I. David the Gardener
“Not everyone in the Kingdom of Israel loves King David.”
“My father said he’ll bring true change to Israel, a new Kingdom.”
As the two servant girls walked past the gardener pruning roses, he thought to himself, “One day those two young girls will die and their opinion, high or low, of King David won’t matter.” He could see the distinct footprints left behind by the girls in the heavy layer of dust on the newly laid mosaic. He pruned a few buds from one stalk, leaving only one behind to thrive off all the nutrients it no longer had to share with it’s suddenly cut off brothers and sisters. “The winners write history”, the gardener thought. He stared at the buds, blossoms, and stalks litering the mosiac depicting King David’s latest victory. In a matter of a few hundred years only the tiles lying before him would remain to glorify the unrighteous pretender to the throne.
Though from a lesser tribe, the gardener was a religious man. He knew Israel had committed a great sin in asking God for a King. Now they were saddled with David, a war-mongering, murdering adulterer whom no one was able to call to account. To the gardener’s way of thinking there was no mystery or divine providence to David’s defeat of the giant Goliath. David was merely the privileged son who spent his days practicing with his sling on his father’s ranch or serenading King Saul. David grew up with the luxury of hunting and songwriting while the rest of Israel’s young men were defending his freedoms.
The gardener had a different opinion of David’s victory. The giant had been threatening Israel’s army from a distance. It should have been obvious that a long-range weapon could easily take the giant out without the risk of being struck by Goliath’s spear. But years of Philistine fear mongering kept the common soldiers at bay until David, chosen by Samuel and the religious elite, his father’s rich friends and probably King Saul himself, showed up and did what any number of good sling-shot wielding Israelites could have done.
Whether rich friends, his father, the King and the religious powers of the day planned David’s rise to power in advance was a moot point. David was a great sinner. David had sent a soldier to die in order to have a guilt free romp with the dead man’s wife. David abused the powers of the throne to kill untold thousands of supposed “threats to national security” and clearly had no regard for God’s law. It was time someone made all these wrongs right. King David of Israel had to die so that Israel as a nation could live without blemish in the sight of God. Someone had to kill the king. Whom better than someone who shared his name? David of Gilead, the palace gardener, believed he was called by God to be Israel’s salvation from a wicked King and that fact that they bore the same name was just another sign of God’s will.
Nathan the Prophet was on his way to see King David. Some one had to kill the King before they could put their heads together and put a positive spin on the situation. David of Gilead cut one last rose, a withered stalk with thorns. He planned to be in the rose garden the next morning when King David took his walk with the latest victim of his philandering abuse of power, a virgin from the tribe of Dan according to palace scuttlebutt. The unfortunate girl would have to witness her beloved King’s death the morning after she gave her greatest level of devotion. The gardener chuckled to himself as he bent down with his spade to start removing the pruned stalks and blossoms. He was looking forward to burying his spade in the back of King David’s royal head.
II. In the Garden
The next morning King David’s concubine awoke to the sound of servants pouring hot water into a bath, setting a small table with figs and milk and opening the curtains. After she bathed and ate, the servants dressed her but there was no sign of her King. She stepped onto an adjoining balcony that looked over the palace rose garden. She heard someone entering the bedchamber. Her heart leapt, could it be the King? She felt his strong arms wrap around her as his voice proclaimed, “Oh beautiful daughter of Naphtali! My hear pounds, my strength fails me when I look upon you.” He turned her and looked into her eyes. She replied, “Thank you my King.”
“How would you like to go to the sea this morning? Long I have pinned for a companion of your beauty and I must say… you are my favorite.” The young girl blushed. “I was actually wondering if we could go down to the rose garden this morning, my Uncle is the palace gardener.” King David walked her over to the edge of the balcony and pointed down at the rose garden and the mosaic depicting his latest victory. The King put his arm around his concubine; “Most mornings I take a walk in the rose garden and see your… uncle is it?” The girl nodded. “I want to go some place special with you.” The girl stepped toward the doorway and pulled on one of King David’s hands with both of hers. “Just being with you makes me feel special great King, I would really like to see the roses this morning, and maybe my uncle!” King David conceded and began walking with her through the palace toward the rose garden on the lower level.
“What your uncle’s name?” The King asked. “David.” She replied.
David the gardener had slept like he hadn’t in years. He rose early in time to watch the coal black of night warm to a brilliant crimson. The blood red light played on the mosaic floor in the rose garden depicting King David’s recent “victory”. In truth, the King of Israel was a murderer, adulterer and tyrant. The gardener bent down, and whispered an old saying to a dying blossom, “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day”. He cut the blossom off the rose bush and looked to the King’s window. A servant drew back the curtains as he made his way into the shadows on the south side of the garden, against the north palace wall.
