1 Samuel 18: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

After David kills Goliath, Saul keeps him in his service, and Jonathan makes a covenant with him and gives him his own robe and weapons. David succeeds in everything Saul sends him to do, but when the women sing that David has killed more than Saul, Saul turns jealous, throws a spear at him, twice sees him get away, and grows afraid of him. Saul then offers his daughters in marriage, first Merab and then Michal, hoping the Philistines will kill David; David pays the bride price of a hundred Philistine foreskins twice over and marries Michal. The chapter ends with Saul as David's steady enemy while David's reputation keeps growing.

Claim by Claim

1. 18:1
   • When he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David.
   • The King James leaves it unstated who had finished speaking to Saul, matching the Hebrew, which does not name the speaker.
   • Jonathan loved David as his own soul.
2. 18:2
   • Saul took David that day.
   • Saul did not allow David to return to his father's house.
3. 18:3
   • Jonathan and David cut a covenant.
   • Jonathan made the covenant because he loved David as his own soul.
4. 18:4
   • Jonathan stripped off the robe that was on him.
   • Jonathan gave the robe to David.
   • Jonathan gave David his tunic as well.
   • Jonathan gave David his sword.
   • Jonathan gave David his bow.
   • Jonathan gave David his belt.
5. 18:5
   • David went out wherever Saul sent him.
   • David acted with success in what he was sent to do.
   • Saul set David over the men of war.
   • This was good in the eyes of all the people.
   • This was also good in the eyes of Saul's servants.
6. 18:6
   • The people were coming home when David returned from striking down the Philistine.
   • The women came out from all the cities of Israel to meet King Saul.
   • The women came out singing and dancing.
   • They came with tambourines.
   • They came with joy.
   • They came with three-stringed instruments.
7. 18:7
   • The women sang responsively as they played.
   • The women said that Saul had struck down his thousands.
   • The women said that David had struck down his ten thousands.
8. 18:8
   • Saul became very angry.
   • This saying was evil in Saul's eyes.
   • Saul said that they had given David ten thousands.
   • Saul said that to him they had given only thousands.
   • Saul said that what remained for David was only the kingdom.
9. 18:9
   • Saul kept a suspicious eye on David from that day onward.
10. 18:10
    • On the next day an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul.
    • Saul prophesied inside the house.
    • David was playing music with his hand, as he did day by day.
    • A spear was in Saul's hand.
11. 18:11
    • Saul hurled the spear.
    • Saul said he would strike David into the wall.
    • David turned away from before him twice.
12. 18:12
    • Saul was afraid of David.
    • Saul was afraid because the LORD was with David.
    • The LORD had departed from Saul.
13. 18:13
    • Saul removed David from his presence.
    • Saul made David a commander over a thousand.
    • David went out and came in before the people.
14. 18:14
    • David acted with success in all his ways.
    • The LORD was with David.
15. 18:15
    • Saul saw that David was very successful.
    • Saul was in dread of David.
16. 18:16
    • All Israel and Judah loved David.
    • They loved him because he went out and came in before them.
17. 18:17
    • Saul said to David that his elder daughter Merab was there.
    • Saul said he would give Merab to David as a wife.
    • Saul told David only to be a valiant man for him.
    • Saul told David to fight the LORD's battles.
    • Saul said that his own hand should not be against David.
    • Saul said that the hand of the Philistines should be against David.
18. 18:18
    • David said to Saul, Who am I?
    • David asked what his life was, or his father's family in Israel.
    • David asked this in view of becoming son-in-law to the king.
19. 18:19
    • At the time when Merab the daughter of Saul was to be given to David, she was given instead to Adriel the Meholathite as a wife.
20. 18:20
    • Michal the daughter of Saul loved David.
    • They told Saul about it.
    • The thing was right in Saul's eyes.
21. 18:21
    • Saul said he would give Michal to David.
    • Saul said she would be a snare to David.
    • Saul said the hand of the Philistines would be against David.
    • Saul said to David that he would become his son-in-law that day.
    • Saul's phrase for how David would become his son-in-law is unclear in the Hebrew, meaning either by the second of the two daughters or by way of two conditions; the King James renders it as by one of the two.
22. 18:22
    • Saul commanded his servants.
    • Saul told them to speak to David privately.
    • Saul told them to say that the king delighted in David.
    • Saul told them to say that all the king's servants loved David.
    • Saul told them to tell David to become the king's son-in-law now.
23. 18:23
    • Saul's servants spoke these words in David's ears.
    • David asked whether it seemed a light thing in their eyes to become the king's son-in-law.
    • David said he was a poor man.
    • David said he was lightly esteemed.
24. 18:24
    • Saul's servants reported to Saul.
    • They said David had spoken in this manner.
25. 18:25
    • Saul told the servants what to say to David.
    • Saul said the king desired no bride-price.
    • Saul said the king desired a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.
    • Saul said this was to take vengeance on the king's enemies.
    • Saul intended to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.
26. 18:26
    • Saul's servants told David these words.
    • The matter was right in David's eyes, to become the king's son-in-law.
    • The days had not yet been completed.
27. 18:27
    • David arose and went, he and his men.
    • David struck down two hundred men of the Philistines.
    • David brought their foreskins.
    • They delivered them in full number to the king.
    • David did this in order to become the king's son-in-law.
    • Saul gave David his daughter Michal as a wife.
28. 18:28
    • Saul saw and knew that the LORD was with David.
    • Saul knew that Michal the daughter of Saul loved David.
29. 18:29
    • Saul became still more afraid of David.
    • Saul was David's enemy all his days.
30. 18:30
    • The commanders of the Philistines went out.
    • Whenever they went out, David had more success than all the servants of Saul.
    • David's name became very highly valued.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

18:1

Jonathan is Saul's oldest son and the expected next king, which is what makes this friendship loaded from the start. The King James "soul" translates a Hebrew word meaning a person's whole self and life, so "loved him as his own soul" means loved him as much as his own life. This language of binding loyalty was also used of political alliances, not only private affection.

