Study Desk

"So deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a covenant of the LORD with you. But if I am guilty of wrongdoing, kill me yourself; for why then should you bring me to your father?"

Then Jonathan said to David, "The LORD, the God of Israel, is my witness! When I have sounded out my father about this time tomorrow or the third day, behold, if he has a good feeling toward you, shall I not then send word to you and inform you?

So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, "May the LORD demand it from the hands of David's enemies."

"And I will shoot three arrows to the side, as though I shot at a target.

"He said, 'Please let me go, because our family has a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has ordered me to attend. So now, if I have found favor in your sight, please let me slip away so that I may see my brothers.' For this reason he has not come to the king's table."

Then Saul's anger burned against Jonathan, and he said to him, "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you are choosing the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?

Now it came about in the morning that Jonathan went out to the field at the time agreed upon with David, and a little boy was with him.

David said to Ahimelech the priest, "The king has commissioned me with a matter and has said to me, 'No one is to know anything about the matter on which I am sending you and with which I have commissioned you; and I have directed the young men to a certain place.'

Then the priest said, "The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, behold, it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod; if you would take it for yourself, take it. For there is no other except it here." And David said, "There is none like it; give it to me."

"For all of you have conspired against me so that there is no one who informs me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you who cares about me or informs me that my son has stirred up my servant against me to lie in ambush, as it is this day."

Then the king sent a messenger to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father's household, the priests who were in Nob; and all of them came to the king.

Saul then said to him, "Why have you and the son of Jesse conspired against me, in that you have given him bread and a sword, and have inquired of God for him, so that he would rise up against me by lying in ambush as it is this day?"

Then David and his men went to Keilah and fought the Philistines; and he drove away their livestock and struck them with a great slaughter. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

When it was reported to Saul that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, "God has handed him over to me, for he shut himself in by entering a city with double gates and bars."

So the two of them made a covenant before the LORD; and David stayed at Horesh, while Jonathan went to his house.

But a messenger came to Saul, saying, "Hurry and come, for the Philistines have launched an attack against the land!"

And he came to the sheepfolds on the way, where there was a cave; and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the inner recesses of the cave.

"After whom has the king of Israel gone out? Whom are you pursuing? A dead dog, a single flea?

"Though if a man finds his enemy, will he let him go away unharmed? May the LORD therefore reward you with good in return for what you have done to me this day.

Now there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel; and the man was very rich, and he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. And it came about while he was shearing his sheep in Carmel