The Welcome That Becomes a Threat to Saul

“Knit” is qashar, to tie or bind. Judah used the same expression of Jacob and Benjamin: “his life is bound up in the lad’s life” (Genesis 44:30). The verse ties the new bond to the end of the conversation with Saul, as though Jonathan had been standing by, listening to David speak.

“That day” is the day of Goliath. The going back and forth between court and sheepfold described in 17:15 ends here; Saul keeps him. “Took” is the verb of royal claiming Samuel warned about when he said the king would take Israel’s sons (8:11).

The Hebrew says they “cut” a covenant, the idiom that goes back to covenants sealed by dividing animals (Genesis 15:10; Jeremiah 34:18). The verb is singular, suggesting Jonathan is the one who initiates it. The reason is repeated from verse 1 almost word for word.

“Stripped himself” is pashat, the verb used when Moses stripped Aaron of his priestly garments and put them on his son Eleazar (Numbers 20:26–28). The robe is a me’il, the garment of Samuel’s mantle (15:27). Jonathan’s sword was one of only two in Israel’s army (13:22).

“Behaved himself wisely” is sakal, to act with skill and so succeed; the verb appears four times in this chapter (verses 5, 14, 15, 30). “Accepted in the sight” is literally “good in the eyes”, and the eyes include Saul’s servants, the men closest to the king.

Women meeting victors with drums and dancing is the custom of Miriam at the sea (Exodus 15:20) and of Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:34). “Tabrets” were hand drums. “Instruments of musick” renders shalishim, a word of uncertain sense, perhaps “three-stringed” things or triangles, from the word for three.

“Answered one another” describes antiphonal singing, two groups alternating lines. Thousands and ten thousands is a standard poetic pair in which the second number heightens the first (Psalm 91:7; Deuteronomy 32:30), so Saul may be hearing a ranking where the singers meant rhythm. The Philistines will quote the song twice (21:11; 29:5).

“Very wroth” is literally “it burned him greatly”, the anger once kindled by the Spirit against Nahash (11:6), now turned on his own champion. The last clause is literally “and yet to him only the kingdom”. Saul is the first person in the book to say out loud that David could be king.

“Eyed” renders a verb found only here, built on the word for eye: Saul was eyeing him. It is watching of the suspicious kind. “From that day and forward” uses the same phrase as the Spirit resting on David “from that day forward” (16:13).

“Prophesied” is the same verb used when Saul prophesied among the prophets and was changed into another man (10:10); here it describes raving under a troubling spirit. The spear, chanit, becomes Saul’s constant companion, never far from his hand (19:9; 22:6; 26:7).

“I will smite David even to the wall” means pin him there. “Avoided” is the 1611 sense of slipped away or withdrew. The shorter Greek text lacks this first spear scene and the offer of Merab (verses 17–19), one of several places where the Greek of these chapters runs noticeably shorter.

Saul was afraid of Goliath (17:11); now he is afraid of the man who killed Goliath. “Departed” is the verb used when the Spirit departed from Saul in 16:14. The verse explains the fear by pairing two presences: God is with one man and gone from the other.

A captain over a thousand is the rank of the officer who received Jesse’s cheeses in 17:18. “Went out and came in before the people” is the language of leading in war, the phrase Moses used when he asked for a successor to lead Israel out and in (Numbers 27:17).

The pairing of success and “the LORD was with him” is said of Joseph in Potiphar’s house and in prison (Genesis 39:2, 23). The Hebrew “in all his ways” leaves no area of David’s conduct outside the description.

The Hebrew changes verbs. In verse 12 Saul “was afraid”; here he “stood in awe” or dreaded, a word for the fear that keeps its distance. The better David does, the more Saul flinches.

In ancient treaty language “love” could mean political allegiance, as when Hiram is called “ever a lover of David” (1 Kings 5:1). Israel and Judah are named separately again. The reason given is David’s public leading, going out and coming in, the task Saul himself assigned.

Goliath’s killer was already promised the king’s daughter (17:25), yet the offer comes with a new condition: “only be thou valiant for me”. Saul adds terms to a reward already earned. The inner thought about hands is set in the same verse as the pious language, so the reader hears both.

“Who am I?” is Moses’ question at the bush (Exodus 3:11). “What is my life” may mean “what is my kin”, a word for clan. Saul himself once asked Samuel a very similar question about his lowly family (9:21).

Adriel was from Abel-meholah in the Jordan valley, later the home of Elisha (1 Kings 19:16). Merab’s five sons by Adriel are handed to the Gibeonites for execution in 2 Samuel 21:8, where the standard Hebrew text has Michal, most likely by a copyist’s slip.

Michal is the only woman in the Hebrew Bible of whom it is said that she loved a man. “The thing pleased him” is literally “the thing was right in his eyes”. Saul is pleased, and the next verse explains why.

A “snare” is a moqesh, a baited trap. “In the one of the twain” is the King James attempt at the Hebrew bishtayim, which more naturally means “a second time”: Saul offers a son-in-law’s place again after withdrawing the first.

“Secretly” is ballat, quietly or gently, the word for Ruth coming “softly” to Boaz (Ruth 3:7). The courtiers are to deliver a message that is partly true: “all his servants love thee” matches verse 5. The part about the king’s delight is the bait.

The Hebrew plays on one root: is it a “light thing” to become the king’s son-in-law when I am “lightly esteemed”? A bridegroom was expected to pay a bride-price, and Jacob worked fourteen years for his (Genesis 29:18–30). David has no money and says so.

Every exchange about the marriage goes through messengers; Saul never speaks to David directly about Michal. “On this manner” is literally “according to these words”, and the king studies David’s words for an opening.

“Dowry” is mohar, the bride-price paid to the bride’s father (Exodus 22:16–17). Foreskins were proof that could only come from Philistines, since most of Israel’s other neighbours practised circumcision; David’s own name for Goliath was “this uncircumcised Philistine” (17:26).

“It pleased David well” is literally “the thing was right in David’s eyes”, the same phrase used of Saul in verse 20. Father-in-law and son-in-law are pleased by the same arrangement for opposite reasons. The deadline is mentioned, though its length never is.

In 2 Samuel 3:14 David himself names the price as “an hundred foreskins”, and the Greek has a hundred here as well. “In full tale” means by full count; a tale was a tally. The count is laid before the king, and Saul has to keep his word.

“Saw and knew” pairs perception with recognition. The Greek reads “and that all Israel loved him” instead of Michal. In the Hebrew, Saul’s own daughter is set beside God as the second fact he cannot change.

Saul’s fear has climbed from afraid (verse 12) to dread (verse 15) to “yet the more afraid”. “Enemy” is oyev, the word for the Philistines themselves. In verse 25 he asked to be avenged of “the king’s enemies”; now David is counted among them, and it lasts “all the days”.

The “princes” are the Philistine lords, the five rulers of their cities. “Much set by” is 1611 English for highly prized, the Hebrew yaqar, “precious”. The word comes back when Saul admits that David held his life “precious” in 26:21.