18:2

Keeping a man at court was an honor and a leash at once. Once the king took David into permanent royal service, David was not free to go home, and everything he did after this happened under Saul's eye.

18:3

A covenant was a binding formal pact, usually sworn with an oath and sometimes a symbolic act. Between two individuals it created obligations of loyalty and mutual protection as strong as those between blood relatives, and it bound their descendants too.

18:4

Jonathan was the king's son and heir. A robe, a sword, a bow and a belt were the visible marks of a warrior's and a prince's rank, personally fitted and not the sort of thing given away casually. Handing over one's own weapons and clothing was a public, deliberate act with a recognized meaning; the text describes it without saying what the onlookers made of it.

18:5

The Hebrew verb used here (and in verses 14, 15 and 30) carries two senses at once: to act with skill and good judgment, and to come out well as a result. English needs two words, "acted wisely" and "succeeded", where the Hebrew uses one.

18:6

The Philistines were a people occupying five city-states on the coastal plain south-west of Israel, Israel's chief military rivals in this period. "The Philistine" David had killed is Goliath, the champion of the previous chapter. Women meeting a returning army with drums, dancing and songs was the customary victory welcome, and the songs they improvised were how a soldier's reputation was made.

18:7

"Thousands... tens of thousands" is a standard pattern in Hebrew poetry, where the second line repeats the first with a heightened number. As a poetic form it need not mean the singers were literally counting and comparing; Saul, however, takes it as a comparison.

18:8

The song lands on a nerve. Israel's monarchy was brand new and it was not yet settled that a king's son would inherit, and Samuel had already told Saul that God had rejected him and would give the kingdom to someone else. Saul jumps straight from a song to the throne because the throne is what he is already afraid of losing.

18:10

Two words here are narrower in Hebrew than in English. The word translated "evil" means harmful or injurious in its effects rather than morally wicked. And the verb "prophesied" covers ecstatic, uncontrolled behavior (raving, babbling, frenzied movement), not only the speaking of predictions. The same verb is used of the bands of prophets in chapter 10.

18:11

The word is a spear, and a spear in a king's hand was more than a weapon. It went with him as a sign of royal authority, the way a scepter would later, which is why Saul is holding one indoors.

18:12

The narrator is pointing back to chapter 16, where the spirit of the LORD came upon David at his anointing and left Saul.

18:13

"Commander of a thousand" was a real rank in Israel's army, but the point of the move was that it took David away from the king's household and out on campaign. "Led them out and brought them back" is a Hebrew idiom for commanding troops on active service, the phrase appears again in verse 16.

18:16

"Went out and came in before them" is a set Hebrew phrase for leading troops out on campaign and bringing them home again. It describes a working field commander, the man the soldiers actually followed.

18:17

Saul had earlier promised his daughter to whoever killed Goliath (chapter 17). "The LORD's battles" was ordinary language for Israel's wars, which were understood as fought on the nation's God's behalf.

18:18

David's reply is partly the conventional self-lowering language expected when a commoner was offered a royal honor, and partly a practical objection: a man marrying into the royal house was expected to have the standing and the wealth to pay for the privilege.

18:19

Adriel came from Abel-meholah, a town in the Jordan valley. Marrying Merab to someone else was a public breach of the offer Saul had just made to David.

18:20

Michal was Saul's younger daughter. Merab, in verse 17, was the older one.

18:21

The Hebrew of Saul's last sentence is compressed and can be read two ways: "you shall be my son-in-law by one of the two" (that is, by one of my two daughters), or "you shall be my son-in-law a second time over", a second offer after the first fell through. Translators divide over which is meant.

18:22

In 1611 "commune with" simply meant talk with. Saul wanted the message given quietly, not announced.

18:23

David's objection is about money. A man could not simply accept a royal marriage; he had to pay for the bride, and the price for a king's daughter would be far beyond a farmer's son from Bethlehem.

18:25

The Hebrew word is *mohar*, the bride price (a payment made by the groom or his family to the bride's father, the reverse of the dowry an English reader may have in mind. Waiving it, or naming a price a man could meet by his own effort, was a way of showing favor. Philistine men were not circumcised, unlike Israelites, so a foreskin proved the dead man was a Philistine and not just any casualty) a battle trophy that also served as a body count. Saul's price required David to kill a hundred armed men at close quarters.

18:26

"The days were not expired" means the agreed period had not yet run out. Saul had set a deadline for the payment, which is part of the trap: it forced David to go looking for Philistines quickly rather than waiting for a safe opportunity.

18:27

David brings back double the number demanded, leaving Saul no room to refuse. Some ancient copies of the text, including the Greek translation, read "a hundred" here rather than "two hundred"; David himself later refers to a hundred (2 Samuel 3:14).

18:30

The "commanders" were the rulers of the five Philistine cities and their officers; the Philistines campaigned as a coalition. The point is that David's record held up over repeated campaigns, not in one battle.