1 Samuel24chapter 24

1 Samuel 24:1-2

Saul turns from a Philistine war he has just fought to hunt one man, and commits three thousand chosen men to the search, the same size force he once led against the whole Philistine army at 13:2. Wesley notes the rocks of the wild goats are steep and dangerous even to an ordinary traveler, so the king's anger over David outweighs his own safety. En-gedi's cliffs along the Dead Sea shore give the outlaw band exactly the kind of ground three thousand soldiers cannot easily search.

1 Samuel 24:3

Saul stops in a cave to cover his feet, a common way of naming a private need, while David's men are already waiting unseen in its recesses. Henry allows two readings, easing nature or simply resting from the heat, and either way providence has walked the hunter into the hunted man's own hiding place. Barnes describes these En-gedi caverns as deep enough that a man near the mouth stays visible while men further in remain hidden even by daylight.

1 Samuel 24:4-5

David's men read Saul's arrival as the answer to a promise David had received of the throne, though Clarke and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown both note that God had never actually promised to deliver Saul himself into David's hand that day. David cuts off the skirt of Saul's robe rather than take the life his men are urging, and the next verse turns the whole scene on its hinge: his heart smites him for the cloth alone. Gill reads that reaction as conscience working on a lesser act than the one his men proposed, which measures how far David will not go.

1 Samuel 24:6-7

David states the anointed argument at full length for the first time in the book, the Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. The title had entered Scripture as an office at 2:10 and had been fixed on David himself at 16:6, and here he refuses to let his own anointing become grounds for touching Saul's. He does not merely hold his own hand but stays his servants with these words, and Henry calls the restraint a type of Christ, who saved his persecutors rather than striking them down.

1 Samuel 24:8-9

My lord the king: David waits until Saul is safely out of the cave before calling after him, and bows to the earth even as he prepares to charge the king with wrongdoing. His opening question names the real danger at Saul's court, men whose words Gill identifies with Doeg and the flatterers who kept feeding the king's suspicion of David. Barnes reads David's own psalms of complaint against false accusers as the record of exactly this pressure.

1 Samuel 24:10-11

David repeats the anointed argument at verse 10, this day thine eyes have seen how the Lord had delivered thee into mine hand, and some bade me kill thee, but mine eye spared thee, for he is the Lord's anointed. He holds up the skirt itself as evidence a knife could just as easily have written, and calls the difference between the cloth and the man proof that there is neither evil nor transgression in his hand. The closing clause turns the argument on Saul without warning: I have not sinned against thee, yet thou huntest my soul to take it.

1 Samuel 24:12-13

David hands the case to heaven rather than to his own hand, the Lord judge between me and thee, and the Lord avenge me of thee, but mine hand shall not be upon thee. Clarke compares the appeal to a wider human instinct, the common refuge of the poor and oppressed to call on God as judge when no earthly court will hear them. He backs it with a proverb already old in his own day, wickedness proceedeth from the wicked, and lets the maxim argue that a man who has spared his enemy twice is not the wicked man Saul's court has painted him.

1 Samuel 24:14-15

David measures himself down to nothing in the same breath he measures Saul's whole army, after whom is the king of Israel come out, after a dead dog, after a flea. Clarke reads the two images together as total contempt joined to total harmlessness, a target too small to justify three thousand men in pursuit. The appeal opened at verse 12 closes here with three verbs stacked on one judge, be judge, and plead my cause, and deliver me, leaving the outcome entirely outside David's own hand.

1 Samuel 24:16-17

Saul knows David's voice before he can make out his face at that distance, and Wesley reads the weeping that follows as grief over his own sin against God as much as his cruelty to David. Saul's confession goes only so far, thou art more righteous than I, and Henry marks the limit precisely: bad men will commonly go no further than this, owning there are those better than they rather than owning their own wickedness outright.

1 Samuel 24:18-20

Saul states the plain fact of the day, when the Lord had delivered him into David's hand, David killed him not, and reasons from ordinary custom that no man lets his enemy go well away without cause. The confession climaxes at verse 20 with Saul saying outright what he had resisted for years, I know well that thou shalt surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in thine hand. Clarke notes the bitter edge under the admission: Saul knew this before, and pursued David to the death anyway.

1 Samuel 24:21-22

Saul asks for one thing only, an oath that David will not cut off his descendants once the throne is his, the same request Jonathan had already made of David at 20:15. David swears it and Saul goes home, but the scene does not close in reconciliation: David and his men go back up to the stronghold rather than to Saul's court. Clarke reads the parting plainly, David could not trust Saul with his life, for an evil spirit still had dominion over him, and chapter 26 will run this same cave scene almost beat for beat.