Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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We pick up the story in 1 Samuel 24.
We need to do a little math right off the bat.
Remember where we left David and how many people he had with him:
1 Samuel 23:13 (NIV)
13 So David and his men, about six hundred in number, left Keilah and kept moving from place to place.
We pick up now in 1 Samuel 24 and we find good, ol’ paranoid Saul:
Okay, now for the math.
David has 600 men.
Saul has 3,000.
Saul has 5 times the number of men David does.
That shows Saul’s paranoia, even his fear of David.
He and a crazy ridiculous number of men go hunt down David.
Verse 3 is one of those awkward or humorous verses (depending on who you are):
Well, here they are.
Saul and David are thrown together.
They’re in the same cave!
Something’s going to happen.
It’s just a pit stop for Saul.
How strange it is to have this detail, but this (like other details in the Bible) show how true the Bible is.
Why put that detail there if it didn’t happen?
Saul’s using the cave toilet, and David and his men are gathered in the back of the same cave.
Awkward.
Now, it’s probably a very large cave, but still.
This is a little uncomfortable.
The significance of this is that Saul is here in this cave without any of his men.
Men don’t typically go to the bathroom in groups.
So, instead of it being 3,000 to 600, it’s Saul alone up against 600 men and David.
And Saul’s vulnerable.
David’s men are opportunists.
They want David to be rid of Saul; they even invoke God’s name.
“This is the Lord giving Saul into your hands!”
“This is the day, this is the day, that the Lord hath made, that the Lord hath made, go on and kill him, go on and kill him...”
How can David not get what God is up to?
David’s men just know this is the Lord’s doing.
David has the opportunity to kill Saul.
If not now, when?
This is the perfect shot.
Instead, David crawls up to where Saul is and cuts a corner off Saul’s robe.
In 1 Samuel 15, the tearing of a robe signified Saul forfeiting the kingdom:
So here, David cutting off a corner of Saul’s robe may have been a declaration of revolt.
David’s a little sneaky.
His men are, no doubt, cheering him on, yet probably wanting David to do far more than cut Saul’s robe; they want David to cut Saul’s throat.
This action—David’s action—however starts to bother David.
Literally, conscience-stricken is “heart-struck”—David’s heart struck him.
Why?
Well, David is a man of conscience.
And, no matter what Saul has done, no matter how many times Saul has chucked a spear at Saul, no matter how Saul has treated David, in David’s eyes, Saul still retains the status of king/the Lord’s anointed.
Saul, as king, has been set apart to the Lord.
There’s a special bond there, between the Lord’s anointed and the Lord.
“Hence,” says Groningen, “to touch, defile, and attack the anointed one was to approach the Lord Himself and seek to defile, harm, and remove the Lord from His rightful place.”
David’s sharp rebuke to his men is stronger than our translations.
Literally, David tore apart his men with words.
Or, as it might be said today: “David ripped his men a new one.”
David was deadly serious, and had to threaten his men not to do anything to Saul.
David had the opportunity to kill Saul.
Instead, David spares Saul.
David saves Saul.
But was this the Lord giving Saul into David’s hands as David’s men suspected?
Apparently not.
Hadn’t the kingdom been promised to David, at least a few times?
Wasn’t this the chance for David to assume the throne?
Saul dies on the toilet (like another “king”), and David becomes the new king—that’s a story we could tell.
It is the Lord’s will for David to become king, but the Lord’s will must be achieved in the Lord’s way.
David’s men don’t care so much about this.
They’re opportunists and pragmatists.
“They claim to have God in their pocket and to know how he relates to the specific situation.”
- Fokkelman
You can almost hear David’s men: “Now’s your time, man! Don’t you want to be king?
Don’t you want all of this for yourself?!”
It’d be tempting, no doubt.
Jesus, the descendant of David, faced the same temptation:
“What the devil offered Jesus was the will of God for Jesus’ life; Jesus absolutely knew that God had planned for and promised to Jesus all the kingdoms and their splendor.
But God’s will must come to pass in God’s way—not through a scheme of the devil, but through the humiliation of the cross.”
- DRD
The temptation to seize the kingdom by killing Saul in that moment was strong, I’m sure.
But David refuses.
He won’t do it.
And he won’t let his men attack Saul.
Saul left the cave and went his way.
This seems crazy.
Saul’s left the cave (without washing his hands, it seems).
And, in a bold move, David follows him and calls out to him.
“My lord, the king!”
David speaks respectfully and shows honor to the king.
Honor where honor is due, even though it’s hard to see how Saul is worthy of any honor.
David bows with his face to the ground and launches into a speech.
David argues his case.
He’s innocent—he knows it and Saul knows it.
David rehearses everything that just went down, including the chance he had to kill Saul and his decision to spare Saul and not kill him.
David even reaches into his pocket, grabs the piece of fabric, and says, “Look at this piece of your robe in my hand!”
In all of this David does what is very, very difficult.
He decides to:
Trust the Lord to Work Justice
Verse 12: “May the Lord judge between you and me.”
David believes Saul should be punished (let’s get that straight); but he’s simply unwilling to do the punishing or to work justice for himself.
David trusts the Lord to judge.
David says, “My hand will not touch you.”
What a response.
What restraint.
More than anything, this shows David’s trust in the Lord God Almighty.
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