1 Samuelchapter 23
29 verses · BSB1 Samuel book hub →
Key verse
And Saul’s son Jonathan came to David in Horesh and strengthened his hand in God,
It stands in scene B of the chapter, verses 14 to 18.
The chapter
Chapter summary
David asks Jehovah twice whether to save Keilah from the Philistines, then asks with Abiathar's ephod whether the men of Keilah will betray him. They will. So the outlaw who just delivered them leaves, and Saul hunts him through the wilderness of Ziph day by day, but God delivers him not into his hand. In the wood at Horesh comes the friends' last meeting: Jonathan strengthens David's hand in God with words he will not live to see fulfilled, thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee. Saul is compassing David about when word of a Philistine raid pulls him away; they call the place the Rock of Escape.
Context
History · Samuel, Nathan, Gad · 1 Samuel overview
Where the chapter sits
1 Samuel 23 falls in David's rise in Saul's shadow (chapters 16–31). David anointed in secret; Goliath; Jonathan's covenant; Saul's pursuit; the cave of Adullam; Nabal and Abigail; the Philistine sanctuary; Saul's death at Gilboa.
Before it: Saul's reign: promise and rejection, chapters 9–15.
The whole shape of 1 Samuel→The world behind this chapter
1 Samuel 23The history
The Philistines are raiding Keilah's threshing floors, which is the precise moment to raid a farming town, all the year's grain in one exposed pile on a hilltop, already threshed and ready to carry away. David's men object that they are frightened enough in Judah without going to Keilah, and David inquires twice before going.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The ephod Abiathar carries is the practical difference between these two chapters and the last. David can now ask specific questions and get yes-or-no answers, and he uses it twice at Keilah, will Saul come down, and will the men of Keilah surrender me. The answer to both is yes, and the future of the town is answered as a conditional: this is what would happen if you stayed. David leaves, and it never happens.
Keilah's readiness to hand him over is the political reality of the period. A walled town with gates and bars, as the text notes, is a trap for a fugitive if the townspeople decide the king's favor is worth more than the man who just saved their harvest. The same thing happens twice with the Ziphites, who send word to Saul offering to deliver David into the king's hand.
The wilderness of Judah east and south of Hebron is bare limestone hill country cut by deep ravines, with caves, springs, and almost no cover, good for hiding and terrible for living. The chase at Maon is described exactly: Saul going along one side of the mountain and David the other, closing on him, until a messenger arrives with news of a Philistine raid and Saul has to break off. The place was named the Rock of Escape afterward.
In the middle of the pursuit Jonathan comes to David at Horesh and strengthens his hand in God. He says plainly, you shall be king over Israel and I shall be next to you, and my father Saul also knows this. That is the crown prince stating on the record that the king knows the truth and is fighting it anyway.
What it meant to them
The chapter is a study in guidance. David asks before every move, and the answers keep him alive; Saul never asks anything and keeps concluding that God has given David into his hand.
First hearers also learned what loyalty from below is worth. Keilah, saved from raiders, would have sold him. The Ziphites, his own tribe of Judah, informed on him twice. The only man who stood by him was the one with the most to lose.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
A. Keilah delivered: and Keilah would hand him over
1. (vv. 1-2)
a.Keilah is exposed to Philistine raiders while David is himself an outlaw with no crown and no army of his own, yet he moves to defend it. Before he acts he enquires of the Lord, opening a pattern that recurs across both books at 23:4, 28:6, 2 Samuel 2:1, 5:19, 5:23 and 21:1, set against Saul's one recorded enquiry as king, which gets silence at 28:6. Albert Barnes notes that David's growing importance as a fugitive is marked by Keilah's own appeal to him for rescue.
