Achish trusted David and said to himself, “He has become so obnoxious to his people, the Israelites, that he will be my servant for life.” – 1 Samuel 27:12

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 20, 2019): 1 Samuel 27

Albert Einstein argued that “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” We all possess a lot of knowledge. It forms the trivia and background noise of our lives. We are all living Rolodexes, filled with numbers and information that is utterly useless unless we can also understand why the information is important.

Achish possessed knowledge. He knew that David was on the run from his own King. Achish looked at what he knew and decided that the enemy of his enemy must be his friend. But all that Achish possessed was knowledge. He was without understanding.

Part of what Achish did not understand was the level of loyalty that David lived with regarding his home and his king. When we are under attack, there are two ways that we can react. One is to return the attack on the opposition. This is our fundamental understanding of most wars. Wars are fought between two sides, and both sides have decided that the way to win the war is to go on the offensive and cause as much damage to the other as possible. Even guerilla warfare carries this understanding. The guerilla soldier emerges from the background darkness, causes damage, and then once again attempts to disappear. To win, the aim is to outpunch the other side. But that is only one way to fight a war. The second way is not to fight. Instead, go into a defensive mode. It is the way that a turtle fights, it hides within its shell, hopefully out of reach of the one who wants to cause it harm. A gopher fights by disappearing into its burrow and waits until the attacker has grown bored and has returned home.

Achish did not understand David’s loyalty or that the land of the Philistine’s had merely become the shell or the burrow in which David was hiding. David’s problem is that philosophically he could not carry the fight to Saul and his soldiers, who David considered to be his brothers. David could not attack Saul. And so, instead, he hid with Achish and waited for something to happen with Saul so that he could go home.

The reality was that David had never stopped being the enemy of Achish and the Philistines. David had also never stopped being a son of Israel. David understood that his current situation was only temporary. And that one day, no matter what Achish believed he knew, David understood that he would go home.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 28