The promised land : $b Bible stories retoldShaw, Catharine
Religion
The promised land : $b Bible stories retold
Shaw, Catharine
Bible stories, English -- New Testament -- Juvenile literature; Bible stories, English -- Old Testament -- Juvenile literature
Meanwhile Jonathan, Saul's son, thought there was no one in the world
like David! He loved him as his own soul.
He took off his own beautiful clothes, which belonged to him as the
king's son, and put them on David, even presenting him with his sword,
his bow and his girdle.
But a jealous feeling began to rankle in the breast of the king.
He heard the women singing who came out to meet him from the cities,
after David's slaughter of the giant, and these were the words they
sang: "Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands."
This made the king very angry, and from that day forth, he determined
to kill David.
So King Saul hunted David up and down the land. Jonathan was devoted
to him, and helped him to escape many times. He endeavoured to be a
peacemaker, and assured his father that David had no evil designs
against him. But it was all of no use. Jealousy, which the Bible says
is "cruel as the grave," had entered into Saul's heart, and it poisoned
all his thoughts.
Then David again had a great victory over the Philistines, and Saul was
so jealous that he threw his javelin at him. David, however, escaped,
and the javelin went into the wall, where he had been sitting playing
his harp to Saul.
He fled down to his house, but Saul sent men to watch for him and to
kill him in the morning. So Michal, his wife, persuaded him to fly that
night, for she was sure he would be slain.
Michal was Saul's daughter, and she loved David. So she let him down
through a window, and he escaped.
Then Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a
goat's-hair pillow for a bolster and covered it with a cloth.
And when Saul's messengers came to take David, Michal said: "He is
sick."
Then Saul sent back the messengers and ordered them to bring David in
his bed!
But when the messengers came in, there was only an image in the bed,
and David was far away!
So it went on, till David was hunted from place to place, all over the
land, and driven, with the men of war who followed him, to live in the
mountains, and among rocks and caves, to get away from Saul's vengeance.
One day, as Saul was pursuing hotly after David, who he heard was in
the wilderness of Engedi, he was very weary with travel, and finding a
large dark cave, he entered it, and lay down to get some sleep.
Little did Saul guess, that the man he had come to seek was close to
him, and that in the darkness of the cave, and hidden by the jutting
sides, David and his men were quietly watching him.
When Saul had fallen into a deep sleep, David's men whispered to him
that the day had come when the Lord had delivered his enemy into his
hand!
So David went forward, and as he approached Saul, he saw that his
robe, with which he had covered his feet, lay partly on the ground.
So he softly cut off the skirt of Saul's robe, and went back to his
hiding-place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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