Bible Commentaries

The repetition not only of the treachery of the Ziphites, but also of thesparing of Saul by David, furnishes no proof in itself that the accountcontained in this chapter is only another legend of the occurrences alreadyrelated in 1 Samuel 23:19-24:22. As the pursuit of David by Saul lasted forseveral years, in so small a district as the desert of Judah, there is nothingstrange in the repetition of the same scenes. And the assertion made byThenius, that “Saul would have been a moral monster, which he evidentlywas not, if he had pursued David with quiet deliberation, and through themedium of the same persons, and had sought his life again, after his ownlife had been so magnanimously spared by him,” not only betrays asuperficial acquaintance with the human heart, but is also founded uponthe mere assertion, for which there is no proof, that Saul was evidently noso; and it is proved to be worthless by the fact, that after the first occasionon which his life was so magnanimously spared by David, he did not leaveoff seeking him up and down in the land, and that David was obliged toseek refuge with the Philistines in consequence, as may be seen from 1 Samuel 27:1-12, which Thenius himself assigns to the same source as 1 Samuel 24. The agreement between the two accounts reduces it entirely to outwardand unessential things. It consists chiefly in the fact that the Ziphites cametwice to Saul at Gibeah, and informed him that David was stopping intheir neighbourhood, in the hill Hachilah, and also that Saul went out twicein pursuit of David with 3000 men. But the three thousand were thestanding body of men that Saul had raised from the very beginning of hisreign out of the whole number of those who were capable of bearing arms,for the purpose of carrying on his smaller wars (1 Samuel 13:2); and the hillof Hachilah appears to have been a place in the desert of Judah peculiarlywell adapted for the site of an encampment. On the other hand, all thedetails, as well as the final results of the two occurrences, differ entirelyfrom one another. When David was betrayed the first time, he drew backinto the desert of Maon before the advance of Saul; and being completelysurrounded by Saul upon one of the mountains there, was only saved frombeing taken prisoner by the circumstance that Saul was compelledsuddenly to relinquish the pursuit of David on account of the report thatthe Philistines had invaded the land (1 Samuel 23:25-28). But on the second occasion Saul encamped upon the hill of Hachilah,whilst David had drawn back into the adjoining desert, from which hecrept secretly into Saul's encampment, and might, if he had chosen, haveput his enemy to death (1 Samuel 26:3.). There is quite as much differencein the minuter details connected with the sparing of Saul. On the firstoccasion, Saul entered a cave in the desert of Engedi, whilst David and hismen were concealed in the interior of the cave, without having the smallestsuspicion that they were anywhere near (1 Samuel 24:2-4). The second timeDavid went with Abishai into the encampment of Saul upon the hill ofHachilah, while the king and all his men were sleeping (1 Samuel 26:3, 1 Samuel 26:5). It istrue that on both occasions David's men told him that God had given hisenemy into his hand; but the first time they added, Do to him whatseemeth good in thy sight; and David cut off the lappet of Saul's coat,whereupon his conscience smote him, and he said, “Far be it from me tolay my hand upon the Lord's anointed” (1 Samuel 24:5-8). In the second instance, on the contrary, when David saw Saul in thedistance lying by the carriage rampart and the army sleeping round him, hecalled to two of his heroes, Ahimelech and Abishai, to go with him into thecamp of the sleeping foe, and then went thither with Abishai, whothereupon said to him, “God hath delivered thine enemy into thy hand: letme alone, that I may pierce him with the spear.” But David rejected thisproposal, and merely took away the spear and water-bowl that were atSaul's head (1 Samuel 26:6-12). And lastly, notwithstanding the fact that thewords of David and replies of Saul agree in certain general thoughts, yetthey differ entirely in the main. On the first occasion David showed theking that his life had been in his power, and yet he had spared him, todispel the delusion that he was seeking his life (1 Samuel 24:10-16). On thesecond occasion he asked the king why he was pursuing him, and called tohim to desist from his pursuit (1 Samuel 26:18.). But Saul was so affectedthe first time that he wept aloud, and openly declared that David wouldobtain the kingdom; and asked him to promise on oath, that when he did,he would not destroy his family (1 Samuel 24:17-22). The second time, on the contrary, he only declared that he had sinned andacted foolishly, and would to David no more harm, and that David wouldundertake and prevail; but he neither shed tears, nor brought himself tospeak of David's ascending the throne, so that he was evidently muchmore hardened than before (1 Samuel 26:21-25). These decided differencesprove clearly enough that the incident described in this chapter is not thesame as the similar one mentioned in 1 Samuel 23 and 24, but belongs to a laterdate, when Saul's enmity and hardness had increased.

