The Ziphites' question was really an offer to betray David. They told Saul exactly where he was hiding and went on, "Now therefore, O king, come down... and our part shall be to deliver him into the king's hand" (1 Samuel 23:20). Matthew Henry says they did it "to ingratiate themselves with Saul," and that Saul had not summoned or threatened them; they came "of their own accord, and even without asking a reward."

Gill suggests a further motive: though they were of David's own tribe, they were "terrified with what Saul had done to Nob" and thought it safest to inform on him. Keil & Delitzsch place the scene beside the one before it: "The treachery of the Ziphites forms a striking contrast to Jonathan's treatment of David."

Saul welcomed them: "Blessed be ye of the LORD; for ye have compassion on me" (1 Samuel 23:21). He sent them to find out more, "and come ye again to me with the certainty," promising to "search him out throughout all the thousands of Judah" (1 Samuel 23:22-23). Saul pursued David into the wilderness of Maon, until "Saul and his men compassed David and his men round about to take them." Then "there came a messenger unto Saul, saying, Haste thee, and come; for the Philistines have invaded the land," and Saul turned back (1 Samuel 23:26-28).

The Ziphites gave David away, but they could not hand him over. Just before their visit the narrator had said, "Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand" (1 Samuel 23:14), and the rest of the chapter shows it. When Saul had David surrounded, a messenger arrived at that very moment. Gill calls it "certainly the providence of God that directed this affair." Henry says the mountain between them was "an emblem of the divine Providence coming between David and the destroyer."

Henry and Gill both link Psalm 54 to this betrayal. There David prays, "strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my soul: they have not set God before them," and then, "Behold, God is mine helper" (Psalms 54:3-4). Henry adds that David calls the Ziphites "strangers, though they were Israelites, because they used him barbarously."