Chapter SIXTY-SEVEN

Send Him Back

The Philistine lords feared Davin more truthfully than Achish trusted him, and their suspicion became his rescue.

The commanders of the Philistines were angry with Achish.

"Send the man back," they said, "that he may return to the place to which you have assigned him. He shall not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary to us. For how could this fellow reconcile himself to his lord? Would it not be with the heads of the men here?"

They did not need Davin to answer the accusation.

The accusation answered itself.

Philistine memory had more theological sobriety in it than Achish's political vanity. The lords understood what kings too often forget: certain men cannot be made safe merely by being useful. Some names carry histories that do not dissolve under patronage.

"Is not this Davin," they said, "of whom they sing to one another in dances, 'Saul has struck down his thousands, and Davin his ten thousands'?"

The song had followed him into enemy territory again.

This time it saved rather than endangered him.

There are humiliations in being delivered by the enemy's refusal to be foolish on your behalf.

Davin accepted this one gladly.

Achish called him aside after the council, irritation and reluctant admiration warring openly in his face.

"As the LORD lives," Achish said, using the Name the way foreign kings sometimes do when they want to honor what they do not worship, "you have been honest, and to me it seems right that you should march out and in with me in the army. For I have found nothing wrong in you from the day of your coming to me to this day. Nevertheless, the lords do not approve of you."

He meant it.

That, oddly, made the moment sadder.

Achish was not righteous.

But he had trusted Davin in the way worldly rulers trust men whose severance from their own people appears sufficiently useful to foreign ambition. He believed he had secured something permanent.

He had not.

"Now then go back," Achish said, "and go peaceably, that you may not displease the lords of the Philistines."

Davin answered as prudence required.

"But what have I done? What have you found in your servant from the day I entered your service until now, that I may not go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?"

The question wore the proper shape.

Achish heard it as wounded loyalty.

The reader of hearts may hear it differently and still not entirely cleanly. Davin had learned exile's grammar too well by now to speak without layers.

Achish sighed.

"I know that you are as blameless in my sight as an angel of God. Nevertheless, the commanders of the Philistines have said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.' Now then rise early in the morning with the servants of your lord who came with you, and start early in the morning; when you have light, depart."

Angel of God.

From a Philistine king.

The world under judgment was always willing to produce its strangest ironies on schedule.

Davin and his men rose early to depart in the morning, to return to the land of the Philistines.

The march south felt lighter at first, almost indecently so. No divided conscience about standing in Philistine ranks while Yisrael drew up opposite. No need to discover at the last instant what faithfulness would demand under battle's noise. The lords had solved for him what he could not yet have solved cleanly on his own.

Abishai breathed as if he had been half-strangled for two days and only now remembered the use of air.

Hador said, "I may yet name one of my sons after a suspicious Philistine."

No one believed him.

Even Eliav smiled.

But relief never travels alone. By noon the whole company had felt the shadow under it.

If the Philistine hosts were marching north and they themselves were being sent back south, what waited at Ziklag? What had been left unattended in the long absence? What enemy had watched the border town empty itself of its fighting strength and called the moment providence?

Davin felt the unease before he had language for it.

They marched harder.

On the second day the pace grew sharper still.

By the third day Ziklag came into view.

Or rather, what smoke and distance first made of Ziklag.

Not home.

Burn.