felt terribly upset by what had just happened and felt that he ought to speak to David and explain things.When they met for the last time,the two friends bade each other an affectionate farewell and David fled into the desert,where he established himself in a cave,called Adullam.
Soon,however,the soldiers of Saul discovered where he was hiding himself.But David had been warned and had escaped further into the wilderness.The cave was empty.The victim was gone.
Life in the desert was very dull and to while away the tedious hours of the endless day,David wrote several more poems.A few of these you will find in a special Chapter of the Old Testament,called the Psalms.I shall not print them in my story.Centuries ago they were translated into such perfect English that it would be very foolish for me to try to repeat them in my own words.Besides,I am only trying to give an account of the adventures of the Jewish people and the Psalms have very little to do with actual history.But they are a magnificent expression of the old poetic spirit of the Jewish race and they contain more beauty and more wisdom than many of the purely historical books of the Old Testament which are devoted to the endless recital of foreign war and domestic upheaval.
But to return to David.He now passed through the strangest adventures of his long and very checkered career.He was in a very difficult and awkward position.Theoretically,he was the King of the Jews,for Samuel had deposed Saul after his disobedience in the Agag campaign and had thereupon anointed David as his successor.
The mass of the people,however,had not been able to follow such a rapid political change.They still vaguely recognised Saul as their King and if the word were not a little too colloquial,we would say that they regarded David as a sort of official understudy,a crown-prince,who at any moment might be called upon to act as regent.
Unfortunately in those days (as now)possession was nine points of the law.
Saul,whatever his actual status,continued to live in the royal tents.He was surrounded by his body-guards and by his attendants and he was the commander of a full-fledged army,ready to do his bidding.
David,on the other hand,was no better than a fugitive before the law.He lived in a cave in the wilderness and he could not show himself in any of the nearby cities or villages without running the risk of being arrested.
Afterwards,when he himself was the undisputed ruler of the Jewish people,this period of David's exile needed a good deal of explaining.At times,our hero seems to have been little better than the leader of a band of brigands.Finally,he even went so far as to take service with the Philistines.
But we must not judge him too severely.David had been treated most unfairly by Saul.It was greatly to his credit that he continued to treat his enemy with the utmost courtesy and generosity.
Saul,judging him by our modern standards,was going stark mad.In restless haste,he was forever travelling from one part of the country to another.
One day,on his trip through the desert,he was overtaken by darkness and went into a cave to spend the night.It happened to be the same cave in which David had made his home after his flight from the residence.David saw his unwelcome guest as he entered,but he hid himself and waited.
In the middle of the night,he crept toward the sleeping man and cut off a piece of his coat.The next morning when Saul departed,David ran after him and called him by name and showed him the piece of cloth.
“Look at this,”he said,“and think what I might have done to you,and what I have not done.You were in my power.I might have killed you quite easily.And yet I spared you,although you continue to persecute me.”
Saul of course could not fail to see that David was right.But he hated this one particular person with the unreasoning resentment of a madman,and although he mumbled an apology and called his soldiers back,he did not ask David to return to his Court.
A short while afterward,Samuel died.
At the funeral,David and Saul met,but the two men were not reconciled.
And so things continued for a long time.