1 Samuel 23:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
1 Samuel 23:1
“David’s growing importance, fugitive as he was, is marked by this appeal to him for deliverance from the Philistines. The “threshing floors” were the natural objects of plunder Jdg 6:11. Keilah was in the Shephelah (marginal reference), probably close to the Philistine border, but its site is uncertain. Jos 2:11 Samuel Jos 23:1 PP1”
1 Samuel 23:1
“The way for any country to be quiet is to let God's church be quiet in it. If Saul fight against David, the Philistines shall fight against his country. David is forward enough to come in for their relief, but is willing to enquire of the Lord concerning it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 23:2, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:2
“Therefore David inquired of the Lord - In what way David made this inquiry we are not told, but it was probably by means of Abiathar; and therefore I think, with Houbigant that the sixth verse should be read immediately after the first. The adventure mentioned here was truly noble. Had not David loved his country, and been above all motives of private and personal revenge, he would have rejoiced in this invasion of Judah as producing a strong diversion in his favor, and embroiling his inveterate enemy.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:2-5
“To repel unprovoked assaults on unoffending people who were engaged in their harvest operations, was a humane and benevolent service. But it was doubtful how far it was David's duty to go against a public enemy without the royal commission; and on that account he asked, and obtained, the divine counsel.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2. (vv. 3-5)
a.David's men balk at the risk of a pitched fight against a Philistine garrison, and rather than overrule them David enquires of the Lord a second time on the same question. Adam Clarke reads the repeated enquiry as accommodation to his men's weaker faith rather than any doubt of David's own. The second answer is as plain as the first, and the raid succeeds: the cattle are recovered and Keilah is saved.
1 Samuel 23:4, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:4
“David inquired of the Lord yet again - This was to satisfy his men, who made the strong objections mentioned in the preceding verse.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:5, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:5
“Brought away their cattle - The forage and spoil which the Philistines had taken, driving the country before them round about Keilah.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3. (v. 6)
a.Abiathar is the one priest who escaped Doeg's massacre at Nob in the previous chapter, and he brings the ephod down to David in his own hand. From this point the ephod is David's fixed channel of enquiry, used again here at verse 9 and once more at Ziklag in chapter 30. Adam Clarke, following Houbigant, suggests the verse belongs before verse 1 in the order of events, since it is what makes David's enquiry at verse 2 possible at all.
1 Samuel 23:6, 3 voices
1 Samuel 23:6
“Moreover, at the time when Abiathar fled, etc. The ephod, as we mentioned above, is a priestly garment, with four most distinguished colors interwoven with gold, and two precious stones on each shoulder, and the sacred names of the twelve patriarchs, which most fittingly corresponds …”
Bede· written before 735· Commentary on Samuelpatristic
1 Samuel 23:6
“Ephod - With the Ephod, the high-priest's Ephod, wherein were the Urim and the Thummim, which when Ahimelech and the rest of the priests went to Saul, were probably left in his hand. This gave him the opportunity both of escaping, whilst Doeg the butcher was killing his brethren, and of bringing away the Ephod, which Saul now was justly deprived of.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:6
“It was a great comfort to David, in his banishment, that when he could not go to the house of God he had some of the choicest treasures of that house brought to him, the high priest and his breast-plate of judgment. David Escapes from Keilah. 7 And it was told Saul that David was come to Keilah.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 7-8)
a.Saul invokes the Lord's name over a plan to besiege the very city David has just saved, one chapter after ordering the slaughter of the Lord's priests at Nob. He calls out the whole levy of the district under cover of the Philistine threat David has already put down, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the muster as pretext for a manhunt rather than a real defense of the border. The verse states Saul's theology and lets the reader measure it against his actions.
1 Samuel 23:7, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:7
“David, though a strong believer, needed the help of his friends for the perfecting of what was lacking in his faith; and herein Jonathan was helpful to him, by reminding him of the promise of God, the holy oil wherewith he was anointed, the presence of God with him hitherto, and the many experiences he had had of God's goodness to him.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 23:7-8
“An ungrateful wretch he was, and for ever unworthy to have any service or kindness done him. Well might David complain of his enemies that they rewarded him evil for good, and that for his love they ere his adversaries, Ps. xxxv. Christ was used thus basely, John x.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 23:8, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:8
“And Saul called all the people together to war,.... Or "caused them to hear" (m) summoned them by an herald, whom he sent into all parts of the kingdom to proclaim war, and require them in his name to attend him; which was the prerogative of a king to do: to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men; that was what he privately intended, but the pretence was to make war against the Philistines. (m) ישמע "fecit audire", Montanus, Piscator.”
