He Strengthened Himself in Yahweh
1 When David and his men had come to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid on the South and on Ziklag, and had struck Ziklag and burned it with fire, 2 and had taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They didn’t kill any, but carried them off and went their way. 3 When David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, their sons, and their daughters were taken captive. 4 Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep. 5 David’s two wives were taken captive, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. 6 David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the souls of all the people were grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters; but David strengthened himself in Yahweh his God. 7 David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, “Please bring the ephod here to me.” Abiathar brought the ephod to David. 8 David inquired of Yahweh, saying, “If I pursue after this troop, will I overtake them?” He answered him, “Pursue, for you will surely overtake them, and will without fail recover all.” 9 So David went, he and the six hundred men who were with him, and came to the brook Besor, where those who were left behind stayed. 10 But David pursued, he and four hundred men; for two hundred stayed behind, who were so faint that they couldn’t go over the brook Besor. 11 They found an Egyptian in the field, and brought him to David, and gave him bread, and he ate; and they gave him water to drink. 12 They gave him a piece of a cake of figs and two clusters of raisins. When he had eaten, his spirit came again to him; for he had eaten no bread, and drank no water for three days and three nights. 13 David asked him, “To whom do you belong? Where are you from?” He said, “I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite; and my master left me, because three days ago I got sick. 14 We made a raid on the South of the Cherethites, and on that which belongs to Judah, and on the South of Caleb; and we burned Ziklag with fire.” 15 David said to him, “Will you bring me down to this troop?” He said, “Swear to me by God that you will not kill me and not deliver me up into the hands of my master, and I will bring you down to this troop.”
David comes home to ashes and an empty town, his own men talking about stones — and the turning point of his life is one sentence long.
When David and his men had come to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid on the South and on Ziklag, and had struck Ziklag and burned it with fire,
The bill for sixteen months arrives all at once. The town he took to be safe is ash, every wife and child is gone, and the raiders are Amalekites — the nation Saul was told to finish 1 Samuel 15:3 and the people David had been raiding to keep his cover 1 Samuel 27:8. There is one mercy buried in the report: they didn't kill any 1 Samuel 30:2.
Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep.
Grief without dignity, described exactly — men crying until crying is no longer physically possible.
David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the souls of all the people were grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters; but David strengthened himself in Yahweh his God.
Here is the hinge of his life, and the two halves of the verse must be read together. He has lost his family, his town, and now his men — the four hundred who followed him through every wilderness are picking up rocks, and their bitterness is not unreasonable, since it was his arrangement that put their families in that town. There is no comfort left in any direction and no one to give it. And the phrase that answers it is the one Jonathan had done for him in the woods 1 Samuel 23:16, now done alone: he strengthens himself in Yahweh his God. Not in his prospects, not in his record, not by talking himself round — the strengthening has an object, and it is a person. What Jonathan taught him in a wood he can now do without Jonathan, which is what discipleship is for.
"Please bring the ephod here to me" 1 Samuel 30:7.
And the very next thing is the thing missing from the whole Ziklag chapter: he asks. Shall I pursue? — and the answer comes back full and specific: pursue, for you will surely overtake them, and will without fail recover all 1 Samuel 30:8. The channel Saul found closed that same week is wide open to a man who had wandered from it, because the difference between them was never the size of the failure.
The pursuit then turns on a dying slave. Two hundred men drop at the brook Besor, exhausted 1 Samuel 30:10, and in a field the rest find an Egyptian abandoned by his Amalekite master because he got sick — three days without food or water 1 Samuel 30:12–13. They feed him first and question him after. The whole rescue depends on a man his own side threw away, which is a lesson about God's methods and about David's men, who at this moment are better than they will be in a few hours.
settled What this mark means