For Teaching

1 Samuel 23: What the Passage Says

95 claims across 29 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Samuel 23 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

David hears that the Philistines are raiding the town of Keilah, asks the LORD twice, and then attacks them and saves the town. Saul hears David is trapped inside a walled town and gathers an army, but David asks the LORD through the priest Abiathar and learns the townspeople will hand him over, so he and his six hundred men leave. David hides in the wilderness of Ziph, where Jonathan comes to encourage him and the two make an agreement, and where the local Ziphites offer to betray him to Saul. Saul nearly surrounds David in the wilderness of Maon, but a report of a Philistine raid pulls him away, and David moves on to the strongholds at En-gedi.

Claim by Claim

23:1
- People told David that the Philistines were fighting against Keilah.
- People told David that the Philistines were plundering the threshing floors.
23:2
- David inquired of the LORD.
- David asked whether he should go and strike these Philistines.
- The LORD told David to go and strike the Philistines.
- The LORD told David to save Keilah.
23:3
- David's men said to him that they were afraid there in Judah.
- David's men asked how much more afraid they would be if they went to Keilah against the ranks of the Philistines.
23:4
- David inquired of the LORD again.
- The LORD answered David.
- The LORD told David to arise and go down to Keilah.
- The LORD said he would give the Philistines into David's hand.
23:5
- David and his men went to Keilah.
- David and his men fought against the Philistines.
- David and his men drove away the Philistines' livestock.
- David struck the Philistines with a great slaughter.
- David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.
23:6
- Abiathar son of Ahimelech fled to David at Keilah.
- Abiathar came down with an ephod in his hand.
23:7
- Saul was told that David had come to Keilah.
- Saul said that God had delivered David into his hand.
- Saul said David was shut in by entering a town with gates and bars.
23:8
- Saul summoned all the people to war.
- Saul summoned them to go down to Keilah.
- Saul intended to besiege David and his men.
23:9
- David knew that Saul was secretly devising evil against him.
- David told Abiathar the priest to bring the ephod.
23:10
- David addressed the LORD as the God of Israel.
- David said his servant had certainly heard that Saul sought to come to Keilah.
- David said Saul sought to destroy the city on David's account.
23:11
- David asked whether the men of Keilah would surrender him into Saul's hand.
- David asked whether Saul would come down, as his servant had heard.
- David asked the LORD, the God of Israel, to tell his servant.
- The LORD said Saul would come down.
23:12
- David asked whether the men of Keilah would surrender him and his men into Saul's hand.
- The LORD said they would surrender him.
23:13
- David and his men numbered about six hundred.
- David and his men arose and departed from Keilah.
- David and his men went wherever they could go.
- Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah.
- Saul refrained from going out.
23:14
- David stayed in the wilderness in strongholds.
- David remained in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph.
- Saul sought David every day.
- God did not give David into Saul's hand.
23:15
- David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life.
- David was in the wilderness of Ziph.
- David was at a place the King James calls a wood and the Hebrew names Horesh.
23:16
- Jonathan, Saul's son, arose and went to David at Horesh.
- Jonathan strengthened David's hand in God.
23:17
- Jonathan told David not to fear.
- Jonathan said the hand of his father Saul would not find David.
- Jonathan said David would be king over Israel.
- Jonathan said he himself would be second to David.
- Jonathan said his father Saul also knew this.
23:18
- The two of them made a covenant before the LORD.
- David stayed at Horesh.
- Jonathan went to his house.
23:19
- The Ziphites came up to Saul at Gibeah.
- The Ziphites asked whether David was not hiding among them in strongholds at Horesh.
- The Ziphites said the place was on the hill of Hachilah.
- The Ziphites said Hachilah was south of Jeshimon.
23:20
- The Ziphites told the king to come down according to all his soul's desire to come down.
- The Ziphites said it would be their part to deliver David into the king's hand.
23:21
- Saul said they were blessed of the LORD.
- Saul said they had compassion on him.
23:22
- Saul told them to go and make further preparation.
- Saul told them to know and see the place where his foot is, where he frequents.
- Saul told them to find out who had seen David there.
- Saul said he was told that David dealt very craftily.
23:23
- Saul told them to see and take knowledge of all the hiding places where David hid himself.
- Saul told them to return to him with certainty.
- Saul said he would go with them.
- Saul said that if David was in the land, he would search him out among all the thousands of Judah.
23:24
- They arose and went to Ziph ahead of Saul.
- David and his men were in the wilderness of Maon.
- They were in the Arabah south of Jeshimon.
23:25
- Saul and his men went to seek David.
- David was told about it.
- David went down to the rock.
- David stayed in the wilderness of Maon.
- Saul heard of it.
- Saul pursued David in the wilderness of Maon.
23:26
- Saul went along one side of the mountain.
- David and his men went along the other side of the mountain.
- David was hurrying to get away from Saul.
- Saul and his men were surrounding David and his men to capture them.
23:27
- A messenger came to Saul.
- The messenger told Saul to hurry and come.
- The messenger said the Philistines had raided the land.
23:28
- Saul returned from pursuing David.
- Saul went against the Philistines.
- That place was called Sela-hammahlekoth.
23:29
- David went up from there.
- David lived in the strongholds at En-gedi.