1 Samuel 23:8
“Saul called all the people together to war--not the united tribes of Israel, but the inhabitants of the adjoining districts. This force was raised, probably, on the ostensible pretext of opposing the Philistines, while, in reality, it was secretly to arouse mischief against David.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
5. (vv. 9-11)
a.David's habit of enquiry, already shown twice in this chapter, now stands under direct mortal threat, and Abiathar's ephod becomes his warning system while Saul mobilizes an army against him. Adam Clarke reads the conditional answers, whether Saul will come down and whether Keilah will hand him over, as real contingency, God's foreknowledge poising outcomes on the choices of men rather than overriding them. John Wesley notes the answer came as a voice or suggestion to the high priest, not by any change in the stones of the breastplate.
1 Samuel 23:9, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:9
“And. David knew that Saul secretly practised mischief against him,.... That is, plotted and contrived it, formed schemes in order to do him mischief, giving out one thing, and designing another; so he pretended war against the Philistines, but his intention was to come against Keilah, and take David there: and he said to Abiathar the priest, bring hither the ephod; not for David to put on, but for the priest himself, that being clothed with it, and the Urim and Thummim in it, he might inquire for him of the Lord.”
1 Samuel 23:9
“Bring hither the ephod - It seems as if David himself, clothed with the ephod, had consulted the Lord; and 1Sa 23:10-12 contain the words of the consultation, and the Lord’s answer. But see on 1Sa 23:2 (note).”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:11, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:11
“In these verses we find the following questions and answers: - David said, Will Saul come down to Keilah? And the Lord said, He will come down. Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, They will deliver thee up. In this short history we find an ample proof that there is such a thing as contingency in human affairs; that is, God has poised many things between a possibility of being and not being, leaving it to the will of the creature to turn the scale.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:11
“The Lord said - From this place it may appear that God's answer by Urim and Thummim, was not by any change in the colour or situation of the precious stones in the breast-plate of the Ephod, but by a voice or suggestion from God to the high-priest. He will - He purposeth to come, if thou continuest here. For still as David's question, so God's answer, is upon supposition.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
6. (vv. 12-13)
a.The second answer closes the matter, and David does not wait to test whether Keilah would actually go through with it. His band has grown to about six hundred men, the number that holds through the rest of the outlaw years at chapters 27 and 30. Keilah's leaders were ready to hand over the man who had just broken the siege and saved their grain, and the narrator records it without a word of comment.
1 Samuel 23:12, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:12
“Then said David, will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul?.... That is, the lords and great men of the place, the governor of the city, and the heads of it, the chief magistrates in it: and the Lord said, they will deliver thee up: that is, provided he stayed there; for the Lord knew the dispositions and affections of their minds, that they were inclined to do it, and would do it, if he continues among them till Saul came down; which showed the great ingratitude of this people to their deliverer.”
B. Jonathan strengthens his hand in God
1. (vv. 14-15)
a.The two conditional answers of the ephod prove true here without David ever testing them: Saul seeks him every day, and God delivered him not into his hand, exactly as the oracle implied he need not stay to find out. The wilderness of Ziph, a mountain district between Hebron and En-gedi, becomes the next hiding ground, and verse 15 has David watching his own pursuer come out to take his life. John Gill compares the daily persistence of the search to Goliath's forty daily defiances in chapter 17, one persecution measured out in days like the other.
1 Samuel 23:14, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:14
“Ziph is placed between Hebron and En-gedi (marginal references). (The “wood” 1Sa 23:15 is by Conder taken as a proper name, “Cheresh,” and identified with Khoreisa.)”
