1 Samuel 20–21

David and Jonathan

20Then David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged^m your father, that he is trying to kill me?”ⁿ

²“Never!” Jonathan replied. “You are not going to die! Look, my father doesn’t do anything, great or small, without letting me know. Why would he hide this from me? It isn’t so!”

³But David took an oath^o and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said to himself, ‘Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved.’ Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”

⁴Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.”

⁵So David said, “Look, tomorrow is the New Moon feast,^p and I am supposed to dine with the king; but let me go and hide^q in the field until the evening of the day after tomorrow. ⁶If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David earnestly asked my permission^r to hurry to Bethlehem,^s his hometown, because an annual^t sacrifice is being made there for his whole clan.’ ⁷If he says, ‘Very well,’ then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper,^u you can be sure that he is determined^v to harm me. ⁸As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant^w with you before the Lord. If I am guilty, then kill^x me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?”

⁹“Never!” Jonathan said. “If I had the least inkling that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn’t I tell you?”

¹⁰David asked, “Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?”

¹¹“Come,” Jonathan said, “let’s go out into the field.” So they went there together.

¹²Then Jonathan said to David, “I swear by the Lord, the God of Israel, that I will surely sound^y out my father by this time the day after tomorrow! If he is favorably disposed toward you, will I not send you word and let you know? ¹³But if my father intends to harm you, may the Lord deal with Jonathan, be it ever so severely,^z if I do not let you know and send you away in peace. May the Lord be with^a you as he has been with my father. ¹⁴But show me unfailing kindness^b like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, ¹⁵and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family^c—not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”

¹⁶So Jonathan^d made a covenant^e with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord call David’s enemies to account.^f” ¹⁷And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath^g out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.

¹⁸Then Jonathan said to David, “Tomorrow is the New Moon feast. You will be missed, because your seat will be empty.^{h 19}The day after tomorrow, toward evening, go to the place where you hidⁱ when this trouble began, and wait by the stone Ezel. ²⁰I will shoot three arrows^j to the side of it, as though I were shooting at a target. ²¹Then I will send a boy and say, ‘Go, find the arrows.’ If I say to him, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them here,’ then come, because, as surely as the Lord lives, you are safe; there is no danger. ²²But if I say to the boy, ‘Look, the arrows are beyond^k you,’ then you must go, because the Lord has sent you away. ²³And about the matter you and I discussed—remember, the Lord is witness^l between you and me forever.”

²⁴So David hid in the field, and when the New Moon feast^m came, the king sat down to eat. ²⁵He sat in his customary place by the wall, opposite Jonathan,^a and Abner sat next to Saul, but David’s place was empty.^{n 26}Saul said nothing that day, for he thought, “Something must have happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean—surely he is unclean.^o” ²⁷But the next day, the second day of the month, David’s place was empty again. Then Saul said to his son Jonathan, “Why hasn’t the son of Jesse come to the meal, either yesterday or today?”

²⁸Jonathan answered, “David earnestly asked me for permission^p to go to Bethlehem. ²⁹He said, ‘Let me go, because our family is observing a sacrifice^q in the town and my brother has ordered me to be there. If I have found favor in your eyes, let me get away to see my brothers.’ That is why he has not come to the king’s table.”

³⁰Saul’s anger flared up at Jonathan and he said to him, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don’t I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? ³¹As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom^r will be established. Now send someone to bring him to me, for he must die!”

³²“Why^s should he be put to death? What^t has he done?” Jonathan asked his father. ³³But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended^u to kill David.

³⁴Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; on that second day of the feast he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David.

³⁵In the morning Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. He had a small boy with him, ³⁶and he said to the boy, “Run and find the arrows I shoot.” As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. ³⁷When the boy came to the place where Jonathan’s arrow had fallen, Jonathan called out after him, “Isn’t the arrow beyond^v you?” ³⁸Then he shouted, “Hurry! Go quickly! Don’t stop!” The boy picked up the arrow and returned to his master. ³⁹(The boy knew nothing about all this; only Jonathan and David knew.) ⁴⁰Then Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said, “Go, carry them back to town.”

⁴¹After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground.^w Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most.

⁴²Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace,^x for we have sworn friendship^y with each other in the name of the Lord,^z saying, ‘The Lord is witness^a between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.^b’ ” Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town.^b

David at Nob

21^aDavid went to Nob,^c to Ahimelek the priest. Ahimelek trembled^d when he met him, and asked, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”

²David answered Ahimelek the priest, “The king sent me on a mission and said to me, ‘No one is to know anything about the mission I am sending you on.’ As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place. ³Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.”

⁴But the priest answered David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread^e on hand; however, there is some consecrated^f bread here—provided the men have kept^g themselves from women.”

⁵David replied, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual^h whenever^b I set out. The men’s bodies are holyⁱ even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!” ⁶So the priest gave him the consecrated bread,^j since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.

⁷Now one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the Lord; he was Doeg^k the Edomite,^l Saul’s chief shepherd.

⁸David asked Ahimelek, “Don’t you have a spear or a sword here? I haven’t brought my sword or any other weapon, because the king’s mission was urgent.”

⁹The priest replied, “The sword^m of Goliathⁿ the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah,^o is here; it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want it, take it; there is no sword here but that one.”

David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”

David at Gath

¹⁰That day David fled from Saul and went^p to Achish king of Gath. ¹¹But the servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sing about in their dances:

“ ‘Saul has slain his thousands,

and David his tens of thousands’?”^q

¹²David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. ¹³So he pretended to be insane^r in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard.

¹⁴Achish said to his servants, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? ¹⁵Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?”