¹⁴Now the Spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul and an evil spirit from Yahweh tormented him. ¹⁵So the servants of Saul said to him, “Look please, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. ¹⁶Please, let our lord command your servants who are before you! Let them seek a man skilled in playing on the lyre. When^l the evil spirit from God is upon you, he can play on it^m and you will feel better.”ⁿ ¹⁷So Saul said to his servants, “Please select a man who plays a stringed instrument well^o and bring him to me.”

¹⁸One of the servants answered and said, “Look, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing a stringed instrument, a brave man, a warrior, prudent in speech, and handsome.^p And Yahweh is with him.” ¹⁹So Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me David your son who is with the sheep.” ²⁰And Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread and a skin of wine and one young goat^q and sent them to Saul by the hand of David his son. ²¹So David came to Saul and entered his service.^r He^s loved him greatly and he became Saul’s armor bearer.^t ²²Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, “Please let David stand before me, because he has found favor in my sight.”^u ²³So whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the stringed instrument and play it with his hand. Then it would bring relief^v for Saul; he would feel better^w and the evil spirit would depart from him.

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Footnotes

lLiterally “And it will happen that”
mLiterally “with his hand”
nLiterally “and it will be good for you”
oLiterally “doing well to play a stringed instrument”
pLiterally “a hero of ability, a man of war, discerning of word, and a man of appearance”
qLiterally “kid of a goat”
rLiterally “stood before him”
sThat is, Saul
tLiterally “he became for him a carrier of weapons”
uLiterally “in my eyes”
vLiterally “it would be relieved”
wLiterally “it would be good for him”