Self-defense is a very natural response when a person is attacked. It is an understandable response. If someone is coming at you, your fight or flight response kicks in. And the law says that you are justified in using self-defense, provided that it is reasonably appropriate and proportional to the perceived threat. You are legally justified to meet deadly force with deadly force to protect yourself or someone else. Back to that in a minute.
If you read the book of 1 Samuel, you will read many interesting historical stories about early history in Israel when they first started getting kings. Just before this are the events recorded in Judges, in which Israel went through several cycles of peace, followed by sin, followed by invasion and subjugation, followed by cries to God for deliverance, followed by God raising up strong men and women called judges to bring about that deliverance, followed by peace just before the cycle restarts. Eventually the people of Israel, surrounded by other peoples that they failed to drive out of the Promised Land, decide that instead of having the Lord as King, it would be preferable to have regular kings, human kings, to rule over them and go to battle for them. While this is not ideal, God warns the people about what they're getting into, and then he lets them have what they want.
The first King that Israel gets is Saul, who is a mix of good and bad. He is tall and handsome, strong in battle, he unexpectedly spends some times prophesying. But he is presumptuous, he does things his own way, and he expects his partial obedience and good intentions to substitute for actual obedience. As I read the stories involving Saul, I don't generally get the sense that he is pure evil, as much as I get the sense that he is continually digging ditches that he promptly falls into. Saul is hot and cold, angry and remorseful and unsure. One minute chasing David, the next welcoming him.
David is Israel's second king. He is anointed by Samuel. To be king is his destiny before the Lord, a coming reality even while Saul is yet king. The blessing leaves Saul as he offers a premature sacrifice, and especially later when he is commanded to go against the Amalekites in battle and to devote them completely to destruction, down even to the cattle and livestock. This he doesn't do. "What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?" This is Samuel's question to Saul when he hears alive what God commanded Saul to destroy. But I saved the best to later offer in sacrifice, says Saul. But as Samuel says, God delights more in obedience than in sacrifice. Through all this we see the kingly line passing from the house of Benjamin to the house of Judah.
There are multiple instances in which Saul throws a spear or some object at David, aiming to take his life. He misses. Consider not just David's life spared at those moments, but all that will flow through David through his lineage. Jesus is a descendant of David, the coming King of Kings, and God's preservation of David's life in all those close calls, including his battle with Goliath, may be seen not just as God protecting David's life, but also God providentially preserving his plan to save people through David's descendant. It is not uncommon for God's people to die in battle, to die as martyrs, to die horrific deaths. (You don't have to look farther than Jesus.) But in David's instance God has very specific plans on his life. He was anointed for a purpose that had not yet been fulfilled, and God's plans are rock solid no matter how things look.
David was God's anointed. But so was Saul. David firmly believed that. When Saul was pursuing David, when Saul was literally throwing deadly objects at David, common sense would say that David had a right to defend himself. David could have acted in self-defense. David could have potentially believed that Saul was a false-king who had forfeited his anointing by disobeying God, and who no longer deserved honor or obedience as King of Israel, especially since David himself had already been anointed by Samuel to be king. (David is actually anointed by Samuel even before he confronts Goliath in battle.)
David continues to honor Saul as the Lord's anointed, and he is supremely conscientious against raising his hand against Saul, no matter how grievously Saul comes against him. At one point David holds Saul's life in his hands when Saul unwittingly goes to the bathroom in a cave where David and company are hiding. David cuts a piece of Saul's garment to later prove that, yes, he could've taken Saul's life but instead spared it. On another occasion David and his men come upon Saul in his camp while he is asleep, and in a similar move he takes Saul's spear but spares his life. David has in his power to end this terrible chase and stress and bring about what will eventually come about: his kingship. But he declines because he has such supreme respect for the fact that Saul carries the Lord's anointing. David feared to touch Saul.
Saul does eventually die in battle. In the beginning of 2 Samuel, David hears of Saul's death from an Amalekite from the battle who says he killed an already fallen Saul who essentially asked the Amalekite to put him out of his misery. David rends his clothes and mourns at the death of his king and of his friend Jonathan. And then David says to the Amalekite: "How is it you were not afraid to put out your hand to destroy the LORD's anointed?" And then David has this man killed. To David, to touch the Lord's anointed is an outrage.
I am struck by this. By the severity of David's conviction. It leads me to believe that I do not esteem the Lord's anointed as highly as I ought to. The Roman government and Jewish people hundreds of years later conspired to put David's descendant Jesus, the Christ, the Lord's anointed to death. And they had him crucified on a tree. They put out their hand against the Lord's anointed. But the truth is that while on one level, yes, the Romans and the Jews did that, ultimately I do that by my own sin. It is my own rebellion against God, my own sin, that required a perfect sacrifice and that sent Jesus to that cursed tree. An accurate way to view my sin is that it is a striking of the Lord's anointed. How dare I?! And what does such action deserve? As in this story, it deserves a swift death. David's response of righteous anger is an echo of God's righteous wrath toward sin, the flip side of the coin of his love for his beloved Son. This story should drive us to our knees in repentance. It shows us what we deserve. Swift justice. But I am thankful, in looking at the cross, for how patient and long-suffering and forgiving and overflowing with unexpected goodness our God is towards even the worst of sinners. Grace.
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