David Spares Saul's Life

Wait, another Bible story?? I thought you were done with Bible stories, Kelley! I hear you saying.

Calm yourself, blog reader. I did indeed finish working on the Explore the Bible series, but I wanted to show a few of my favorite Bible illustrations on this blog. I finished this one back in December 2015. This scene is from the Old Testament.

So David and Abishai went to the army by night, and there was Saul, lying asleep inside the camp with his spear stuck in the ground near his head. Abner and the soldiers were lying around him...

Abishai said to David, “Today God has delivered your enemy into your hands. Now let me pin him to the ground with one thrust of the spear; I won’t strike him twice.” But David said to Abishai, “...the Lord forbid that I should lay a hand on the Lord’s anointed. Now get the spear and water jug that are near his head, and let’s go.” 

So David took the spear and water jug near Saul’s head, and they left. No one saw or knew about it, nor did anyone wake up.

-1 Samuel 26:7-12 

This was a rather unusual assignment for this series. Usually the client had me draw characters talking and preaching to groups of other characters. The art director always asked to see the expressions on the characters' faces, which made it difficult to use any extreme camera angles. (And meant I had to get creative in other ways.)

But for this scene of a sleeping army, I had the freedom to use a birds-eye-view camera angle. I was also able to get away with only showing the feet of David and Abishai, their shadows looming over Saul menacingly.

The fact that it was a night scene was also somewhat unusual, and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to capture a moonlight feeling while still keeping the scene colorful enough to appeal to kids.

Because I was having so much fun with this scene, I put more detail into it than usual.

I'll share a few more of my favorite Bible illustrations in the future. Thanks for reading!