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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Friend (11/02/17)
A friendship between a prince and a shepherd is a rare thing.

Two men from different sides of the fence, as it were, formed a deep covenantal relationship and shaping history.
Jonathan was a young man and lived in his father’s palace. His father was the king and he was an evil man.
'Jonathan was not much like his father. Jonathan was known for his deep love, loyal friendship, and faith in God, while Saul repeatedly showed foolishness, pride, and disobedience to God’ [www.gotquestions.org]

It seemed he had few if any friends. His father was away at war a lot because they had enemies. Their chief enemy group was the Philistines. They seemed undefeatable until David came along.
In one fell swoop, he killed the leader with a simple slingshot and a stone and started the destruction of their stronghold over Israel. Saul took David into his home and he was loved by Jonathan.

At last Jonathan had a friend and so did David.
“The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” {1 Samuel 18:1}. They were best friends.

David was the last son of his father Jesse’s eight sons and he was assigned the job of the shepherd to his father’s flock. He was a fighter, defended his flock, played the harp, wrote psalms and played songs. Because he was a mighty warrior and blessed by God; over time he who was loved by Saul became the hated and feared one. Saul tried to kill David many times and in many ways, but God was with him.

Jonathan was in a difficult place, he had to stand against his father where David was concerned. This was a friendship more precious than gold to him. He knew that David was to be the next king. In the natural, he should be the next king but he was a man indeed. He supported his friend fully.

Years later, when Jonathan had died. David was king and he adopted his friend's only living son.
Jonathan’s five-year-old son, Mephibosheth, was crippled on the day that his household received news of Jonathan’s death. As King, David honoured Mephibosheth and treated him as his own son for the sake of his friend Jonathan.
(2 Samuel 9).

A happy ending indeed!
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This article has been read 595 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
C D Swanson 
11/10/17
Well done
Blessings~
Bonnie Bowden 
11/11/17
Johnathan and David paint a clear picture of true friendship.
Jenny Fulton 
11/12/17
Good job tracing the development of this friendship. The nature and circumstances around it has always intrigued me.

A couple of notes: "shaping history" at the beginning should be"shaped history"
When you were talking about Israel and their enemies the philistines, I first read "they were undefeated" as in Israel was undefeated, since Israel had been the subject of the previous sentences.