A Refuge Forms While Nob Is Destroyed

Adullam was an old town of the Shephelah (Joshua 15:35), the district where Judah once went down and befriended Hirah the Adullamite (Genesis 38:1). The titles of Psalms 57 and 142 place those prayers “in the cave”. David’s family goes down to join him, probably because Saul could reach them as easily as he reached David.

“Discontented” is literally “bitter of soul”, Hannah’s own condition at Shiloh (1:10). “In debt” names men with creditors, who in that world could lose their children or themselves to debt slavery (2 Kings 4:1). David’s first army is made of people with nothing further to lose.

Mizpeh means “watchtower”, and this Moabite one has never been located. Speaking to a foreign king, David says “God” rather than using the covenant name. A later Jewish tradition held that the king of Moab killed David’s parents, and used it to explain David’s harshness to Moab in 2 Samuel 8:2, though the book says nothing of it.

“The hold” is metsudah, a stronghold on a height, the word later used for “the strong hold of Zion” (2 Samuel 5:7). Where this one was is unclear: somewhere in Moab, or Adullam itself. The parents stay in Moab for as long as David is in it, and then drop from the record.

Gad appears here for the first time, and remains with David for life: he brings the word of judgment after the census (2 Samuel 24:11) and helps order the temple music (2 Chronicles 29:25). His first instruction sends David back into danger rather than away from it. The forest of Hareth is otherwise unknown.

“Under a tree in Ramah” is literally “under the tamarisk on the height”, not the town of Samuel. Saul holds court under a tamarisk here, and his bones will be buried under a tamarisk at Jabesh (31:13). The spear is in his hand again; the scene is a king enthroned with his weapon.

Saul addresses his men as “Benjamites”, and the appeal is openly tribal: his court is drawn from his own tribe, and David is from Judah. The rivalry between Benjamin and Judah will outlast Saul, in the civil war of 2 Samuel 2–3 and in Benjaminites like Shimei and Sheba who never accept David.

“Made a league” is the verb for cutting a covenant, the one of 20:16; Saul knows more about Jonathan than he admits. “Sorry for me” is literally “sick for me”, grieved on my behalf. He still calls David “my servant”, and complains that no one pities the king.

The Greek makes Doeg overseer of Saul’s mules. He calls David “the son of Jesse”, borrowing the king’s own sneer, a courtier who has learned the right words. He also names Ahimelech by his father Ahitub, the line of Eli (14:3), a family already under sentence (2:31).

Chapter 21 records bread and a sword but no inquiry of the LORD, so Doeg either supplies what the account left out or adds it. He puts it first. To seek God’s guidance for a man could be read as backing his cause, which makes it the most dangerous item on the list. “Victuals” means provisions for a journey.

Saul summons not only Ahimelech but his whole priestly family from Nob, a few miles away. “They came all of them”, a detail that says something by itself: men who knew themselves guilty of conspiracy would hardly all walk into the king’s presence together.

Saul will not use Ahimelech’s name, just as he will not use David’s: “thou son of Ahitub”. The priest answers hinneni, “Here I am”, the reply Samuel gave when God called him in the night at Shiloh (3:4). The same word now answers a king who means to kill.

Saul repeats his phrase from verse 8, “to lie in wait, as at this day”, word for word. The verb is the one for setting an ambush, yet David is hiding in caves, not lying in wait for anyone. Saul’s list uses “God” where Doeg said “the LORD”.

“Goeth at thy bidding” may mean “captain over thy bodyguard”; the same Hebrew word, mishma’at, names the guard Benaiah commanded (2 Samuel 23:23). If so, Ahimelech is reminding Saul that David commanded the king’s personal guard. “Honourable” means held in honour, weighty in the household.

“Less or more” is literally “small or great”, the pair Jonathan used when he insisted his father told him everything, “either great or small” (20:2). The priest who knew nothing is condemned, while the son who thought he knew everything was not told.

Saul pronounces the sentence in the same words he once used on his own son: “thou shalt surely die, Jonathan” (14:44), with the name placed at the end. This time he adds the whole house of the priest’s father.

“Footmen” are the ratsim, “runners”, the royal guard who ran before the king’s chariot, the office Samuel predicted in 8:11. They refuse to raise a hand, as the whole army once refused to let Jonathan die (14:45). This time there is someone else to do it.

An Edomite does what Israelite guards would not. The Greek counts three hundred and five priests. “A linen ephod” was the priest’s garment; the boy Samuel wore one at Shiloh (2:18). The number is given in persons who wore it, so each victim is counted as a priest.

The Hebrew begins and ends the list with “with the edge of the sword”, enclosing the whole town between the two phrases. Nob is called “the city of the priests”, the only town in the book given that name. The list runs from men to sheep in the order of 15:3.

Abiathar serves as David’s priest for the rest of his reign, until Solomon banishes him to Anathoth, and 1 Kings 2:27 says this fulfilled “the word of the LORD, which he spake concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh”. The one survivor carries the old sentence with him.

Abiathar calls the victims “the LORD’s priests”, the very phrase that made Saul’s runners refuse in verse 17. He names Saul, not Doeg, as the killer, placing the guilt with the one who gave the order.

“I knew it”: the verb Saul used when he accused the priests of knowing that David fled (verse 17). The priests did not know; David did. “I have occasioned” is literally “I have turned”, perhaps “I have brought it round”; the Greek renders it “I am guilty”.

“He that seeketh my life seeketh thy life” makes the two men fellow targets of one hunter. “Safeguard” is mishmeret, a charge or keeping. With Abiathar comes the ephod (23:6), and from now on the means of asking God travel with David, not with Saul.