death was but too likely to come next. The
doubts of his identity seem to have lasted for some little time, and to
have been at first privately communicated to the king. They somehow
reached David, and awoke his watchful attention, as well as his fear.
The depth of his alarm and his ready resource are shown by his degrading
trick of assumed madness--certainly the least heroic action of his life.
What a picture of a furious madman is the description of his conduct
when Achish's servants came to arrest him. He "twisted himself about in
their hands" in the feigned contortions of possession; he drummed on the
leaves of the gate,[H] and "let his spittle run down into his beard."
(1 Sam. xxi. 13.) Israelitish quickness gets the better of Philistine
stupidity, as it had been used to do from Sampson's time onwards, and
the dull-witted king falls into the trap, and laughs away the suspicions
with a clumsy joke at his servants' expense about more madmen being the
last thing he was short of. A hasty flight from Philistine territory
ended this episode.

[H] The Septuagint appears to have followed a different reading here
from that of our present Hebrew text, and the change adds a very
picturesque clause to the description. A madman would be more likely to
hammer than to "scrabble" on the great double-leaved gate.

The fifty-sixth psalm, which is referred by its title to this period,
seems at first sight to be in strange contrast with the impressions
drawn from the narrative, but on a closer examination is found to
confirm the correctness of the reference by its contents. The terrified
fugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot in
the hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enough
to hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. The
psalm is far in advance of the conduct--is it so unusual a circumstance
as to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith and
submission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? Instead of taking
the contrast between the words and the acts as a proof that this psalm
is wrongly ascribed to the period in question, let us rather be thankful
for another instance that imperfect faith may be genuine, and that if we
cannot rise to the height of unwavering fortitude, God accepts a
tremulous trust fighting against mortal terror, and grasping with a
feeble hand the word of God, and the memory of all his past
deliverances. It is prec