David the gardener was perfectly positioned behind a couple large rose bushes. Every morning King David came through the east gate into the rose garden and stopped at the second or third rose bush, plucked a rose, handed it to his current concubine and told her she was his favorite. As the gardener knelt down between the two bushes and cut back three or four buds he caught two silhouettes in the light pouring through the east gate. King David and his concubine were almost to the threshold of the garden. The gardener’s hand dropped to grab his chosen weapon, a simple spade, but his sleeve was caught on a thorn. He jerked and a thorn pricked deep in the palm of his hand. His tunic was stuck too! He tried not to call out or move.
The King and his concubine were through the east gate facing directly south, their backs to the hidden gardener still caught on a thorn. King David leaned over the second rose bush and plucked a beautiful blossom for the young girl. Time seemed to slow. No sooner had King David’s mouth formed the words, “You’re my favorite,” David the gardener lunged to break free of the two bushes and went sprawling on the mosaic, his bloody hand landing directly on King David’s likeness in the mosaic. King David laughed as he leaned down to help the gardener up, “I’m afraid the rose bush has beaten you my friend.”
David the gardener now had his chance, as King David grabbed his free hand to help him up he would drive the spade right under the King’s chin. The gardener pushed himself up onto his knees, one hand out for the King’s and one clutching the spade. Then he noticed the concubine, the one who was supposed to be from the tribe of Dan, if the palace gossip could be trusted. It was his niece Dinah.
“Uncle, you look frightful!”
III. The Soul who Sins is the One who will Die
“Dinah!?”
David the gardener couldn’t believe his eyes. He stood up, brushing away King David’s hand, and almost forgot his purpose. “How did King Saul’s tribe get a virgin to be with the King?”
King David whirled on the young girl, “What? You’re of the tribe of Benjamin?” The King’s back was turned. With pure steel in his voice the gardener took a step nearer the King and said, “You can die happy knowing the last woman you defiled was of the true King’s tribe!”
King David was a warrior and knew a trap almost before it was sprung. Shouting at the top of his voice, “Assassin!” he turned and blindly charged. David the gardener had only enough time to raise his free hand in a vain attempt to deflect the spade as it was driven under his chin. King David’s gardener turned assassin laid sputtering and spitting blood onto the mosaic.
King David turned and faced Dinah. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t execute you right now as a co-conspirator?”
Dinah backed away from the King pricking her delicate hands on the rose thorns. “Ahh!” She lunged forward. King David grabbed her. She felt strength in his arms she had not known the night before. He shook her violently. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now!”
“I’m your favorite!!!” Dinah screamed. That was all he needed to hear. King David let her slowly down to the ground where she curled up in a ball and began sobbing. She was just another poor girl in love with the King. David knew Dinah wasn’t part of the gardener’s plot to kill him. Guards had arrived and were moving to collect the dead body but King David staid them with a motion of his hand.
“So he was a Benjamite?” David asked over his shoulder. Dinah choked back more tears in order to speak but could only nod her assent.
King David kicked the still twitching body of his enemy. “You are not worthy of the name David… no one in Israel shall have my name again.” David addressed the growing throng of guards and servants in the garden as he walked through the growing pool of blood on the mosiac. “As long as the history of Israel lasts may no man share my name, it is mine alone!” David pointed at the body of gardener. “This assassin shall been known by another name, the name of my enemy, Cush.”
Everyone stood still. The sun had risen. The garden was hot save for the deep shadows. The King knelt and began to wipe away the blood from his own likeness in the tile. The servants and guards recognized the King’s mood. No one moved.
David began to sing. Songs often came to him in moments of great emotion. He wrote the song in the gardener’s blood as he sang.
“A song I sing concerning Cush, a Benjamite…
O Lord my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me.
O Lord my God, if I have done this and there is guilt on my hands- if I have done evil to him who is at peace with me or without cause have robbed my foe- then let my enemy overtake me; let him trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in the dust.”
King David stood up and said, “Selah… yes a good spot for a crescendo… now… how should it end?” He began to pace. Everyone had spirited themselves away while he was still kneeling; writing poetry with the blood of his enemy. For when the King was composing his songs he was the most temperamental and best left alone. The guards were able to coerce Dinah into leaving and she was soon put out on the palace steps.
King David continued to sing aloud occasionally stooping down to make another mark in blood on the mosaic. “He who is pregnant with evil and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment. He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he has made. The trouble he causes recoils on himself; his violence comes down on his own head.”
David clapped his hands twice. “I give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and will sing praises to the name of the Lord most high.”
That night King David wrote the song in it’s entirety and you can read it for yourself in the Book of Psalm, Chapter 7.
