1 Samuel 20

because he was too old, and they didn’t want his sons to succeed him because they accepted bribes and perverted justice (8:3). But King Saul was guilty of disobeying God’s clear commandments and also of lying about what he had done, and because of these sins, he had forfeited his throne. He was still in office and yet was unfit to lead the nation, and Samuel had broken fellowship with him (15:34–35). In his grief, Samuel must have felt like a dismal failure as a father, a spiritual leader, and a mentor to the new king. The word translated “mourn” means “to mourn for the dead” and reveals the depths of Samuel’s sorrow.

There is a time to mourn (Eccl. 3:4), but there is also a time to act (Josh. 7:10), and for Samuel, that time had arrived. In spite of how he felt about himself, Samuel’s work wasn’t over yet, for God wanted him to anoint the new king, David, the son of Jesse. If Saul was “the people’s king,” then David was God’s king, and the events recorded in these two chapters indicate clearly that God’s hand was unquestionably on David, the leader of His choice.

David has been criticized and called impulsive because he left Ramah and his friend Samuel and fled to Gibeah to confer with Jonathan. But David knew that Saul’s ecstatic experience would soon end and would leave his heart unchanged. Saul had promised Jonathan that he wouldn’t try to kill David (19:6), but he had already broken that promise four times (vv. 20–24), so the wisest course for David was to get away from Saul and go into hiding. For David to remain at Gibeah wasn’t an exercise of faith; it was an act of presumption and he was only tempting God. The drama in these three chapters involves four persons: Jonathan, Saul, David, and Doeg.

In all literature, David and Jonathan stand out as examples of devoted friends. Jonathan had the more difficult situation because he wanted to be loyal to his father while at the same time being a friend to the next king of Israel. Conflict of loyalties, especially in the family, is one of the most painful difficulties we face in the life of faith (Matt. 10:34–39), but Christ calls for supreme devotion to Him and His will for our lives.

Conferring (vv. 1–10, 18–23). David met Jonathan somewhere near Gibeah and wasted no time confronting his beloved friend with the key question: “What have I done that is so evil that your father wants to kill me?” David hadn’t disobeyed any royal commands, incited any rebellion against the throne, or broken God’s law, yet Saul was bent on destroying him. David knew that Saul was an envious man who wanted to keep the throne for himself and hand it on to his descendants, but David had faith that the Lord would remove Saul from the scene in His good time and in His own way (26:7–11). David dearly loved Jonathan and didn’t want to hurt him by criticizing his father, but now it was a matter of life or death.

Jonathan’s reply sounds rather naive, especially in the light of Saul’s statement in 19: and his behavior at Ramah. Saul had thrown his spear at David at least three times (10–11; 19:9–10), and he had sent three groups of soldiers to capture him, and Saul finally went to Ramah himself to do the job (vv. 20–24). How much evidence did Jonathan need that his father was a disturbed man out to destroy God’s anointed king? Jonathan mistakenly thought that his own relationship to his father was closer than it really was and that Saul would confide in him, but subsequent events proved him wrong, for Saul would even try to kill Jonathan!

David refuted Jonathan’s argument by stating that the logical thing for Saul to do was to keep his eldest son in the dark. Saul knew that David and Jonathan were devoted friends and that Jonathan would be pained if he knew Saul’s real intentions. The matter was so serious that David couldn’t put his faith in what Saul told Jonathan. “There is but a step between me and death” (20:3). This was true both metaphorically and literally, for three times David had dodged the king’s spear.

Jonathan offered to help in any way his friend suggested, and David proposed a simple test of Saul’s true feelings. It was customary for each Jewish family to hold a feast at the new moon (Num. 10:10; 28:11–15; Ps. 81:3), and Saul would expect David to attend. If Saul’s son-in-law and leading military hero didn’t attend the feast, it would be an insult to the king as well as the family, so David’s absence would help reveal Saul’s genuine attitude toward David. If Saul became angry, then David’s assessment was correct, but if Saul excused David and didn’t press the matter, then Jonathan was correct. The only problem with this scheme was that it required Jonathan to lie by saying that David had gone to Bethlehem to attend his own family’s feast. David would be hiding in the field and waiting for Jonathan to tell him whether or not it was safe to come home.

How would Jonathan safely get the message to David (1 Sam. 20:10)? He couldn’t trust one of the servants to carry the word, so, in spite of the danger, he would have to do it himself. He devised a simple plan involving shooting three arrows out in the field where David was hiding (v. 20). Jonathan would call to the lad who was helping him and in this way signal David and tell him what to do. Even if some of Saul’s spies were present, they wouldn’t understand what was going on.

Covenanting (vv. 11–17). From verse 11 to verse 23, David is silent while Jonathan reviews the covenant they had made with each other (18:1–4). Jonathan even took an oath and promised to give David the correct message on the third day of the feast, so he would know whether the king was friendly or angry. Jonathan went beyond the immediate crisis to deal with future events. He knew that David would one day become king, and he prayed that the Lord would bless his reign. In their covenant, they agreed that Jonathan would serve next to David as second in command (23:16–18), and now Jonathan asked that if anything happened to him, David would promise not to wipe out his household, and David agreed. The phrase “the kindness of the Lord” (20:14) shows up in 2 Samuel 9 where David’s compassionate care of Jonathan’s crippled son, Mephibosheth, is described.