1 Samuel 23:15, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:15
“No, he makes no such attempt; he keeps God's way, waits God's time, and is content to secure himself in woods and wildernesses, though with some it might seem a reproach to that courage for which he had been famous.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 23:15
“As it had been from the beginning, so it was now, and will be, he that is born after the flesh persecuteth him that is born after the spirit, Gal. iv.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 16-18)
a.strengthened his hand in God: This is the last recorded meeting between David and Jonathan, and the covenant the two make before the Lord in verse 18 renews what they had already sworn at 18:3 and again at 20:16-17, its third renewal in the book. Jonathan's word that David shall be king and he himself next to him is the clearest statement in the narrative that the king's own son understood and accepted where the throne was going. Matthew Henry reads it as what Jonathan wished rather than what he had ground to expect, since the two never meet again in the story that follows.
1 Samuel 23:16, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:16
“And Jonathan - strengthened his hand in God - It is probable that there was always a secret intercourse between David and Jonathan, and that by this most trusty friend he was apprised of the various designs of Saul to take away his life.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:16
“And strengthened - He comforted and supported him against all his fears, by minding him of God's infallible promises made to him, and his singular providence which hitherto had and still would be with him.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:17, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:17
“Next to thee - Which he gathered either from David's generosity, and friendship to him; or from some promise made to him by David concerning it. So that the whole imports thus much;”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:17
“This, he tells him, Saul knew very well, Jonathan having sometimes heard him say as much, whence it appears what a wicked man Saul was, to persecute one whom God favoured, and what a foolish man he was, in thinking to prevent that which God had determined and which would certainly come to pass.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 23:18, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:18
“Our covenant with God should be often renewed, and therein our communion with him kept up. David and Jonathan now parted, and never came together again, that we find, in this world; for Jonathan said what he wished, not what he had ground to expect, when he promised himself that he should be next to David in his kingdom.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
C. The Ziphites inform, and the rock of escape
1. (vv. 19-21)
a.The Ziphites are David's own tribesmen of Judah, and they volunteer his location to Saul unasked, before any threat or reward is offered; Matthew Henry contrasts them with Judas, who at least named a price. Psalm 54 carries a title naming this very report, though this database stores the Psalms without their Hebrew titles, so the link cannot be shown from the floor by query even though the title is canonical text in the Hebrew Bible. Saul's answer, blessed be ye of the Lord, puts the covenant name of God in the mouth of a king thanking men for betraying his own anointed, two verses after Jonathan strengthened that same anointed's hand in the same God.
1 Samuel 23:19, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:19-23
“No wonder, then, that the Ziphites saw David and his men passing to and fro in the mountains of the wilderness. Spying him at a distance when he ventured to show himself on the hill of Hachilah, "on the right hand of the wilderness," that is, the south side of Ziph, they sent in haste to Saul, to tell him of the lurking place of his enemy [VAN DE VELDE].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 23:20, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:20
“Saul had not sent to examine or threaten them, but of their own accord, and even without asking a reward (as Judas did-- What will you give me? ), they offered to betray David to him who, they knew, thirsted after his blood.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 23:21, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:21
“And Saul said, blessed be ye of the Lord,.... He highly commends them for the offer they made to him, blesses God for them, and desires the blessing of God upon them for it: for ye have compassion on me; pitied him on account of the troubles he met with from his son-in-law, were sorry for him, and sympathized with him, which others did not, of which he complained, 1Sa 22:8.”
2. (vv. 22-25)
a.Saul's caution here, wanting certainty of the place before he commits his men, costs him time, and David withdraws further south into the wilderness of Maon while the search continues. Nineteenth-century surveyors described this tableland as broken sharply into ravines, terrain that explains both David's ability to disappear into a rock at verse 25 and the difficulty Saul's larger force has closing on him. Saul's whole company now moves to surround the smaller band, narrowing the ground between them verse by verse.
