UST 1SA Chapter 20

◄ 1SA 20 ► ║ ═ ©

20 David ran away from Naioth. He went to meet with Jonathan and told him, “I have done nothing wrong. I have not harmed your father. Nevertheless, he is trying to kill me!” 2 Jonathan replied, “My father is not going to kill you! I would not let that happen. Besides, he always tells me before he does anything of any kind. So he would not fail to tell me if he were planning to kill you. What you are saying can not be true.” 3 Then David solemnly declared this to Jonathan: “Your father knows very well that you and I are very good friends, so he says to himself, ‘I will not tell Jonathan what I am going to do. If I tell Jonathan, he will be upset, and then he will tell David.’ But I swear by Yahweh and I swear by your own life that your father is just about to kill me.” 4 Jonathan said to David, “I will do for you whatever you tell me to do.” 5 David replied, “Here is what you can do for me. Tomorrow the king will host a feast to celebrate the start of a new month. I always sit with the king at such festivals. But this time, allow me not to attend. Instead, I will hide in the field, and I will stay there until the evening of the day after tomorrow. 6 If your father asks why I am not there at the festival, this is what you should tell him: ‘All of David’s relatives gather once a year to sacrifice an animal and eat a meal from the meat at which they praise and thank Yahweh. He asked permission from me to make a brief visit to Bethlehem so that he could eat that meal with his family.’ 7 If your father says, ‘Very well’, then I know I will be safe. But if he becomes extremely angry, you can be sure that he definitely intends to kill me. 8 If that is true, then you must protect me. You indicated you would do that when you promised, with Yahweh as your witness, that you and I would always be good friends. But if I deserve to die for something very wrong that I have done, then you should kill me yourself. You do not need to make your father kill me.” 9 Jonathan replied, “I would never let my father kill you! If I ever find out that my father definitely intends to kill you, I will certainly tell you that.” 10 David asked him, “How will I find out if your father answers you harshly?” 11 Jonathan replied, “We need to go somewhere where we can speak more privately. Please come with me out to the field.” So they went together out into the field. 12 There Jonathan said to David, “I swear by Yahweh, the God whom we Israelites worship, that by this time tomorrow or the next day, I will find out from my father whether he intends to kill you. If he does not intend to kill you, I will certainly send a message to you to inform you of that. 13 But if he is planning to kill you, I hope that Yahweh will punish me very severely if I do not tell you in advance and help you flee so that you get away safely. Yahweh helped my father when he became king, and I hope that Yahweh will help you in the same way. 14 While Yahweh was listening, we swore an oath that we would always be friends. So I know you will not kill me when you become king. But suppose I have already died when you become king. Then our oath would not apply to me personally. 15 Instead, please never stop acting kindly toward my family, even after Yahweh has killed all your enemies everywhere on earth.” 16 Then Jonathan and David made a solemn agreement that applied to David’s descendants as well. They agreed that if David or his descendants ever killed Jonathan’s descendants, then they wanted Yahweh to punish David and his descendants by killing them. 17 Then Jonathan also had David swear by the love he had for Jonathan that he would not harm his descendants. Jonathan knew that David would keep that promise because David loved Jonathan as much as he loved himself. 18 Then Jonathan told him, “Tomorrow we will celebrate the festival of the new moon. Since you will not be sitting at your place when we eat, my father will miss you. 19 The day after tomorrow, hurry down from your hiding place high up in the mountains. Come back here and hide in the same place where you hid when I first warned you that my father was trying to kill you. Wait by the big rock that people call Ezel. 20 I will come out and pretend that I am using the rock as a target to practice how to shoot arrows. I will shoot three arrows, and I will make sure that they land beside the rock. 21 Then I will tell a boy to go and get the arrows. You may hear me call out to him, ‘You have gone too far, the arrows are behind you, turn around and pick them up!’ I swear by Yahweh that if you hear me say that, then it is safe for you to return. You are in no danger. 22 But you might also hear me call out to the boy, ‘The arrows are still past you, keep going!’ If you hear me say that, you will know that you must leave immediately. Yahweh wants you to go away so that you will be safe. 23 Regarding the promise we made never to harm the descendants of the other, Yahweh will always make sure that we keep it.” 24 So David went and hid in the field. When the festival of the new moon started, King Saul came to the table for the feast. 25 He sat where he usually sat, in the place of honor at the end of the table close to the wall. Jonathan gave up his seat next to Saul so that Abner, the army commander, could sit next to him. But David was absent. He was not sitting in his usual seat. 26 At the time Saul did not say anything about David being absent, because he was thinking, “Something must have happened that caused David to become ritually unclean so that he cannot attend this religious festival today.” 27 But the next day, when David was not sitting at the place where he usually sat, Saul asked Jonathan, “Why has that son of Jesse not been here to eat with us either yesterday or today?” 28 Jonathan replied, “David urgently requested permission from me to go to Bethlehem. 29 He told me, ‘Our family is going to offer a sacrifice in Bethlehem, and my oldest brother has insisted that I be there. So please let me go. I hope that you think well enough of me to permit that, since I would like to go and visit with my older brothers.’ I allowed David to go, and that is the reason why he is not here eating with you.” 30 Saul became furious with Jonathan. He said to him, “Your mother must have been unfaithful to me, because no real son of mine would have done that! It is no secret to me that you have promised always to be friends with that son of Jesse. But by being his friend, you are shaming yourself by showing that your mother must have had sexual relations with some other man who is your actual father. 31 I can assure you that as long as Jesse’s son is living, you will never become king. No, you will never rule this kingdom! So now send someone to get David and bring him to me, because I must execute him!” 32 Jonathan insisted to his father, “David has done nothing wrong! So you should not execute him!” 33 Then Saul became so angry that he threw his spear at Jonathan to try to kill him. But the spear did not hit him. So Jonathan knew that his father really did want to kill David. 34 This made Jonathan very angry, and he left the room. On that second day of the festival, he refused to eat anything. His father had said unfairly that David was not loyal to him, and that made Jonathan offended for David’s sake. 35 The next morning Jonathan went out to the field to give a message to David as he had agreed that he would do. He took a young boy with him. 36 Jonathan told the boy, “Run out into the field so that you can find the arrows that I shoot.” The boy started running, and Jonathan shot an arrow over the boy so that it would land on the ground far ahead of him. 37 The boy ran to the place where the arrow hit the ground, but Jonathan shouted out to him, “The arrow is farther away!” 38 After he had done this three times, he shouted to the boy, “Now come back here right away! Do not stay out there in the field!” The boy picked up the arrows Jonathan had shot and brought them back to him. 39 The boy did not realize that Jonathan had given a signal to David. Only Jonathan and David knew about that. 40 Then Jonathan gave his bow and arrows to the boy and told him, “Take these back to where I keep my weapons in the city.” 41 When the boy left, David came out from behind the south side of the large rock where he had been hiding. He went to Jonathan and bowed respectfully in front of him three times, with his face touching the ground. Then David and Jonathan kissed each other on the cheek, and they cried together until David became exhausted from crying. 42 Jonathan said to David, “I am letting you go safely, because we made a promise to each other with Yahweh as our witness. We asked Yahweh to make sure that we would always help each other and that our descendants would never hurt each other.” Then David finally left, and Jonathan went back into the city of Gibeah.

1SA C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C13 C14 C15 C16 C17 C18 C19 C20 C21 C22 C23 C24 C25 C26 C27 C28 C29 C30 C31