David
I. David the Gardener
“Not everyone in the Kingdom of Israel loves King David.”
“My father said he’ll bring true change to Israel, a new Kingdom.”
As the two servant girls walked past the gardener pruning roses, he thought to himself, “One day those two young girls will die and their opinion, high or low, of King David won’t matter.” He could see the distinct footprints left behind by the girls in the heavy layer of dust on the newly laid mosaic. He pruned a few buds from one stalk, leaving only one behind to thrive off all the nutrients it no longer had to share with it’s suddenly cut off brothers and sisters. “The winners write history”, the gardener thought. He stared at the buds, blossoms, and stalks litering the mosiac depicting King David’s latest victory. In a matter of a few hundred years only the tiles lying before him would remain to glorify the unrighteous pretender to the throne.
Though from a lesser tribe, the gardener was a religious man. He knew Israel had committed a great sin in asking God for a King. Now they were saddled with David, a war-mongering, murdering adulterer whom no one was able to call to account. To the gardener’s way of thinking there was no mystery or divine providence to David’s defeat of the giant Goliath. David was merely the privileged son who spent his days practicing with his sling on his father’s ranch or serenading King Saul. David grew up with the luxury of hunting and songwriting while the rest of Israel’s young men were defending his freedoms.
The gardener had a different opinion of David’s victory. The giant had been threatening Israel’s army from a distance. It should have been obvious that a long-range weapon could easily take the giant out without the risk of being struck by Goliath’s spear. But years of Philistine fear mongering kept the common soldiers at bay until David, chosen by Samuel and the religious elite, his father’s rich friends and probably King Saul himself, showed up and did what any number of good sling-shot wielding Israelites could have done.
Whether rich friends, his father, the King and the religious powers of the day planned David’s rise to power in advance was a moot point. David was a great sinner. David had sent a soldier to die in order to have a guilt free romp with the dead man’s wife. David abused the powers of the throne to kill untold thousands of supposed “threats to national security” and clearly had no regard for God’s law. It was time someone made all these wrongs right. King David of Israel had to die so that Israel as a nation could live without blemish in the sight of God. Someone had to kill the king. Whom better than someone who shared his name? David of Gilead, the palace gardener, believed he was called by God to be Israel’s salvation from a wicked King and that fact that they bore the same name was just another sign of God’s will.
Nathan the Prophet was on his way to see King David. Some one had to kill the King before they could put their heads together and put a positive spin on the situation. David of Gilead cut one last rose, a withered stalk with thorns. He planned to be in the rose garden the next morning when King David took his walk with the latest victim of his philandering abuse of power, a virgin from the tribe of Dan according to palace scuttlebutt. The unfortunate girl would have to witness her beloved King’s death the morning after she gave her greatest level of devotion. The gardener chuckled to himself as he bent down with his spade to start removing the pruned stalks and blossoms. He was looking forward to burying his spade in the back of King David’s royal head.
II. In the Garden
The next morning King David’s concubine awoke to the sound of servants pouring hot water into a bath, setting a small table with figs and milk and opening the curtains. After she bathed and ate, the servants dressed her but there was no sign of her King. She stepped onto an adjoining balcony that looked over the palace rose garden. She heard someone entering the bedchamber. Her heart leapt, could it be the King? She felt his strong arms wrap around her as his voice proclaimed, “Oh beautiful daughter of Naphtali! My hear pounds, my strength fails me when I look upon you.” He turned her and looked into her eyes. She replied, “Thank you my King.”
“How would you like to go to the sea this morning? Long I have pinned for a companion of your beauty and I must say… you are my favorite.” The young girl blushed. “I was actually wondering if we could go down to the rose garden this morning, my Uncle is the palace gardener.” King David walked her over to the edge of the balcony and pointed down at the rose garden and the mosaic depicting his latest victory. The King put his arm around his concubine; “Most mornings I take a walk in the rose garden and see your… uncle is it?” The girl nodded. “I want to go some place special with you.” The girl stepped toward the doorway and pulled on one of King David’s hands with both of hers. “Just being with you makes me feel special great King, I would really like to see the roses this morning, and maybe my uncle!” King David conceded and began walking with her through the palace toward the rose garden on the lower level.
“What your uncle’s name?” The King asked. “David.” She replied.
David the gardener had slept like he hadn’t in years. He rose early in time to watch the coal black of night warm to a brilliant crimson. The blood red light played on the mosaic floor in the rose garden depicting King David’s recent “victory”. In truth, the King of Israel was a murderer, adulterer and tyrant. The gardener bent down, and whispered an old saying to a dying blossom, “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day”. He cut the blossom off the rose bush and looked to the King’s window. A servant drew back the curtains as he made his way into the shadows on the south side of the garden, against the north palace wall.
