The Death of Ahimelech
Jesus said that he is the light that gives true life to the world. The light came into the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light. Fear kept them from coming to Jesus: they were afraid that if they came into the light, the filthy and shameful deeds they had done in the dark would be exposed. But the children of God who pursue the truth had lived good lives with nothing to be ashamed of, so believing in Jesus held no fear for them. Light and darkness are this sharply divided, and that is why those who follow Christ, the light, cannot help being hated by the world of darkness.
In John 15:18-19 Jesus said that if the world hates you, you should know that it hated him before it hated you. God’s people are hated by the world because they do not belong to it and will not submit to it. As long as we are in the body, we cannot help living in the world. To be hated by the world until the day the body returns to dust means suffering as bitter as death itself.
How do you think about death? What kind of life do you want to live, and what kind of death do you hope to meet at its end? Have you ever once considered your own end? If you are to keep a right relationship with God in this life, you must first understand light and darkness, spirit and flesh, and the relationship between Christ and Satan.
An angel who opposed God was cast out of heaven by God’s wrath.
After that, Adam was led astray by the fallen angel and sinned by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tragedy followed: he was driven out of Eden. Satan seized 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 light to save souls that had not received true life and had fallen into death. He told souls not to remain in darkness but to come out into the light. What he meant is this: cast off the worldly thinking, habits, and notions you have held until now, 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 whether you believe God or Satan, you may live by the lusts of the flesh, or you may grow in holiness by the Spirit and put to death the deeds of the body. Living after the flesh shows that you are under Satan’s rule; putting worldly deeds to death by the Spirit would show that you have met God and been born again. Only when this is firmly settled in your heart will your view of death change as well. Only when you realize how much more the saving of the soul matters than the world will the words of Jesus make sense to you, and you will know how much there is to be thankful for in the salvation of your 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 verse tells us that what matters is not living in the body but whom we are living for. The saying that whoever wants to save his life will lose it means that drawing breath does not make anyone truly alive. And the promise to give life again to those who die as martyrs for Christ and the truth brings new tidings: though the life of the body is lost, there is another life, more precious and more blessed than the life of the body. To receive this new life, Jesus said, we are not to be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, we are to fear God, who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. We 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, while God is the Creator who can put both body and soul to death. That is why we need not fear the death of the body.
I have spoken about death at such length because I want to tell you about the death of Ahimelech, which human reason simply cannot understand. By now you will have understood that, though death is one and the same, the death of the body differs from the death of the spirit, and that there is Satan, who takes the life of the body, and there is God, who casts not only the body but even the soul into the fire of hell. You will also have understood that the saints who have given themselves to God will live forever with him in heaven. Only if you keep this in mind as you look at Ahimelech’s death can you understand it.
Ahimelech had helped David while Saul was hunting him, and he defended him confidently before King Saul as a faithful man. David was the king’s son-in-law, the captain of the king’s guard, and honored in the royal household, he said; he could not see what wrong he had done in helping David. He may have sensed that his death was coming, yet he would not have regretted it. David had lied to him, and all he had done was help David because David was the king’s son-in-law; yet King Saul put to the sword eighty-five priests and all of Nob, the city of the priests—men and women, children and nursing babies, cattle, donkeys, and sheep. That is the world: even a life, if it brings no profit, is thrown away at once.
Jesus said that the world hates you because it hated him; in the same way, Satan, who opposes God, does not hesitate in the least to kill God’s servants, and he takes the life of the body. To believe in God is to become Satan’s enemy, and you too may therefore suffer as Ahimelech did, even to the loss of your life. Still, if you trust only in God, who saves souls, and live boldly in the light, the darkness will retreat of its own accord.
Doeg, who reported Ahimelech’s good deed to Saul, was a man who walked of his own accord into deep darkness to gain worldly power. For now, with Saul’s approval, he may look like the winner. But the problem is that every life has its appointed span. When his life is over, Doeg will face the judgment of God, who is able to destroy not only the body but 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 refuge outside Israel but to go to the land of Judah, David went into Judah, where his life might be in danger. In Genesis 12, when Abraham ignored God’s will and went down into Egypt, God called him back to the land of Canaan; in the same way, he was telling David to return to Judah—the land of the covenant—and to his own people. For those who belong to God, his land is their place of rest. Once David left Judah, he had to feign madness before King Achish to survive, and beg the king of Moab for land for his family. However dangerous Judah might seem to David because of Saul, it was by staying in the land of Judah, as God had commanded, that he could receive God’s help.
The prophet Gad’s command made no sense in human terms, but David believed that if it was God’s will, God would not leave him in hardship for long, and he set out for Judah. God did not want David to leave his land and his people. The reason was that David was to be king of Israel, and he had to give the people the assurance that he loved and protected them even at his own cost. David obeyed because he knew God was leading him into Judah, the land of hardship, so that one day the people would trust him.
When Saul heard that David had come into the land of Judah, he grew anxious and ordered Doeg to kill not only Ahimelech but the eighty-five priests and all their families. Ahimelech, who had shown kindness, was wiped out along with his family without even knowing why. People take God to be one who gives only love, 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 had served faithfully all his life as a priest and had boldly defended David before the wicked Saul; such people will not be able to understand a God who does not help him even as he dies so horribly. Their thought is: why does God not help when a good man is being killed by an evil man?
You must remember the God who saves the soul even when the body dies. Scripture has many records of hundreds of thousands of enemies dying overnight to protect Israel. If we understand God’s purpose in taking hundreds of thousands of lives in a single moment to save his people, we will see that Ahimelech’s death in the body was not in vain, because, though his body died, the reward for living by the word is the blessing of eternal life and of sharing in the glory of God. Scripture does not regard the death of the body as death. That is why, when someone breathes their last, it sometimes says they returned to where they came from, or that they fell into everlasting sleep. It knows that this world is not the end, that there is an eternal life beyond death. So 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, amid the slaughter of Ahimelech and all the rest, Abiathar, one of Ahimelech’s sons, has fled to David. Now the lives of Abiathar and David are bound together as one. In David’s embrace, Abiathar was free of Saul and safe. Satan, who opposed the Lord, now opposes the saints who keep their faith. But as David and Abiathar became one, so Christ and his saints have become one, and in that union they are safe. Christ is the Lord of life, and for that reason Satan cannot harm those who are in the Lord, however fiercely he attacks.
As we go through life, we will meet both hardship and joy. But as long as we are in Christ, all of it is only a tool for bringing us to maturity. Abiathar, who fled to a David who seemed of little account, received a greater blessing when David established the united kingdom. In the same way, though Jesus on the cross may look lowly in the world’s eyes, when the Lord comes on the last day with a shout, those who have held fast to their faith will receive great blessing. Your own end may come before the end of the world, but your faith is the pledge that you will be given eternal life as a blessing in the everlasting 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.