Saul tries to kill David
19
📚And Saul told his son Jonathan, and all his servants, that they should kill 📖 David. 2 📚But Saul’s son Jonathan greatly delighted 📖 in David, and Jonathan told David, saying, “My father Saul is seeking to kill you. Now therefore, please watch out for yourself until morning, and stay in a secret place and hide yourself. 3 📚And I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will talk with my father about you. And I will tell you what I find out”. 4 📚And Jonathan spoke well of David to his father Saul, and said to him, “May the king not sin against his servant, against David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his actions toward you have been very good. 5 📚For he put his life in jeopardy and killed the Philistine, and the LORD accomplished a great deliverance for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without a cause?”
6 📚And Saul listened to the voice of Jonathan, and Saul gave his oath, “As the LORD lives, he will not be killed”.
19:6 Saul was quick to make oaths, but not to keep them (1 Sam 14:24, 44). He was, like Reuben (Gen 49:4), unstable as water.⚜
7 📚And Jonathan called David, and Jonathan told him all those things. And Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence, as in times past.
8 📚And there was war again, and David went out and fought with the Philistines, and killed them in a great slaughter; and they fled from him.
9 📚And the evil 📖 spirit from the LORD was on Saul as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand, and David was playing the harp with his hand. 10 📚And Saul tried to strike David to the wall with the javelin, but he slipped away from Saul’s presence, and Saul struck the javelin into the wall. And David fled and escaped that night.
11 📚And Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him and to kill him in the morning 📖. And David’s wife Michal told him, saying, “If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed”.
Michal helps David escape
12 📚So Michal let David down through a window, and he went out and fled and escaped.
19:12 Saul hoped that by giving Michal to David he would be killed (1 Sam 18:25). Instead, she becomes a means of his escape. Note at 18:14-16.⚜
13 📚And Michal took an idol 📖 and laid it in the bed, and put a rug of goats’ hair at its head, and covered it with a cloth.
14 📚And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick”.
15 📚And Saul again sent the messengers to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me on the bed, so that I can kill him”. 16 And when the messengers went in, they saw that there was an idol in the bed, with a rug of goats’ hair at its head.
17 📚And Saul said to Michal, “Why have you deceived me so, and sent my enemy away, so that he has escaped?” And Michal answered Saul, “He told me, ‘Let me go; why should I kill you?’ ”
19:17 Michal was as quick to lie as Saul to make oaths.⚜
18 📚So David fled and escaped and came to Samuel at Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and stayed in Naioth.
Saul and his men prophesy
19 📚And it was told Saul, saying, “Look, David is at Naioth in Ramah”. 20 📚And Saul sent messengers to take David, and when they saw the group of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing there as their leader, the Spirit of God came on the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. 21 📚And when it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesied. And Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they also prophesied. 22 Then he also went to Ramah, and came to a great well that is in Sechu, and asked and said, “Where are Samuel and David?” And someone said, “Look, they are at Naioth in Ramah”.
23 📚And he went there, to Naioth in Ramah. And the Spirit of God came on him also, and he went on, prophesying, until he came to Naioth in Ramah.
19:23 Note at 10:10. He went to kill David and yet here he is prophesying. By this we can see that a certain kind of prophesying, even by the Spirit of God (as here), had nothing to do with the character or life style of the person who did it, and was no mark of spirituality. See also Num 24:2; John 11:49-51.⚜
24 📚And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel 📖, like the others, and lay down naked all that day and all that night 📖. Therefore they say, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”