1 Samuel22chapter 22

1 Samuel 22:1-2

David flees to the cave Adullam, and his brethren and all his father's house go down to him rather than risk Saul's rage falling on them at home. The company that gathers next is drawn by need rather than merit, everyone in distress, everyone in debt, everyone discontented, four hundred men in all, and the fugitive becomes their captain. The older writers read the anointed but not yet enthroned king gathering the desperate as a picture of Christ before his kingdom comes, a reading Blaikie names and Spurgeon preached from this very cave, though the text itself says only that a captain now stands where one man once stood alone before Goliath.

1 Samuel 22:3-4

Mizpeh of Moab: David sends his father and mother to the king of Moab for safekeeping, till I know what God will do for me, and Barnes reads the choice of asylum as owing something to David's own descent from Ruth the Moabitess four generations back. The same Bethlehem line that opened at Ruth 4:17 now buys Jesse a place of refuge among his ancestress's own people. Gill notes that Scripture never says what became of David's parents afterward; the silence stands as it was left.

1 Samuel 22:5

the prophet Gad said: The prophet Gad is named for the first time here, sent to tell David not to stay in the hold but to go openly into the land of Judah. Wesley reads the command as training for the throne, exercising David's faith and courage while Saul still lives rather than leaving him to hide until the danger passes on its own. Gad will still be at David's side decades later, naming his sin at the threshingfloor in 2 Samuel 24, but his first word to the man he serves is simply to stand where his claim can be seen.

1 Samuel 22:6-8

Saul sits under a tree in Gibeah with his spear in hand, the mark by which his servants know where the king has made camp. He appeals to his own tribe by name, asking whether the son of Jesse will give them fields and vineyards as he has, and accuses the whole court of conspiring against him though no such league was ever made. Henry calls the charge doubly false, since whatever covenant stood between David and Jonathan carried Saul no harm at all.

1 Samuel 22:9-10

Doeg the Edomite alone answers Saul's demand, reporting that he saw David at Nob with Ahimelech, who enquired of the Lord for him and gave him bread and the sword of Goliath. This is one of the enquired of the Lord beats that marks both books, and here Doeg turns a priest's ordinary office into evidence of treason. The title standing over Psalm 52 names Doeg as the occasion of that psalm, though this database stores psalm titles apart from the verses themselves and the link cannot be shown from the floor by query.

1 Samuel 22:11-15

Saul summons Ahimelech and all his father's house from Nob and charges them by name with conspiracy for the bread, the sword, and the enquiry of God given to David. Ahimelech answers that David was, and so far as he knew still was, the most faithful of all Saul's servants, the king's own son in law who went at his bidding and was honourable in his house. He denies this was any new act of allegiance against Saul, for he had enquired of the Lord for David many times before on the king's own business, and knew nothing of a quarrel between them.

1 Samuel 22:16-17

Saul pronounces the priests' death himself, without appeal to judge or prophet, and orders his own footmen to fall on the priests of the Lord for a hand with David that was never proved. The servants will not put forth their hand, and Henry calls it a command of a prince more honourably disobeyed than almost any other in Scripture, the footmen showing more sense and grace than their master. Their refusal is the last restraint standing between Saul and the massacre the next verse carries out.

1 Samuel 22:18-19

Doeg alone does what Israel's own soldiers would not, killing fourscore and five men who wore the linen ephod, then putting the whole city of Nob to the sword, men, women, children and cattle together. Wesley calls it the worst deed of Saul's entire reign, plain evidence of the evil spirit that had long tormented him. Henry and Gill both read the slaughter as the sentence spoken over Eli's house at 2:27 to 36 and again at 3:11 to 14 falling due, God's justice riding on Saul's injustice without excusing the man who carried it out.

1 Samuel 22:20-21

One son of Ahimelech, Abiathar, escapes the slaughter and flees to David, carrying word of what Saul has done to the Lord's priests. He is the last of Eli's line left standing, and Barnes traces his service through the rest of David's reign until he backs Adonijah and is put out of the priesthood at 1 Kings 2:26 to 27, the verse that closes the word spoken over Eli's house by name. He will bring an ephod down to David at Keilah in the next chapter, the office surviving in exile where the city at Nob no longer does.

1 Samuel 22:22-23

David tells Abiathar plainly, I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy father's house, owning his own part in the massacre without excusing Doeg's hand or Saul's order. He had suspected as much the day he saw Doeg standing at Nob in the chapter before this one, and he answers his own failure now with shelter rather than despair, abide thou with me, fear not. Henry reads he that seeketh my life seeketh thy life as the pattern David keeps toward every man who suffers for his sake afterward, and Clarke calls the promise the mark of a generosity Saul never showed anyone.