1 Samuel 26:1-2

The second betrayal of David by the Ziphites occurred afterDavid had married Abigail at Carmel, and when he had already returned tothe desert of Judah. On 1 Samuel 26:1 and 1 Samuel 26:2 compare the explanations of 1 Samuel 23:19 and 1 Samuel 24:3. Instead of “before (in the face of) Jeshimon” (i.e., thewilderness), we find the situation defined more precisely in 1 Samuel 23:19,as “to the right (i.e., on the south) of the wilderness” (Jeshimon).

1 Samuel 26:3-4

When David saw (i.e., perceived) in the desert that Saul wascoming behind him, he sent out spies, and learned from them that hecertainly had come (אל־נכון, for a certainty, as in 1 Samuel 23:23).

1 Samuel 26:5-7

Upon the receipt of this information, David rose up with twoattendants (mentioned in 1 Samuel 26:6) to reconnoitre the camp of Saul. When hesaw the place where Saul and his general Abner were lying - Saul was lyingby the waggon rampart, and the fighting men were encamped round abouthim - he said to Ahimelech and Abishai, “Who will go down with me intothe camp to Saul?” Whereupon Abishai declared himself ready to do so;and they both went by night, and found Saul sleeping with all the people. Ahimelech the Hittite is never mentioned again; but Abishai the son ofZeruiah, David's sister (1 Chronicles 2:16), and a brother of Joab, wasafterwards a celebrated general of David, as was also his brother Joab (2 Samuel 16:9; 2 Samuel 18:2; 2 Samuel 21:17). Saul's spear was pressed (stuck) into the ground athis head, as a sign that the king was sleeping there, for the spear servedSaul as a sceptre (cf. 1 Samuel 18:10).

1 Samuel 26:8-11

When Abishai exclaimed, “God hath delivered thine enemyinto thy hand: now will I pierce him with the spear into the ground with astroke, and will give no second” (sc., stroke: the Vulgate rendering givesthe sense exactly: et secundo non opus erit, there will be no necessity for asecond), David replied, “Destroy him not; for who hath stretched out hishand against the anointed of the Lord, and remained unhurt?” נקּה, as in Exodus 21:19; Numbers 5:31. He then continued (in 1 Samuel 26:10, 1 Samuel 26:11): “Astruly as Jehovah liveth, unless Jehovah smite him (i.e., carry him off witha stroke; cf. 1 Samuel 25:38), or his day cometh that he dies (i.e., or he dies anatural death; 'his day' denoting the day of death, as in Job 14:6; Job 15:32), orhe goes into battle and is carried off, far be it from me with Jehovah(מיהוה, as in 1 Samuel 24:7) to stretch forth my hand againstJehovah's anointed.” The apodosis to 1 Samuel 26:10 commences with חלילה, “far be it,” or “the Lord forbid,” in 1 Samuel 26:11. “Take now the spearwhich is at his head, and the pitcher, and let us go.”

1 Samuel 26:12

They departed with these trophies, without any one waking upand seeing them, because they were all asleep, as a deep sleep from theLord had fallen upon them. שׁאוּל מראשׁתי standsfor שׁ ממראשׁתי, “from the head of Saul,” with מ dropped. Theexpression “a deep sleep of Jehovah,” i.e., a deep sleep sent or inflicted byJehovah, points to the fact that the Lord favoured David's enterprise.

