We are now called to follow David from the scenes of his exile to those of his government. Saul has passed off the stage of history, having met death by the hand of an Amalekite--one of that very nation which he had disobediently spared. Solemn warning! Jonathan, too, had fallen in company with his father, Saul, on Mount Gilboa, and David had given utterance to his sublime lament over both. David had ever carried himself towards Saul with the fullest sense of his being the Lord's anointed; nor did he manifest anything bordering upon a spirit of exultation when informed of his death; on the contrary, he wept over him, and called on others to do the same. Neither do we find anything like unbecoming haste to ascend the throne left vacant for him; he waited upon the Lord about it. "David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? And the Lord said unto him, Go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And He said, Unto Hebron."[20] This was real dependence. Nature would have been eager to rush into the place of honor; but David waited on the Lord, and only moved as directed of Him. It was this confidence in and dependence upon God--delighting himself in Jehovah--that forms the peculiar loveliness of David's character, "the man after God's own heart." Happy would it have been for him had he continued thus to move on in child-like dependence. [20] Hebron means _Communion_; it is in communion with Himself the Lord ever calls His servants in entering the field of service to which He calls and for which He prepares. [Ed.] But, alas; we have to trace far more of nature in David during the period of his elevation than during the period of His rejection. A time of peace and prosperity tends to develop and bring to maturity many seeds of evil which might be nipped and blighted by the keen blast of adversity. David found the kingdom more thorny and dangerous than the wilderness.