1 Samuel 18 & 20 · An Iconic Story
David and Jonathan
The heir to Israel's throne takes off his own robe and hands it to the shepherd who will wear the crown instead of him — and swears a covenant that outlives them both.
Doré draws the moment in the field after the arrows: two men holding on to each other in the open, with the boy and the bow already sent away and nobody left to see. He gives Jonathan the upright soldier's posture and David the bowed one — which is the way the text has it too, since it is David who weeps the longer. Behind them the country is empty in every direction, and that emptiness is the point: David is about to walk into it alone.
The Prince Gives Away His Own Robe
1 Samuel 18 and 20, told plainly
David has just come back from killing Goliath, and he is standing in front of the king with the giant's head still in his hand. The king's son is listening. And something happens to Jonathan that the text describes in one strange sentence: his soul was knit to the soul of David, and he loved him as his own soul.
After David had finished speaking with Saul, the souls of Jonathan and David were knit together, and Jonathan loved him as himself.The Hebrew verb is a builder's word — to tie something fast. It is not a word for a mood.
Then Jonathan does something enormous, and it is easy to miss because it looks like a gesture. He takes off his own robe and gives it to David, and his armour, and his sword and his bow and his belt. Jonathan is the crown prince. That robe is the next king's robe. He hands it to the shepherd who just did what the army could not.
Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. And Jonathan removed the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, his sword, his bow, and his belt.A covenant first, and then the clothes — the sworn agreement comes before the gift, and the gift is what it looks like on a man.
After that the story is mostly Jonathan protecting David from his own father. He argues David's case to Saul and gets him restored. When Saul turns murderous again, the two of them work out a signal with arrows in a field so that David will know whether it is safe to come back. It is not. They meet one last time behind a stone, and weep, and Jonathan sends him away with the covenant between them and their descendants forever. Years later, when Jonathan is dead on Mount Gilboa, David keeps it — he hunts down Jonathan's crippled son and seats him at the king's own table for life.
None had so much reason to dislike David as Jonathan had, because he was to put him by the crown, yet none regards him more. Those that are governed in their love by principles of wisdom and grace will not suffer their affections to be alienated by any secular regards or considerations: the greater thoughts will swallow up and overrule the less.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 1 Sam 18:1
What Jonathan swore
Where it was paid
Four things sworn, four things paid, and the last payment falls decades after the man who was owed it is dead. That is the shape of a covenant, and it is why the page keeps books instead of making a case.
Six Places the Retellings Drift
what the text actually says, against what the story has become
IT WAS NOT A FRIENDSHIP. IT WAS A COVENANT.
The word the text uses is berith — the same word as the covenants with Noah, Abraham and David. It is sworn, it has terms, it has the LORD as its witness, and 1 Sam 20:14-17 extends it to Jonathan's descendants for ever. Friendship does not have a clause about your grandchildren.
THE ROBE WAS NOT A KIND GIFT
It was the heir apparent's own kit, handed over in order: robe, armour, sword, bow, belt. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown record what that meant in that world — receiving any part of the dress worn by a sovereign or his heir was the highest honour a subject could be given. Eleven chapters earlier, in this same book, a torn robe had already been made the sign of a kingdom torn away.
JONATHAN HAD EVERYTHING TO LOSE
He is the one person in Israel whose inheritance David costs. Matthew Henry says it at the first verse: none had so much reason to dislike David as Jonathan had, because he was to put him by the crown, yet none regards him more. Everything he does after that is done by a man giving away his own future.
THE PARTING WAS NOT EQUAL
20:41 says David wept until he exceeded. Henry reads the difference off the circumstances rather than off the men: Jonathan was going back to his family and friends, and David was leaving everything he had, including the sanctuary of God. Clarke lists the same losses — wife, relatives, country, and the altars.
JONATHAN NEVER ABANDONED HIS FATHER
After the arrows he goes back into the city. Barnes notices the restraint and honours it: Jonathan's filial duty and patriotism prevented a complete rupture with his father. He dies beside Saul on Gilboa. He never chose between them, and he never stopped protecting David.
