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The Messenger | The Outlaw!
Passage from The Leper Messiah:
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And so the sullen boy wandered the hill country alone while his frown spread over all of Judea…
I Samuel 23, verse 14:
And David stayed in the wilderness in the strongholds and remained in the hill country of Zphi. And Saul sought him every day but God did not deliver him into his hand.
David was a troubled soul in a troubled land.
The Hebrews had been humiliated by the Philistines at Shiloah and even worse the Ark of the Covenant had been taken from them on the battlefield.
The loss played hard on the proud warring tribes so they crowned their first King – Saul, also a shepherd boy. He was from “Gish” and the tribe of Judah.
Davids’ journey to destiny was a long and dark twisted affair that left him scarred for life. His relationship with men suffered for what happened in his childhood with his father, Jessie.
When Saul uttered the words, “Banishment is David,” his reaction was as if another father figure had cast him out into the wilderness.
“Banishment, banishment,” Saul continued yelling as the cock crowed uneasily in the cold dawn.
Years ago, the young child David was cast out when Jessie talked to his other brothers.
“He is all.” Jessie said, “He is the light. He makes the colors that we see before our eyes and is also the darkness that falls on us.” David knew just what to do.
David had grown into a young passionate man who had what rabbinical scholars called a gift from God – charm. He was bequeathed this gift from the heavens and knew how to use it.
It was not simply that women wanted him and that men wanted to be like him, it was more – he commanded attention and a cult-like devotion as few other characters in history have had. Alexander with his troops, Captain Cook with his shipmates and in the modern era JFK with the American voters.
David had a following, an army of outlaws and thieves who hung on every word he uttered.
He, however, also knew that Saul was given a “Divine Right of Kings” from God, which meant he could not spill Saul’s blood.
And so he raided the towns and villages on the outskirts of ancient Israel. He was a mercenary for the Philistines and paid well for his troubles.
“Banishment, you know nothing of Banishment,” David whispered as he galloped up the rounded hillocks of cracked red earth toward the winding narrows that now turned inward daring him, demanding his to go further into the web of treacherous and mangled underbrush.
Revenge and Regret.
David’s soul was black as night.
The real traitors were the father figures that abandoned him, that cast him out and had threadbare care for him.
The red-headed, bow-legged, short bandit caused havoc wherever he went. His rugged individualism was born out of mistrust for his elders. He had no need for the old, wise men of Bethlehem. He had traded in his mothers’ spells and incantation for the whip and the saddle. He kept his own council and his men listened to him as he survived on his guile and wits.
David was an iconoclast and while he attacked helpless villagers to load up on supplies for his troops, he also kept his cherished beliefs of his God close to him.
In the hill country, the long trail of 200 horses clouded the sunbaked paths for miles. The wind whispered and moaned along the baked plains as David pushed onward at the lead of his gang of thieves. He rode for hope and despair, he rode for passion and pain, the passion for his God, and the pain of banishment. He rode for revenge and regret, the revenge in his heart and the regret that filled his soul.
“Banishment from a father’s love, from brother’s love,” he yelled into the wind. “That is pain, that is heartache…” Donkeys brayed and spat out the hard truths of traveling in the wild. “I’ve suffered a thousand more times than banishment,” David continued.
In Bethlehem, David, was also an outcast, so much so that the town drunks and poor would laugh and spit at him at the town square. His fathers’ abuse became a license for others to heap insults on the boy.
We can hear his cries in Psalms 61:29:
Insults have broken my heart, and I am in despair. I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found no one. 21They poisoned my food with gall and gave me vinegar to quench my thirst.
What we have uncovered on our archaeological expedition is not the mighty King David but rather the troubled child, and the desperate bandit, the Outlaw!
Robert