The Death of Ahimelech

Jesus said that he is the light that gives true life to the world. The light has come into the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light. Afraid that coming into the light would expose the filthy, ugly deeds they had done in the darkness, they could not come to Jesus. But God’s children, who pursue the truth, had lived good lives with nothing to be ashamed of, so they were not afraid to believe in Jesus. Light and darkness are this clearly divided. That is why believers who follow Christ, who is the light, cannot help being hated by the world, which is darkness.

In John 15:18-19 Jesus said that if the world hates you, you know that it has hated him before it hated you. The world hates believers because they do not belong to the world and do not submit to it. As long as people have bodies, they have no choice but to live in the world. So believers are hated by the world until the day their bodies return to the dust, and that means suffering like death itself.

What do you think about death? What kind of life do you want to live, and what kind of death do you want to meet at its end? Have you ever once thought about your own end? To keep your relationship with God sound while you are in the world, you must first understand the relationship between light and darkness, between spirit and flesh, and between Christ and Satan.

The angel who had opposed God was cast out of heaven by God’s wrath.

After that, Adam was deceived by the fallen angel and sinned by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the misfortune of being driven out of Eden followed. Satan took hold of the power of the air and began to rule over the world and humankind. Everyone born into this world, where Satan holds power, is born a child of Satan, the master of darkness, and lives as one without life.

Jesus is the one who came to this earth as the light to save souls that had not received true life and had fallen into death. Jesus told souls not to stay in the darkness but to come out into the light. By this he meant that they should throw away the worldly ways of thinking, the habits and the ideas they had held until then, and meet God.

Romans 8:13 says that if you live after the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Depending on whom you believe, God or Satan, you may live by the cravings of the flesh, or you may be sanctified in the spirit and put to death the deeds of the body. Living after the flesh is evidence that one is under Satan’s rule, and putting worldly deeds to death by the Spirit would be evidence that one has met God and been born again. Only when this is firmly set at the center will the way we look at death also change. Only when we realize how much more important spiritual salvation is than the world will Jesus’ words make sense to us, and will we know how much there is to be thankful for in the salvation of the soul.

Mark 8:35

35For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Good News will save it.

This word says that what matters is not living after the body, but whom a person is living for. When Jesus says that whoever wants to save his life will lose it, he means that breathing does not make a person alive. And when he says he will give life again to those who are martyred for Christ and for the truth, he is making known new tidings: though they have lost the life of the flesh, there is another life, more precious and more blessed than the life of the flesh. He said that to receive this new life, we must not be afraid of those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul, but fear only God, who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. Believers face two kinds of death: the death of the body and the death of the soul. Satan can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, whereas God is the Creator who puts to death even the soul along with the body. So believers need not fear the death of the body.

I am speaking about death in such detail in order to tell you about the death of Ahimelech, which human thinking simply cannot understand. By now you will have understood that although both are death, the death of the body and the death of the spirit are different. You will have understood that there is Satan, who takes away physical life, and there is God, who throws not only the flesh but even the soul into the fire of hell. You will also have understood that believers who have devoted themselves to God live forever with God in heaven. Only when you remember this and then look at Ahimelech’s death can you understand that death.

Ahimelech helped David while Saul was hunting him, and he confidently defended David before King Saul as a faithful man. He said that David was the king’s son-in-law, taken into the king’s council and honorable in the royal house, and that he did not see what he had done wrong in helping David. He may have sensed that his own death was coming, but he would not have regretted it. David had lied, and Ahimelech had helped him only because he was the king’s son-in-law. Yet King Saul killed with the sword the eighty-five priests and, in Nob, the city of the priests, both men and women, children and nursing babies, and cattle and donkeys and sheep. That is the world: even a life is thrown away at once if there is nothing to gain from it.

Just as Jesus said that the world hates you because it hates him, Satan, who opposes God, takes the life of the flesh from God’s people without the slightest hesitation. To believe in God is to become Satan’s enemy. So you might even suffer, as Ahimelech did, the loss of your life. Even so, if you believe only in God, who saves the soul, and live boldly in the light, the darkness will retreat of itself.

Doeg, who informed Saul of Ahimelech’s good deed, is a man who walked into deep darkness of his own accord to gain worldly power. Now, while he enjoys Saul’s favor, he may seem to have won. But the trouble is that every life has its appointed time. When his life ends, Doeg will face the judgment of God, who is able to kill not only the body but also the soul, and he will fall into the burning fire of hell.

1 Samuel 22:5

5The prophet Gad said to David, “Don’t stay in the stronghold. Depart, and go into the land of Judah.” Then David departed, and came into the forest of Hereth.