2 SAMUEL 1:26 IS A BATTLEFIELD LAMENT
It sits inside a poem that mourns Saul as well, and its terms are the covenant terms the two earlier chapters have already set. The Hebrew verb behind it is the ordinary word for love, used in these same chapters of Saul, of all Israel, of Saul's servants and of Michal. This page gives the text's own vocabulary — soul, covenant, loyalty, love — and does not translate it into modern categories in either direction.
Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David--To receive any part of the dress which had been worn by a sovereign, or his eldest son and heir, is deemed, in the East, the highest honor which can be conferred on a subject (see on Es 6:8).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 1 Sam 18:4
When Saul put these marks of honour on David he put them off again, because he would first earn them and then wear them; but, now that he had given proofs of the spirit of a prince and a soldier, he was not ashamed to wear the habits of a prince and a soldier. David is seen in Jonathan's clothes, that all may take notice he is a Jonathan's second self.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 1 Sam 18:4
What a Sworn Brotherhood Actually Was
the customs, the garment, and a signal built to survive surveillance
A covenant of brotherhood was a known, public institution in that world — not a private feeling given a formal name afterwards. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown describe the practice as it was still observed in the East in their own century: ratified with ceremonies, before witnesses, binding the two men as sworn brothers for life.
Then Jonathan and David made a covenant--Such covenants of brotherhood are frequent in the East. They are ratified by certain ceremonies, and in presence of witnesses, that the persons covenanting will be sworn brothers for life.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 1 Sam 18:3
The transfer at 18:4 is a succession act carried out in clothing. Robe, armour, sword, bow, belt — the whole kit of a fighting prince, handed across in order. And this book has already taught its reader to watch robes. Eleven chapters earlier Saul had torn the hem of Samuel's robe, and the prophet turned the tear into the sentence on his reign.
As Samuel turned to go, Saul grabbed the hem of his robe, and it tore. So Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you.The garment-vocabulary of the kingdom, set up in advance: a robe torn is a kingdom torn away — and three chapters later the heir takes his off and hands it over.
The business with the arrows in chapter 20 is not a boys' game. It is a legal device designed to survive being overheard: Jonathan can shout the message at a boy without addressing David at all, so the signal still works if Saul has men in the field. And the oath itself keeps naming a third party. Twice — at 20:14-17 and again at 20:42 — the LORD is made the witness and the enforcer, and both times the terms are extended past the lifetimes of the two men swearing them.
And as long as I live, treat me with the LORD’s loving devotion, that I may not die, and do not ever cut off your loving devotion from my household—not even when the LORD cuts off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.” So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the LORD hold David’s enemies accountable.” And Jonathan had David reaffirm his vow out of love for him, for Jonathan loved David as he loved himself.The clause that turns this from a friendship into an estate: kindness to my house, for ever, when the LORD has cut off David's enemies.
why Jonathan was so earnest to have the friendship entailed is purely generous, and has nothing of self in it; it was because he loved him as he loved his own soul, and therefore desired that he and his might be beloved by him.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 1 Sam 20:17
One word does the load-bearing work in that clause. Jonathan asks for chesed — covenant loyalty, the kindness owed inside a sworn bond — and chesedis the exact word David reaches for in 2 Samuel 9:1, decades later, when he goes looking for someone left of Saul's house to pay it to.
What the Text Refuses to Tell
the silences are named as silence, and left that way
These chapters are full of action and almost empty of explanation. They record what Jonathan did and not one word of what it cost him, and a great deal of what readers “know” about this story is supplied from outside the page. Here is where the text stops, named as stopping.
What Jonathan believed about his own future
At their last recorded meeting Jonathan says something remarkable: you will be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. It never happens. He dies on Gilboa beside his father before David is crowned anywhere. Whether he really expected to stand beside David's throne, and what he made of it at the end, Scripture does not say.
And Saul’s son Jonathan came to David in Horesh and strengthened his hand in God, saying, “Do not be afraid, for my father Saul will never lay a hand on you. And you will be king over Israel, and I will be your second-in-command. Even my father Saul knows this is true.” So the two of them made a covenant before the LORD. And David remained in Horesh, while Jonathan went home.The last recorded meeting — and the only place in Scripture where one man is said to strengthen another's hand in God.