“And David went over to the other side, and placed himself upon the topof the mountain afar off (the space between them was great), and cried tothe people,” etc. Saul had probably encamped with his fighting men on theslope of the ill Hachilah, so that a valley separated him from the oppositehill, from which David had no doubt reconnoitred the camp and then gonedown to it (1 Samuel 26:6), and to which he returned after the deed wasaccomplished. The statement that this mountain was far off, so that therewas a great space between David and Saul, not only favours the accuracyof the historical tradition, but shows that David reckoned far less nowupon any change in the state of Saul's mind than he had done before, whenhe followed Saul without hesitation from the cave and called after him (1 Samuel 24:9), and that in fact he rather feared lest Saul should endeavour toget him into his power as soon as he woke from his sleep.

1 Samuel 26:14

David called out to Abner, whose duty it was as general todefend the life of his king. And Abner replied, “Who art thou, who criestout to the king?” i.e., offendest the king by thy shouting, and disturbesthis rest.

1 Samuel 26:15-16

David in return taunted Abner with having watched the kingcarelessly, and made himself chargeable with his death. “For one of thepeople came to destroy thy lord the king.” As a proof of this, he thenshowed him the spear and pitcher that he had taken away with him. ראה is to be repeated in thought before את־צפּחת: “look where theking's spear is; and (look) at the pitcher at his head,” sc., where it is. Thesereproaches that were cast at Abner were intended to show to Saul, whomight at any rate possibly hear, and in fact did hear, that David was themost faithful defender of his life, more faithful than his closest and mostzealous servants.

1 Samuel 26:17-19

When Saul heard David's voice (for he could hardly have seenDavid, as the occurrence took place before daybreak, at the latest when theday began to dawn), and David had made himself known to the king inreply to his inquiry, David said, “Why doth my lord pursue his servant?for what have I done, and what evil is in my hand?” He then gave him thewell-meant advice, to seek reconciliation for his wrath against him, and notto bring upon himself the guilt of allowing David to find his death in aforeign land. The words, “and now let my lord the king hear the saying ofhis servant,” serve to indicate that what follows is important, and worthyof laying to heart. In his words, David supposes two cases as conceivablecauses of Saul's hostility:(1) if Jehovah hath stirred thee up against me; (2) if men have done so. Inthe first case, he proposes as the best means of overcoming thisinstigation, that He (Jehovah) should smell an offering. The Hiphil ירח only means to smell, not to cause to smell. The subject is Jehovah. Smelling a sacrifice is an anthropomorphic term, used to denote the divinesatisfaction (cf. Genesis 8:21). The meaning of the words, “let Jehovah smellsacrifice,” is therefore, “let Saul appease the wrath of God by thepresentation of acceptable sacrifices.” What sacrifices they are whichplease God, is shown in Psalm 51:18-19; and it is certainly not by accidentmerely that David uses the word minchah, the technical expression in thelaw for the bloodless sacrifice, which sets forth the sanctification of life ingood works. The thought to which David gives utterance here, namely,that God instigates a man to evil actions, is met with in other passages ofthe Old Testament. It not only lies at the foundation of the words ofDavid in Psalm 51:6 (cf. Hengstenberg on Psalms), but is also clearlyexpressed in 2 Samuel 24:1, where Jehovah instigates David to number thepeople, and where this instigation is described as a manifestation of theanger of God against Israel; and in 2 Samuel 16:10., where David says, withregard to Shimei, that God had bade him curse him. These passages also show that God only instigates those who have sinnedagainst Him to evil deeds; and therefore that the instigation consists in thefact that God impels sinners to manifest the wickedness of their hearts indeeds, or furnishes the opportunity and occasion for the unfolding andpractical manifestation of the evil desire of the heart, that the sinner mayeither be brought to the knowledge of his more evil ways and also torepentance, through the evil deed and its consequences, or, if the heartshould be hardened still more by the evil deed, that it may become ripe forthe judgment of death. The instigation of a sinner to evil is simply onepeculiar way in which God, as a general rule, punishes sins throughsinners; for God only instigates to evil actions such as have drawn downthe wrath of God upon themselves in consequence of their sin. WhenDavid supposes the fact that Jehovah has instigated Saul against him, heacknowledges, implicitly at least, that he himself is a sinner, whom theLord may be intending to punish, though without lessening Saul's wrongby this indirect confession.