When the prophet Gad told David not to look for a hiding place outside Israel but to go into the land of Judah, David went into Judah, where his life could be threatened. In Genesis 12, when Abraham ignored God’s will and went down into the land of Egypt, God called him back out to the land of Canaan. In the same way, God was telling David to return to Judah, that is, to the land of the covenant and to his people. For believers, God’s land is a place of rest. Once David left Judah, he had to act like a madman before King Achish to survive, and he had to beg the king of Moab for land for his family. Even if, to David’s mind, the land of Judah seemed dangerous because of Saul, only by staying in the land of Judah, as God had commanded, could he receive God’s help.

The prophet Gad’s command made no sense in human terms, but David headed for Judah, believing that if this was God’s will, God would not leave him long in suffering. God did not want David to leave his own land and people. That was because David, who was to be king of Israel, had to give the people the assurance that he loved and protected them, even at cost to himself. David knew that God was leading him into Judah, the land of suffering, so that the people would one day trust him, and that is why he obeyed.

When Saul heard that David had come into the land of Judah, he grew anxious and ordered Doeg to kill Ahimelech along with the eighty-five priests and all their families. Ahimelech, who had done good, and his family were all wiped out without even knowing why. People think of God as one who gives only love, one who loves good and hates evil. So they believe that someone like Saul should die at once, and that God ought to protect a good man like Ahimelech from harm. Ahimelech served faithfully as a priest all his life and boldly defended David before wicked Saul, yet God did not help him while he died a horrible death, and people will not understand such a God. That is because they ask why God does not help when a good man is being killed by a wicked one.

You must remember God, who gives life to the soul even when the body dies. The Bible has many records of hundreds of thousands of enemies dying overnight to protect Israel. If you know God’s purpose in taking hundreds of thousands of lives in a single moment to save his people, you will be able to see that Ahimelech’s physical death was not in vain. For though Ahimelech’s body died, the reward for living by the Word is the blessing of eternal life and of enjoying God’s glory. The Bible does not regard the death of the flesh as death. That is why, when someone breathes their last, it sometimes says that they returned to where they came from, or that they fell asleep forever. It speaks this way because it knows that this world is not the end, and that there is an eternal life after death. That is why Jesus told the disciple who wanted to go and bury his father to leave the dead to bury their own dead.

1 Samuel 22:23

23Stay with me. Don’t be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. For you will be safe with me.”

In verse 23, while Ahimelech and everyone else were being killed, Abiathar, one of Ahimelech’s sons, escaped and fled to David. Now the lives of Abiathar and David were bound together as one. Held in David’s arms, Abiathar was free of Saul and safe. Satan, who opposed the Lord, now opposes the believers who keep the faith. But just as David and Abiathar became one, Christ and believers have become one, and that is why believers are safe. Christ is the master of life, so however much Satan attacks, he cannot harm believers who are in the Lord.

Living in the world, we will meet both hardship and joy. But as long as we are in Christ, all of it is only a tool that brings believers to maturity. Abiathar, who fled to David when David was lowly, received greater blessing when David established the united kingdom. In the same way, though Jesus hanging on the cross may look lowly in the world’s eyes, when the Lord comes on the last day with a shout, the believers who have kept the faith will receive great blessing. Your own end may come before the end of the world, but your faith is the token that lets you receive eternal life as a blessing in the eternal kingdom.

May you always receive God’s love and grace in faith. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 23:19-29

19Then the Ziphites came up to Saul to Gibeah, saying, “Doesn’t David hide himself with us in the strongholds in the woods, in the hill of Hachilah, which is on the south of the desert? 20Now therefore, O king, come down. According to all the desire of your soul to come down; and our part will be to deliver him up into the king’s hand.” 21Saul said, “You are blessed by Yahweh; for you have had compassion on me. 22Please go make yet more sure, and know and see his place where his haunt is, and who has seen him there; for I have been told that he deals very crafty. 23See therefore, and take knowledge of all the lurking places where he hides himself, and come again to me with certainty, and I will go with you. It shall happen, if he is in the land, that I will search him out among all the thousands of Judah.” 24They arose, and went to Ziph before Saul: but David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon, in the Arabah on the south of the desert. 25Saul and his men went to seek him. When David was told, he went down to the rock, and stayed in the wilderness of Maon. When Saul heard that, he pursued David in the wilderness of Maon. 26Saul went on this side of the mountain, and David and his men on that side of the mountain; and David hurried to get away for fear of Saul; for Saul and his men surrounded David and his men to take them. 27But a messenger came to Saul, saying, “Hurry and come; for the Philistines have made a raid on the land!” 28So Saul returned from pursuing David, and went against the Philistines. Therefore they called that place Sela Hammahlekoth. 29David went up from there, and lived in the strongholds of En Gedi.