What Saul knew, and when
Saul understood enough about his son's loyalties to accuse him of choosing David against his own dynasty, and then to throw a spear at him across the dinner table. How much of the covenant he actually knew, and how he came to know it, the text never says.
Then Saul hurled his spear at Jonathan to kill him; so Jonathan knew that his father was determined to kill David.The ledger's second payment: Jonathan takes the weapon that had been meant for David.
Whether they ever met again
1 Samuel 23:16-18 is the last meeting Scripture records. It does not say it was the last meeting. Readers have often written the scene as a final farewell, and the text simply moves on to the next thing without telling us.
What the robe cost him
The narrator records the stripping and the handing over and then goes straight on to David's promotions. Not a line of Jonathan's reasoning, not a hesitation, not a second thought. Whatever it took to do that, the text keeps it to itself — and the restraint is part of why the act lands as hard as it does.
A Crippled Man at the King's Table
the New Testament never cites this story — so Scripture's own commentary on it carries the beat
Say the honest thing first: no apostle ever quotes this story. There is no New Testament reading of David and Jonathan to lead with, and this page will not invent one. But Scripture does supply its own commentary on the covenant, seven chapters into the next book, and its logic is exact.
Then David asked, “Is there anyone left from the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for the sake of Jonathan?”The king opens a search, and names its reason: for Jonathan's sake. The word he uses for the kindness is the word Jonathan asked for.
Watch what happens to the man they find. He is sought out by a king he has never met. He is crippled and living out of the way, in a house that is not his own. He is brought in, told not to be afraid, given back everything his family had lost, and seated at the king's own table permanently — not because of anything he has done, and not because of anything he could do, but because of a covenant somebody else swore before he was born.
And when Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he fell facedown in reverence. Then David said, “Mephibosheth!” “I am your servant,” he replied. “Do not be afraid,” said David, “for surely I will show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.” Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should show regard for a dead dog like me?”“Do not be afraid… you will always eat at my table.” The man's own answer names what he thinks he is worth; the king's answer is not about that at all.
That is this page's Christ beat, and its strength is that it is drawn from inside Samuel itself rather than laid over the top of it. A place at the king's table, given for the sake of a covenant a man did not make and could not keep, to someone who could not walk to it — the gospel has been telling that story ever since, and here it is being kept as a piece of household bookkeeping in the reign of David.
The robe, read as a picture of the greater exchange
Readers have long seen in Jonathan's robe a picture of Philippians 2 — the rightful heir stripping himself in order to clothe another, and 2 Corinthians 8:9, where the rich one becomes poor so that the poor one becomes rich. It is a beloved reading and this page is glad to name it, but it is the church's devotional tradition and not a claim the text makes. Jonathan is not presented in Scripture as a figure of Christ. He is a man who kept faith at ruinous cost and died young in a lost battle, and that is enough to be.
THE ARTWORK
Rembrandt paints the parting of 1 Samuel 20:41 as an embrace in which only one man's face is visible — and it is not the one who is weeping hardest. David is buried in Jonathan's shoulder; Jonathan looks out past him, already turning back toward the city and his father. The painter has read the chapter carefully: one of these men is going home, and the other one is leaving everything he has.
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Parting of David and Jonathan (c. 1632-1633), Hermitage Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
How the Commentators Read It
four public-domain voices on the knitting, the parting, and the restraint
On the knitting of the two souls
Was knit with the soul of David - The same forcible phrase occurs of Jacob's love for Benjamin (marginal reference). Jonathan's truly heroic character is shown in this generous love of David, and admiration of his great deed.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869), on 1 Sam 18:1
the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David--They were nearly of an age. The prince had taken little interest in David as a minstrel; but his heroism and modest, manly bearing, his piety and high endowments, kindled the flame not of admiration only, but of affection, in the congenial mind of Jonathan.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 1 Sam 18:1
Barnes points at Genesis: the same forcible phrase is used of Jacob's love for Benjamin, an old father bound to a youngest son. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown add the detail that the two were close in age, and that Jonathan had taken no particular interest in David the harpist — it was the man who walked into the valley who kindled it.
