This is the second time David has had the opportunity to take Saul’s life and enter into the promises God has given him.
The end of verse 12 makes it clear that God was in control of this opportunity; he had put Saul and his men into a deep sleep – including, presumably, whoever was supposed to be on sentry duty! Yet David didn’t say ‘Today the Lord has given my enemy into my hands and fulfilled his promise to me.’ Instead, he used it as an opportunity to demonstrate his faith in God’s timing.
I think this is an example of David’s deep relationship with God – the text doesn’t make it explicit, but it seems David knew how to interpret the situation he was in when either interpretation would seem to be valid: this could well have been God’s way of fulfilling his promise to David and putting him on the throne, but somehow David knew it wasn’t.
We too need to be so attuned to God that we know which opportunities are the ones we should take and which are distractions leading us away from God’s will, even though they may at first seem to be the fulfilment of it.
What is your experience of this?
I can’t think of an exact example of this, but it’s not taking advantage of someone – playing fair. I know I have been in the right place at the right time before and wished I had been more in tune with God so that I had got there knowingly rather than in the haphazard way it actually happened! Many Bible translations actually translate the commandment as ‘Do not murder’ rather than, ‘do not’ kill’. And it seems to me that killing someone who is asleep is more like murder even if he would do the same to you, rather than if you killed him in hand to hand combat.