Study Desk

Yonatan cried after the boy, Go fast! Hurry! Don't delay! Yonatan's boy gathered up the arrows, and came to his master.

Yonatan gave his weapons to his boy, and said to him, Go, carry them to the city.

As soon as the boy was gone, David arose out of [a place] toward the South, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed himself three times: and they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded.

Now a certain man of the servants of Sha'ul was there that day, detained before the LORD; and his name was Do'eg the Edomite, the best of the herdsmen who belonged to Sha'ul.

The servants of Akhish said to him, "Isn't this David the king of the land? Didn't they sing one to another about him in dances, saying, 'Sha'ul has slain his thousands, David his ten thousands?'"

David laid up these words in his heart, and was very afraid of Akhish the king of Gat.

He changed his behavior before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard.

Then said Akhish to his servants, Look, you see the man is mad; why then have you brought him to me?

David therefore departed there, and escaped to the cave of `Adullam: and when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.

Sha'ul heard that David was discovered, and the men who were with him: now Sha'ul was sitting in Gevah, under the tamarisk tree in Ramah, with his spear in his hand, and all his servants were standing about him.

Sha'ul said to his servants who stood about him, Hear now, you Binyamini; will the son of Yishai give everyone of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds,

Then the king sent to call Achimelekh the Kohen, the son of Achituv, and all his father's house, the Kohanim who were in Nov: and they came all of them to the king.

Have I today begun to inquire of God for him? be it far from me: don't let the king impute anything to his servant, nor to all the house of my father; for your servant knows nothing of all this, less or more.

David and his men went to Ke`ilah, and fought with the Pelishtim, and brought away their cattle, and killed them with a great slaughter. So David save the inhabitants of Ke`ilah.

It happened, when Avyatar the son of Achimelekh fled to David to Ke`ilah, that he came down with an efod in his hand.

Sha'ul summoned all the people to war, to go down to Ke`ilah, to besiege David and his men.

Will the men of Ke`ilah deliver me up into his hand? will Sha'ul come down, as your servant has heard? LORD, the God of Yisra'el, I beg you, tell your servant. The LORD said, He will come down.

Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Ke`ilah, and went wherever they could go. It was told Sha'ul that David was escaped from Ke`ilah; and he gave up going there.

David abode in the wilderness in the strongholds, and remained in the hill-country in the wilderness of Zif. Sha'ul sought him every day, but God didn't deliver him into his hand.

David saw that Sha'ul had come out to seek his life: and David was in the wilderness of Zif in the wood.