Jonathan reaffirmed his oath and included the whole house of David (1 Sam. 20:16), and he asked David to repeat his covenant oath as well. There’s no mention of the offering of a covenant sacrifice (Gen. 15) or the signing of a covenant document, because the love the two men had for the Lord and each other was sufficient to make the agreement binding. Jonathan had brought much joy and encouragement to David during those difficult years, but it wasn’t God’s will that David permanently join himself to Saul and his family, for they belonged to the wrong tribe and represented a rejected and condemned monarchy. David never had a coregent because Jonathan was killed in battle (1 Sam. 31:1–2), and David rejected Saul’s daughter Michal as his wife and she died childless (2 Sam. 6:16–23). Had she borne any children, it would have brought confusion into the royal line.

On the first day of the feast, David hid himself by the stone of Ezel and waited for Jonathan’s signal, for it was remotely possible that the king might be favorably inclined and welcome him back into the official circle.

David’s absence (vv. 24–29). Constantly afraid of personal attack, Saul sat with his back to the wall, his commander Abner next to him, and Jonathan across from his father. David’s place next to Jonathan was empty, but the king said nothing about it, convinced that David was ceremonially unclean and therefore unable to eat a holy feast that day. The feast consisted primarily of meat from the new moon fellowship offerings, and anyone ceremonially unclean was prohibited from participating (Lev. 7:20–21). Perhaps David had touched something unclean, or he may have had intercourse with his wife (15:16–18). If so, all he had to do was separate himself from other people for that day, bathe his body, and change clothes, and he could come back into society the next day.

But when the men met for their meal the second day, again David was missing, which suggested to Saul that his son-in-law’s absence was caused by something more serious than simple ritual defilement. An unclean person could remove the defilement in a day, but David had been missing for two days. Suspicious of anything out of the ordinary in his official staff, Saul asked Jonathan why David was absent, disdainfully calling him “the son of Jesse” rather than by his given name that was now so famous. Later, Saul would try to humiliate the high priest, Ahimelech, by calling him “the son of Ahitub” (1 Sam. 22:11–12).

At this point Jonathan dropped his lie into the conversation and nothing went right after that. Jonathan didn’t say that David’s father Jesse had summoned him home but that one of his brothers had commanded him to attend the family feast. Perhaps Jonathan hoped his father would assume that the invitation came from one of David’s three brothers serving in Saul’s army (17:13), which might make the matter easier for Saul to accept. Jonathan also used a verb that means “to get away, to make a quick visit” so that Saul wouldn’t suspect David of going home for a long visit and rallying his own troops so he could seize the throne.

Saul’s anger (vv. 30–34). When hateful feelings are in the heart, it doesn’t take much for angry words to come out of the mouth (Matt. 12:34–35). Saul had probably been brooding over how David had insulted him by refusing to attend the feast, and the longer he brooded, the more the fire raged within. But instead of attacking David, King Saul attacked his own son! Had the Lord not intervened back in Ramah, Saul would have killed David in the very presence of the prophet Samuel (1 Sam. 19:22–24), and now he reviled his own son while eating a holy feast!

The king’s tirade seems to disparage his own wife, but rightly understood, his words describe his son as the lowest of the low. According to Saul, Jonathan’s treachery in befriending David indicated that he was not Saul’s son at all but the son of some other man, for a son of Saul would never betray his father. Therefore, Jonathan was slandering his own mother and saying she was a common prostitute, a rebel against the law of Moses, and a woman who practiced perversion. Because Jonathan helped David and didn’t protect his father’s throne, he had shamed his mother as much as if he had exposed her nakedness. She bore him to be the successor to his father, and now Jonathan had refused the crown in favor of the son of Jesse. The king was shouting, “You are no son of mine! You must be illegitimate!”

Saul’s great concern was the preservation of the kingdom that the Lord had already taken from him. God had made it very clear that none of Saul’s sons would ever inherit the throne and David was the king of God’s choice, so Saul was fighting the will of God and asking Jonathan to do the same thing. Saul was aware that his son knew where David was hiding and commanded Jonathan to find David and bring him in to be slain. When Jonathan remonstrated with his father and refused to obey the royal command, Saul threw his spear at his own son! Jonathan left the table in great anger and spent the rest of the day fasting.

Jonathan’s alarm (vv. 35–42). Jonathan waited until the next day and then went out into the field with one of his young attendants as though he were going to practice shooting arrows. As he promised David, he shot three arrows (v. 20), one of which was sent far beyond the boy, making it necessary for Jonathan to shout to the lad. But his words were meant for David’s ears: “Hurry! Go quickly! Don’t linger!” When the boy came back with the arrows, Jonathan gave him the bow and sent him back to the city, and then he ran out to meet David.

This was not their last meeting (23:16–18), but it was certainly a profoundly emotional farewell. They both wept, but David wept the most. He didn’t know how many years of exile lay before him, and perhaps he might never see his beloved friend again. Eastern peoples aren’t ashamed to weep, embrace, and kiss one another when they meet or when they part (Gen. 31:55; Acts 20:37). Jonathan’s, “Go in peace” must have encouraged David. Both men reaffirmed their covenant, knowing that the Lord heard their words and saw their hearts. David left and traveled three miles to the priestly city of Nob, and Jonathan returned to Gibeah and continued to be an officer in his father’s army.

Ten years later, the Philistines would kill Saul, Jonathan, and his brothers on the battlefield (1 Sam. 31:1–6).