On the parting in the field
When the young man had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone, fell facedown, and bowed three times. Then he and Jonathan kissed each other and wept together—though David wept more. And Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for the two of us have sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, ‘May the LORD be a witness between you and me, and between your descendants and mine forever.’” Then David got up and departed, and Jonathan went back into the city.They weep together, and one weeps longer; then the covenant is spoken over the parting and the two men separate for the last time the text records.
The separation of two such faithful friends was equally grievous to them both, but David's case was the more deplorable; for, when Jonathan was returning to his family and friends, David was leaving all his comforts, even those of God's sanctuary, and therefore his grief exceeded Jonathan's, or perhaps it was because his temper was more tender and his passions were stronger.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 1 Sam 20:41
David's distress must, in the nature of things, be the greatest. Besides his friend Jonathan, whom he was now about to lose for ever, he lost his wife, relatives, country; and, what was most afflictive, the altars of his God, and the ordinances of religion.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 1 Sam 20:41
Jonathan said to David, Go in peace--The interview being a stolen one, and every moment precious, it was kindness in Jonathan to hasten his friend's departure.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 1 Sam 20:42
On Jonathan going back into the city
Jonathan went into the city - From which one may infer, what the after history also indicates, that Jonathan's filial duty and patriotism prevented a complete rupture with his father. Jonathan's conduct in this, as in everything, was most admirable.
Albert Barnes· Notes on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869), on 1 Sam 20:42
It would have been simpler to leave with David, and the story would be easier to tell. Jonathan does the harder thing instead: he keeps both loyalties, protects the fugitive and honours the father, and pays for it on Gilboa. Barnes is right to call the conduct admirable, and right to notice that the after-history proves it.
The lament, years later
I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother. You were delightful to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.From the lament David wrote over Saul and Jonathan after Gilboa — a poem for a fallen brother-in-arms, in the vocabulary the covenant chapters had already set.
The verse sits inside a war poem that mourns Saul in the same breath, and its terms are the terms of 1 Samuel 18 and 20: soul, covenant, loyalty, love. This page gives the words the text gives and leaves them in the world they were written in.
A note on the voices: MannaFest normally leads with the teachers on its roster, and on this story none of them has taught it — so none of them appears here. The commentators above carry the page because they are the ones who did the work on these two chapters.
Read the Great Books
the works that have carried this teaching — go further than this page
Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry · 1710
Henry is the reason this page has a spine. He is the one who saw that Jonathan had more reason to resent David than anyone alive, and built his whole reading of the friendship on that fact.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Notes on the Old and New Testaments
Albert Barnes · 1832-1869
Barnes is the closest reader of the Hebrew here — the knitting of souls tied back to Jacob and Benjamin, and Jonathan's refusal to break with his father read off the later history.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · 1871
The best single source on what a covenant of brotherhood actually was, and on what it meant in that world to be handed a garment off a prince's back.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
Clarke counts what David actually lost when he walked out of that field — wife, relatives, country, and the altars of his God — and is the plainest of the four on why the grief was not evenly shared.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →The Covenant Outlived Them Both
Jonathan died on Mount Gilboa with his father and his brothers, in a battle Israel lost, and he never sat next to the throne he had promised to stand beside. By every ordinary measure the covenant he swore should have died on that hill with him. Instead it turns up years later in a royal ledger, as a search for anyone left of a dead rival's house, and it is paid out in full to a lame man who had nothing to trade for it. The robe changed hands in chapter 18; the debt was settled in the next book; and both halves were signed with the same name — the LORD between me and you, and between my seed and your seed, for ever.
GO ON FROM HERE
Built from MannaFest's research brief on the Land and the Kingdom stories and the gate-verified quote pool for 1 Samuel 18 and 20 — public-domain commentary quoted verbatim (Matthew Henry, Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown). Hebrew word data floor-verified against the site's word-level text of 1 Samuel. Scripture BSB, fetched from the floor. Artwork: Gustave Doré (1866) and Rembrandt (c. 1632-1633), both public domain, license-verified at Wikimedia Commons.