1 Samuel20chapter 20

1 Samuel 20:1-3

David flees the company of prophets at Naioth in Ramah, where the previous chapter left him, and goes straight to Jonathan rather than into hiding. His three questions ask for a specific charge, and Jonathan cannot yet believe his father's oath at 19:6 has already been broken. Both men swear the same oath twice over, that there is but a step between me and death, and the chapter opens on the covenant already sworn at 18:3 about to be tested and renewed.

1 Samuel 20:4-6

Jonathan's blank promise becomes the shape of the test David proposes: the new moon feast, a monthly sacrifice and meal the king kept publicly, will show whether Saul still means to kill him. David's excuse, if he is missed, is a yearly family sacrifice at Bethlehem, his own city, the same town that sent him to this court as a shepherd boy in chapter 16. An absence that draws anger rather than the disappointment a family occasion would explain will answer David's question without a word spoken to Saul.

1 Samuel 20:7-9

David reads Saul's temper as the sign itself, calm meaning peace and wrath meaning a settled purpose to kill. He asks Jonathan to remember that he has brought his servant into a covenant of the LORD, and offers to let Jonathan be his own executioner if any real iniquity is found in him. Jonathan's answer, far be it from thee, refuses even to entertain the alternative and closes a question David never doubted the answer to.

1 Samuel 20:10-11

David's practical question forces the two friends out of the palace and into a field belonging to Gibeah, where no servant of Saul can overhear them. The privacy the scene requires is itself evidence of how far things have fallen: a king's son and the king's own son in law can no longer plan safely inside the king's house. The move outdoors sets up both the covenant oath of verses 12 to 17 and the archery signal that follows it.

1 Samuel 20:12-13

Jonathan swears by the LORD God of Israel that he will sound his father's mind and send word either way, binding the promise with a curse on himself if he fails to keep it. His closing line, the LORD be with thee, as he hath been with my father, is spoken by Saul's own heir, and reads as a plain admission that the LORD's presence has already passed from the father's house to David. Clarke takes the remark as evidence Jonathan already knew the kingdom had been appointed to David before either man says so openly.

1 Samuel 20:14-15

Jonathan asks first for himself, that David deal with him in the kindness of the LORD while he lives, then widens the request in verse 15 to cover his whole house forever, even after the LORD has cut off every enemy of David from the earth. The same word returns once more in these two books, at 2 Samuel 9:3, where David asks whether any of Saul's house remains that he might shew him the kindness of God, and finds Mephibosheth. Jonathan is asking here for exactly what David will grant there, years before Saul's line has fallen and before David has any throne to grant it from.

1 Samuel 20:16-17

made a covenant with the house of David: The covenant sworn person to person at 18:3 is now formalized between houses, sealed with an oath calling on the LORD to require it at the hand of either side's enemies should the pledge be broken. Verse 17 has Jonathan make David swear yet again, for the same reason already given at 18:1 and 18:3, because he loved him as he loved his own soul. The repeated swearing is not padding in the text; it marks how many separate times this one bond gets restated before the chapter ends.

1 Samuel 20:18-19

Jonathan restates the plan David already laid out at verse 5, then adds the meeting point for verse 19, the stone Ezel, and a three day span for David to stay hidden before returning to that place. The name Ezel is otherwise unknown in Scripture, and older readers who take it to mean departure treat the naming as fitting rather than as proof of anything. The plan now has a place, a signal yet to come, and a deadline, all arranged before either man knows what Saul will actually do.

1 Samuel 20:20-23

Three arrows and a lad sent to fetch them give Jonathan a way to warn David without a word spoken face to face, the number matching the three days David is to wait at the stone. Verse 23 closes the exchange with a second oath formula, the LORD be between thee and me for ever, sealing the covenant of verses 12 to 17 rather than opening a new one. The care Jonathan takes to build deniability into an innocent afternoon of archery shows how far Saul's court has already turned from open dealing.

1 Samuel 20:24-26

The plan from verses 18 to 23 is carried out exactly, and the feast begins with Saul in his usual seat, Jonathan across from him, Abner at the king's side, and David's place left empty. Saul says nothing the first day, assuming ceremonial uncleanness has kept David from the peace offerings, a reasonable explanation any Israelite would reach for before assuming treachery. The silence itself is telling: only four men sit at that table, so one empty seat cannot go unnoticed for long.

1 Samuel 20:27-29

By the second day the ordinary explanation has run out, and Saul asks Jonathan directly, still calling David only the son of Jesse rather than by name. Jonathan gives the same excuse rehearsed at verse 6, a family sacrifice at Bethlehem and a brother's summons, true as far as it goes even though it is not the whole truth. Bethlehem covers for David a second time in this book, the same town that already sent him to Saul's court as an errand boy in chapter 17.

1 Samuel 20:30-31

Saul's rage finally says outright what the narrative has been showing since chapter 16, that as long as David lives Jonathan's own kingdom cannot be established. His insult against Jonathan's mother is aimed at Jonathan's loyalty rather than at any fact about her, the kind of charge a father makes when he has no other to bring. The son who gave away his robe and sword at 18:4 is now told plainly that he has thrown away a crown, and it is Saul who says so, not Jonathan.

1 Samuel 20:32-34

Jonathan's question gets no answer in words. Saul throws his javelin at his own son, the same weapon he had already thrown at David twice, at 18:11 and 19:10, so that the spear meant for one target in this book finally reaches the other. Jonathan rises from the table in grief rather than in fear for himself, and the text is careful to say he is grieved for David and for the shame his father has done him, not for the blow he himself avoided.

1 Samuel 20:35-38

The plan reaches its appointed hour, with a boy present who knows nothing of what the arrows mean. Jonathan shoots one arrow beyond the lad, the signal agreed at verse 22, then calls after him to hurry, words the boy hears as urgency about retrieving arrows but David hears as urgency about his own life. Every word Jonathan speaks in this scene is aimed past the lad at David hiding within earshot, a second meaning running under an ordinary morning of target practice.

1 Samuel 20:39-40

The narrator states plainly that the boy is kept innocent of the whole arrangement, and Jonathan sends him back into the city carrying the bow and arrows, his part in the story ending without his ever learning what he carried out. Only two men in the whole kingdom know what the arrows meant, which is exactly how a covenant Saul would kill to break has to be kept. The lad's ignorance protects him as much as it protects the secret; he can report nothing because there is nothing in his knowledge to report.

1 Samuel 20:41-42

David comes out of hiding to bow three times before Jonathan, the subject bowing to the king's son even though both men now know the throne is passing the other way. Their weeping is mutual, but the text notes David's grief runs further, since Jonathan returns to a father's house and a place at court while David walks away from every comfort he has known. The parting oath in verse 42 restates the covenant a final time, the LORD be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever, the vocabulary of kindness from verses 14 and 15 now sworn over children neither man yet has.