"Stay with me; don't be afraid; the man who is seeking your life is seeking mine also. You will be safe with me."

1 Samuel 22:23

Interesting verse, right?  David was running from King Saul, who was trying to kill him, and he had passed through the town of Nob.  While he was there, he had spoken with Ahimelech the priest, who gave him food and a sword for protection (the sword of Goliath, no less).  Unfortunately, one of Saul's servants had witnessed the exchange and had reported it to Saul as a conspiracy; so Saul was convinced that the priests of Nob had sided with David against Saul, although Saul was the one who was against David, not the other way around.  So Saul had all the priests of Nob killed, but Ahimelech's son Abiathar escaped to report it to David.  And upon hearing this report, David spoke the strangely comforting words of this verse.

How can it be comforting to hear, "I'm sorry I'm the reason your entire family was killed.  Stay with me; I'll protect you.  The same man who wants to kill you wants to kill me too"?  I guess in the historical context (and in the exact words that David spoke), it would have been much more comforting: "Then David said to Abiathar: 'That day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, I knew he would be sure to tell Saul.  I am responsible for the death of your father's whole family.  Stay with me; don't be afraid; the man who is seeking your life is seeking mine also.  You will be safe with me'" (1 Samuel 22:22-23).  It was David's fault that Abiathar's family had been killed, so he took it upon himself as his duty to protect Abiathar with his life.  And in that time, if David was your personal bodyguard, you were set.  It was well-known throughout all the land that the Lord was with David, and no harm could come to him or to those under his care.  So it makes sense that Abiathar would have been comforted by those words.

But what about the part that says, "the man who is seeking your life is seeking mine also"?  It seems to go against logic that Abiathar should stay with David to protect himself if the man who was trying to kill him was also looking for his protector.  If Saul found one of them, he would find both of them, and what's better than killing two birds with one stone?  David was clearly the more hated and more endangered of the two, so wouldn't it make more sense for Abiathar to get as far away from David as possible so that Saul would go after David rather than Abiathar?

Nope.  The thing is that that logic is only human logic.  It leaves God out of the equation.  With God on David's side, Saul would never succeed against him.  And because of that, two things are true: 1) Saul may have realized his inability to defeat David (doubtful, but possible) and turned after Abiathar instead because he was much more likely to be able to kill him than David; and 2) to be under David's protection meant to be under God's own protection, which meant certain victory and survival.  David and Abiathar both knew this to be true, and so Abiathar found a strange comfort in David's promise of safety.

My original intent for reading through 1 Samuel was to read about David and his relationship with the Lord.  (I'm going through a devotional this summer for Freshley leadership, and one of this week's questions asks about the relationships of various men of the Bible with God.)  I was just reading, doing my devotional, when out of nowhere, this verse appeared and caught my attention so suddenly that I just had to stop.  What really made 1 Samuel 22:23 stick out to me the most was the statement, "the man who is seeking your life is seeking mine also."  Maybe it's because I was just reading last night in John 15:18-20 when Jesus told the disciples that the world would hate them because it hates Him, and that they could be sure that they would be persecuted because He had been persecuted.  Anyway, I want to offer this interpretation of 1 Samuel 22:23:

Jesus said to mankind: "That day when I conquered sin and death before the eyes of Satan, I knew that he would seek to hinder the growth of My kingdom.  I am responsible for the passing of your earthly life and everything that is temporary.  Stay with Me; don't be afraid; the enemy who is seeking your life is seeking Mine as well.  If you run away from Me to protect yourself, the enemy will come after you because he knows that I cannot be defeated, but you can.  But if you stay with Me, I will protect you; my Father is with Me, and He will not allow any harm to come to you.  Because you are now My responsibility, I will protect you with My life.  You will be safe with Me, and in return for the temporary life you are losing, I will give you eternal life."

If that isn't comforting, I don't know what is!

"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." ~ Philippians 4:7