1 Samuel 23:24, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:24
“But David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon, etc. Maon is interpreted as dwelling. Jeshimon means bringing death. Generally, however, the faithful, having obtained Christ as their leader, rejoice to thirst for the eternal homeland, which the waterless places of the desert …”
Bede· written before 735· Commentary on Samuelpatristic
1 Samuel 23:24
“The plain - The Arabah, the desert tract which extends along the valley of the Jordan from the Dead Sea to the Lake of Gennesareth, now called El-Ghor. The word is now given by the Arabs to the valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba.”
1 Samuel 23:25, 3 voices
1 Samuel 23:25
“The wilderness of Maon - Maon was a mountainous district in the most southern parts of Judah. Calmet supposes it to be the city of Menois, which Eusebius places in the vicinity of Gaza; and the Maenaemi Castrum, which the Theodosian code places near to Beersheba.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:25
“The mountain plateau seems here to end. It is true the summit ridge of the southern hills runs out a long way further towards the southwest; but towards the southeast the ground sinks more and more down to a tableland of a lower level, which is called "the plain to the right hand [that is, to the south] of the wilderness" [VAN DE VELDE].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 23:25
“A rock - That is, into a cave which was in the rock; where at first he might think to hide himself, but upon farther consideration he removed from thence upon Saul's approach.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
3. (v. 26)
a.This is the nearest Saul ever comes to taking David alive: the two parties stand on opposite sides of a single mountain, and Saul's men close around David's smaller company to take them. Nothing in the verse is David's own doing, no stratagem and no word from the ephod, and the older commentators read the bare fact of the encirclement as the chapter's real turning point for exactly that reason.
1 Samuel 23:26, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:26-29
“It was that, since Saul neglected the public safety, he might take care of it, notwithstanding the ill treatment that was given him; for he must render good for evil, and therein be a type of him who not only ventured his life, but laid down his life, for those that were his enemies.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 27-29)
a.The rescue comes from outside the story entirely, a Philistine raid elsewhere in the land arriving at the one moment it could matter, and Adam Clarke calls it plainly the workings of providence: deliverance without a battle, a sign, or an answer from the ephod. The place keeps the memory of it in its name, the rock of divisions, because there Saul's pursuit was split off from David by circumstance rather than by choice or defeat. David goes up from there to the strongholds of En-gedi, where the seventeenth-century scholar John Lightfoot placed the writing of Psalm 63, a tradition both Gill and Henry record.
1 Samuel 23:27, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:27
“There came a messenger - See the providence of God exerted for the salvation of David’s life! David and his men are almost surrounded by Saul and his army, and on the point of being taken, when a messenger arrives and informs Saul that the Philistines had invaded the land! But behold the workings of Providence!”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:28, 1 voice
1 Samuel 23:28
“They called that place Sela-hammah-lekoth - That is, the rock of divisions; because, says the Targum, the heart of the king was divided to go hither and thither. Here Saul was obliged to separate himself from David, in order to go and oppose the invading Philistines.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 23:29, 2 voices
1 Samuel 23:29
“And David went up from thence,.... From the wilderness of Maon, having had a narrow escape for his life: and dwelt in strong holds in Engedi; another place in the tribe of Judah, and which lay in the wilderness of Judah, and from whence that is called the wilderness of Engedi; and here Dr. Lightfoot (w) thinks he penned the sixty third psalm, Psa 63:1, the wilderness about Engedi being the most desert of all other places, that being upon the borders of the dead sea; of this place; see Gill on Jos 15:62. (w) Works, vol. 1. p. 58.”
1 Samuel 23:29
“En-gedi (the fountain of the kid), anciently called Hazezon-Tamar Gen 14:7 from the palm-trees which used to grow there, still preserves its name in Ain-Djedy. It is about 200 yards from the Dead Sea, about the center of its western shore. It is marked by great luxuriance of vegetation, though the approach to it is through most dangerous and precipitous passes. The country is full of caverns, which serve as lurking places for outlaws at the present day.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 1 Samuel 23. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Bede, Commentary on Samuel; Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley and Matthew Henry.
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