And Jonathan answered Saul, David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Beth–lehem:
And Jonathan answered Saul, David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Beth-lehem:
And Jonathan answereth Saul, `David hath been earnestly asked of me unto Beth-Lehem,
And Jonathan answered Saul, David earnestly asked leave of me [to go] to Bethlehem,
1 Samuel — The transition from judges to monarchy. Samuel rises as prophet-judge; Israel demands a king; Saul rises and is rejected; David is anointed in obscurity and flees across the wilderness. Three lives overlapping — the prophetic-judicial-royal handoff.
Voices2
And Jonathan answered Saul: He earnestly requested me that he might go to Bethlehem, etc. It indeed seems strange according to the letter, why he should think and inquire about David in this manner, or Jonathan should respond, when the very obvious cause of royal …
Bede· Commentary on Samuel, 735patristic
And Jonathan answered Saul,....
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)reformed
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The verses this one reaches1
If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David urgently requested my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because there is an annual sacrifice for his whole clan.’
The walk5
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first — the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
1 Samuel 20:6If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David urgently requested my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because there is an annual sacrifice for his whole clan.’
leads to
“Yes, he is ahead of you,” they answered. “Hurry now, for today he has come to the city because the people have a sacrifice on the high place.
“Whose son are you, young man?” asked Saul. “I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem,” David replied.
Doesn’t the Scripture say that the Christ will come from the line of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”
Instead, you must seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to establish as a dwelling for His Name, and there you must go.
“How can I go?” Samuel asked. “Saul will hear of it and kill me!” The LORD answered, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’
The whole web at once: see the Arc.