David the gardener was perfectly positioned behind a couple large rose bushes. Every morning King David came through the east gate into the rose garden and stopped at the second or third rose bush, plucked a rose, handed it to his current concubine and told her she was his favorite. As the gardener knelt down between the two bushes and cut back three or four buds he caught two silhouettes in the light pouring through the east gate. King David and his concubine were almost to the threshold of the garden. The gardener’s hand dropped to grab his chosen weapon, a simple spade, but his sleeve was caught on a thorn. He jerked and a thorn pricked deep in the palm of his hand. His tunic was stuck too! He tried not to call out or move.
The King and his concubine were through the east gate facing directly south, their backs to the hidden gardener still caught on a thorn. King David leaned over the second rose bush and plucked a beautiful blossom for the young girl. Time seemed to slow. No sooner had King David’s mouth formed the words, “You’re my favorite,” David the gardener lunged to break free of the two bushes and went sprawling on the mosaic, his bloody hand landing directly on King David’s likeness in the mosaic. King David laughed as he leaned down to help the gardener up, “I’m afraid the rose bush has beaten you my friend.”
David the gardener now had his chance, as King David grabbed his free hand to help him up he would drive the spade right under the King’s chin. The gardener pushed himself up onto his knees, one hand out for the King’s and one clutching the spade. Then he noticed the concubine, the one who was supposed to be from the tribe of Dan, if the palace gossip could be trusted. It was his niece Dinah.
“Uncle, you look frightful!”
III. The Soul who Sins is the One who will Die
“Dinah!?”
David the gardener couldn’t believe his eyes. He stood up, brushing away King David’s hand, and almost forgot his purpose. “How did King Saul’s tribe get a virgin to be with the King?”
King David whirled on the young girl, “What? You’re of the tribe of Benjamin?” The King’s back was turned. With pure steel in his voice the gardener took a step nearer the King and said, “You can die happy knowing the last woman you defiled was of the true King’s tribe!”
King David was a warrior and knew a trap almost before it was sprung. Shouting at the top of his voice, “Assassin!” he turned and blindly charged. David the gardener had only enough time to raise his free hand in a vain attempt to deflect the spade as it was driven under his chin. King David’s gardener turned assassin laid sputtering and spitting blood onto the mosaic.
King David turned and faced Dinah. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t execute you right now as a co-conspirator?”
Dinah backed away from the King pricking her delicate hands on the rose thorns. “Ahh!” She lunged forward. King David grabbed her. She felt strength in his arms she had not known the night before. He shook her violently. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now!”
“I’m your favorite!!!” Dinah screamed. That was all he needed to hear. King David let her slowly down to the ground where she curled up in a ball and began sobbing. She was just another poor girl in love with the King. David knew Dinah wasn’t part of the gardener’s plot to kill him. Guards had arrived and were moving to collect the dead body but King David staid them with a motion of his hand.
“So he was a Benjamite?” David asked over his shoulder. Dinah choked back more tears in order to speak but could only nod her assent.
King David kicked the still twitching body of his enemy. “You are not worthy of the name David… no one in Israel shall have my name again.” David addressed the growing throng of guards and servants in the garden as he walked through the growing pool of blood on the mosiac. “As long as the history of Israel lasts may no man share my name, it is mine alone!” David pointed at the body of gardener. “This assassin shall been known by another name, the name of my enemy, Cush.”
Everyone stood still. The sun had risen. The garden was hot save for the deep shadows. The King knelt and began to wipe away the blood from his own likeness in the tile. The servants and guards recognized the King’s mood. No one moved.
David began to sing. Songs often came to him in moments of great emotion. He wrote the song in the gardener’s blood as he sang.
“A song I sing concerning Cush, a Benjamite…
O Lord my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me.
O Lord my God, if I have done this and there is guilt on my hands- if I have done evil to him who is at peace with me or without cause have robbed my foe- then let my enemy overtake me; let him trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in the dust.”
King David stood up and said, “Selah… yes a good spot for a crescendo… now… how should it end?” He began to pace. Everyone had spirited themselves away while he was still kneeling; writing poetry with the blood of his enemy. For when the King was composing his songs he was the most temperamental and best left alone. The guards were able to coerce Dinah into leaving and she was soon put out on the palace steps.
King David continued to sing aloud occasionally stooping down to make another mark in blood on the mosaic. “He who is pregnant with evil and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment. He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he has made. The trouble he causes recoils on himself; his violence comes down on his own head.”
David clapped his hands twice. “I give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and will sing praises to the name of the Lord most high.”
That night King David wrote the song in it’s entirety and you can read it for yourself in the Book of Psalm, Chapter 7.