1 Samuel 14:1-15
There is no restraint to the LORD
He and his armour bearer climb between two crags on a sign they invent themselves. Twenty men fall in half an acre and the whole Philistine camp panics.
People of the Bible
Jonathan
Gave away the throne he was born to, garment by garment, and meant it.
Jonathan is Saul’s heir and the best soldier in the book before David arrives. He climbs a cliff with one armour bearer on the reasoning that it may be the LORD will work for us, for there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few, and starts a rout. He eats honey on a day his father has cursed anyone who eats, and the army has to buy his life back. Then David kills Goliath, and Jonathan takes off his robe, his armour, his sword, his bow and his belt and gives them to him, which is what a man does when he is handing over a succession.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Jonathan
- 01
- 02
1 Samuel 14:24-45
The honey and the oath
He did not hear the curse, tastes honey on the end of his staff, and says plainly that his father has troubled the land. The people ransom him rather than let him die.
- 03
1 Samuel 18:1-4
The robe, the sword, the bow and the belt
His soul is knit to David’s. He strips off everything that marks him as the king’s son and gives it away, and the text lists each item separately.
- 04
1 Samuel 20:1-42
The arrows in the field
He tests his father, gets a spear thrown at him, and goes out with a boy and a bow to signal a verdict he cannot say aloud. Then he sends the boy away and they weep together.
- 05
1 Samuel 31:1-6
Gilboa
He dies with his brothers and his father on the same mountain on the same day. David’s lament names him last and longest: your love to me was wonderful.
Why it matters
Jonathan is the one person in the account who has everything to lose by David succeeding and is glad about it anyway. He says it in as many words: you shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. He warns David, he argues with his father about him, he takes a spear thrown at him for it, and he goes out to the wilderness one last time to strengthen his hand in God. Then he dies beside the father who never listened to him.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