The second supposition is: “if, however, children of men” (sc., haveinstigated thee against me); in which case “let them be cursed before theLord; for they drive me now (this day) that I dare not attach myself to theinheritance of Jehovah (i.e., the people of God), saying, Go, serve othergods.” The meaning is this: They have carried it so far now, that I amobliged to separate from the people of God, to fly from the land of theLord, and, because far away from His sanctuary, to serve other gods. Theidea implied in the closing words was, that Jehovah could only beworshipped in Canaan, at the sanctuary consecrated to Him, because itwas only there that He manifested himself to His people, and revealed Hisface or gracious presence (vid., Psalm 42:2-3; Psalm 84:11; Psalm 143:6.). “We are not tounderstand that the enemies of David were actually accustomed to usethese very words, but David was thinking of deeds rather than words”(Calvin).

1 Samuel 26:20

“And now let not my blood fall to the earth far away from theface of the Lord,” i.e., do not carry it so far as to compel me to perish in aforeign land. “For the king of Israel has gone out to seek a single flea (vid.,1 Samuel 24:15), as one hunts a partridge upon the mountains.” This lastcomparison does not of course refer to the first, so that “the object ofcomparison is compared again with something else,” as Thenius supposes,but it refers rather to the whole of the previous clause. The king of Israel ispursuing something very trivial, and altogether unworthy of his pursuit,just as if one were hunting a partridge upon the mountains. “No one wouldthink it worth his while to hunt a single partridge that had flown to themountains, when they may be found in coveys in the fields” (Winer, Bibl. R. W. ii. p. 307). This comparison, therefore, does not presuppose thatקרא must be a bird living upon the mountains, as Theniusmaintains, so as to justify his altering the text according to the Septuagint. These words of David were perfectly well adapted to sharpen Saul'sconscience, and induce him to desist from his enmity, if he still had an earfor the voice of truth.

Moreover, Saul could not help confessing, “I have sinned: return, my sonDavid; I will do thee harm no more, because my life was precious in thineeyes that day.” A good intention, which he never carried out. “He declaredthat he would never do any more what he had already so often promisednot to do again; and yet he did not fail to do it again and again. He oughtrather to have taken refuge with God, and appealed to Him for grace, thathe might not fall into such sins again; yea, he should have entreated Davidhimself to pray for him” (Berleb. Bible). He adds still further, “Behold, Ihave acted foolishly, and have gone sore astray;” but yet he persists in thisfolly. “There is no sinner so hardened, but that God gives him now andthen some rays of light, which show him all his error. But, alas! when theyare awakened by such divine movings, it is only for a few moments; andsuch impulses are no sooner past, than they fall back again immediatelyinto their former life, and forget all that they have promised.”

1 Samuel 26:22-23

David then bade the king send a servant to fetch back thespear and pitcher, and reminded him again of the recompense of God:“Jehovah will recompense His righteousness and His faithfulness to theman into whose hand Jehovah hath given thee to-day; and (for) I wouldnot stretch out my hand against the anointed of the Lord.”

1 Samuel 26:24-25

“Behold, as thy soul has been greatly esteemed in my eyesto-day, so will my soul be greatly esteemed in the eyes of Jehovah, thatHe will save me out of all tribulation.” These words do not contain any“sounding of his own praises” (Thenius), but are merely the testimony ofa good conscience before God in the presence of an enemy, who is indeedobliged to confess his wrong-doing, but who no longer feels oracknowledges his need of forgiveness. For even Saul's reply to these wordsin 1 Samuel 26:25 (“Blessed art thou, my son David: thou wilt undertake, and alsoprevail:” תּוּכל יכל, lit. to vanquish, i.e., to carry outwhat one undertakes) does not express any genuine goodwill towardsDavid, but only an acknowledgment, forced upon him by this freshexperience of David's magnanimity, that God was blessing all hisundertakings, so that he would prevail. Saul had no more thoughts of anyreal reconciliation with David. “David went his way, and Saul turned to hisplace” (cf. Numbers 24:25). Thus they parted, and never saw each other again. There is nothing said about Saul returning to his house, as there was whenhis life was first spared (1 Samuel 24:22). On the contrary, he does not seemto have given up pursuing David; for, according to 1 Samuel 27:1-12, David wasobliged to take refuge in a foreign land, and carry out what he haddescribed in 1 Samuel 26:19 as his greatest calamity.