1 Samuel26chapter 26

1 Samuel 26:13-16

stood on the top of an hill afar off: From a hill with a wide ravine between them, close enough for a voice to carry in that clear air but far enough to be safe, David wakes the camp with one question, Answerest thou not, Abner? He shames the captain of the guard by name, calling him and his men worthy to die for the one watch they failed, then holds up the proof, the king's own spear and the cruse that stood at his head. The distance David keeps even now, after showing he could have closed it forever, answers Abishai's counsel from a few verses earlier: mercy resting on God does not need to stand near enough to be struck back.

Abner's reply guards the king's dignity even while the king lies unguarded. Matthew Henry suggests Abner held David too cheap to fear and so set no proper watch. David calls to Abner first, the man answerable for Saul's safety.

Albert Barnes hears real praise inside the irony, for Abner's standing as a warrior is confirmed by David's lament over him at 2 Samuel 3:33 and 3:38. Barnes also thinks David blamed Abner in part for Saul's pursuit. Abner had reason to dread a rival in the young champion.

David charges the guards with a death penalty for the very watch the Lord had closed at verse 12. Adam Clarke notes that their failure came through a sleep sent from the Lord. He thinks Saul's softened mood alone saved them from punishment.

1 Samuel 26:17-18

Is this thy voice, my son David?: Saul calls him my son before David has said a word in his own defense, the same address he used at the cave's mouth in chapter 24 and will use again at verse 21, words that cost him nothing to speak and nothing to keep. David answers with two questions of his own, what have I done, and what evil is in mine hand, the same appeal to a clean record Saul had already conceded at 24:17, Thou art more righteous than I. A king who has already granted the verdict once is being asked to hold to it a second time.

David speaks of himself in the third person as the king's servant, the language of a subject at court, even while he stands across a ravine from an army sent to kill him. Matthew Henry hears the grievance underneath. A man who would gladly serve is hunted as a rebel.

If the Lord have stirred thee up against me: David names two possible causes for the whole pursuit and settles neither: either the Lord himself has stirred Saul against him, a trial to be met with an offering, or human hands are behind it, men who deserve a curse for driving him from the land of the Lord's own inheritance into a country where other gods are served. Barnes reads the first clause against the evil spirit sent on Saul back at 16:14, one persecution with two possible sources named in a single breath. David does not choose between them; he leaves the judgment to God rather than pass it himself, and this driven-out complaint is the sharpest word he speaks against his own exile in either sparing chapter.

as when one doth hunt a partridge: David's closing image is self-deprecation aimed to disarm: the king of Israel, with three thousand chosen men, come out after a single flea, hunted the way men hunt a partridge in the mountains, put up again and again until it tires enough to be clubbed. Every figure in the speech shrinks David and enlarges the disproportion of Saul's whole campaign, from a flea to a bird that only flies rather than fights. The plea that his blood not fall before the face of the Lord ties the whole appeal back to the inheritance he says he has been driven out of a verse earlier.

1 Samuel 26:21-22

I have sinned: return, my son David: Saul's confession here goes further than the one he gave at the cave in chapter 24, naming himself a fool and owning that he has erred exceedingly, but Henry notes it is not the first such word from him and asks what a confession is worth without a change in the life behind it. David does not answer with trust; he keeps his distance still, telling one of Saul's own young men to come and fetch the spear rather than approach the king himself. The spear handed back is also a message: David could have kept the very weapon that names a king's rule, and chooses instead to return it whole.

Saul's promise of verse 21 gets no reply at all. Matthew Henry judges that Saul meant it when he spoke, though it came from no true repentance. David's next words, at 27:1, show what he made of it.

1 Samuel 26:23-24

The Lord render to every man his righteousness: David's closing appeal moves from the human court he has argued before Abner and Saul to the divine one, the Lord render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness, the same court he trusts to settle what Saul's own promises have already failed to settle once. Verse 24 turns the appeal personal, asking that his own life be held as precious in the eyes of the Lord as Saul's life was just now held in his hand and spared. The prayer closes the chapter's whole argument in one line: the anointed does not defend himself by force because he has already appealed to a higher bench.

At verse 21 Saul said David had held his life precious. David turns that word into a prayer, asking the Lord to value his own life the same way. Augustine of Hippo counts this gentleness toward a merciless enemy among the marks of David's strength.

Blessed be thou, my son David: Saul's last blessing to David in either book foretells great things and continued prevailing, and neither man rests his weight on the words; each returns to his own place rather than to one road together. Barnes reads this chapter as a second telling of the encounter in the cave at Engedi, one event carried by more than one source; Keil and Delitzsch and most of the bench read the differences, a night camp instead of a cave, a spear and cruse instead of a severed skirt, Abishai present instead of David alone, as evidence of two separate sparings rather than one confused into two. Either way this is the last time Saul and David meet as living men; David hears of him next from an Amalekite messenger, over a body already dead.