Words Worth Explaining

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

23:1: The Philistines were a people settled in five cities along the Mediterranean coast, southwest of Israel, and Israel's main military rivals in this period. A threshing floor was a flat, open patch of hard ground, usually on a breezy hilltop outside a town, where the harvested grain was beaten and winnowed. Raiding one at harvest time was an efficient way to steal a town's whole food supply in one place, before it could be stored inside the walls.
23:2: "Asked the LORD" describes a formal procedure, not private prayer: a question was put through a priest and an answer was expected, usually yes or no. See the note at verse 6.
23:3: Judah was David's own tribal territory, in the southern hill country, comparatively safe ground for him. Keilah lay lower down, toward the Philistine plain, which is why going there felt far more exposed.
23:5: Driving off the enemy's livestock was standard practice in this kind of fighting: the animals were the raiders' own supply train and their profit, and taking them was both a blow to the enemy and payment for the men who fought.
23:6: An ephod was a priestly garment, worn over the chest, that held or was associated with the objects used to get a yes-or-no answer from God. Abiathar was the sole survivor of the priests of Nob, whom Saul had slaughtered (chapter 22), so the ephod, and the ability to consult God with it, had passed from Saul's court to David's camp.
23:7: "Gates and bars" marks Keilah as a walled town. Walls protect the people inside from attack, but they also close off escape routes, which is exactly what Saul is counting on: a besieging army could pen David in.
23:8: To surround a town meant to camp all around its walls so nobody could leave or bring in food. It was a way of winning without fighting.
23:9: The ephod was used for a limited kind of question, the answer came back yes or no, which is why David asks two short, separate questions in verses 11 and 12 rather than one open one.
23:11: David asks two questions here but only one answer is recorded, and it addresses the second. The Hebrew text leaves this untidy as it stands; some ancient copies of the book have only the second question at this point.
23:13: Six hundred men is a raiding band, not an army, enough to beat off a Philistine raiding party, nowhere near enough to withstand a siege by the king's forces.
23:14: The wilderness here is not sand desert but dry, broken limestone hill country east and south of the Judean ridge, full of ravines, caves and hilltop refuges, very hard to search and easy to hide in. "Places that were hard to attack" translates a word for such natural refuges.
23:15: The King James translates the Hebrew word as "a wood," but it is almost certainly a place name, Horesh, meaning a thicket or wooded ridge in otherwise dry country.
23:16: "Strengthened his hand" is a Hebrew idiom for encouraging someone, putting fresh courage into them. Jonathan was Saul's eldest son and heir, and his own father's rival was David.
23:17: "Second to you" is the position of chief officer under the king. Jonathan, as the king's son, would normally expect the throne himself; he is stating that he expects to serve under David instead.
23:18: A covenant was a formal, binding agreement, sworn with God named as witness, closer to a treaty or sworn oath than to a private promise. This is the third such agreement between the two men in the book.
23:19: The Ziphites were fellow members of the tribe of Judah, David's own people, living in the district where he was hiding, which is what makes their offer to Saul significant. Gibeah was Saul's home town and the seat of his court. Jeshimon ("the wasteland") was the barren country falling away toward the Dead Sea.
23:20: "Come down" is literal geography: Saul's Gibeah is on the high central ridge, and the Ziphite country lies lower and to the south.
23:21: "Blessed be ye of the LORD" was an ordinary formula of warm thanks, close to "God reward you for this." Saul is treating the informers as loyal subjects doing him a kindness.
23:22: "Haunt" in 1611 simply meant the place someone regularly goes, with no ghostly sense. "Subtilly" meant cunning and hard to pin down, not the modern sense of understated.
23:23: "Clans" translates a word meaning literally "thousands", the units into which a tribe was divided for census and military purposes, each headed by its own chief. Saul is saying he will conduct a house-by-house search through the entire tribe.
23:24: The desert plain is the Arabah, the deep, hot rift valley running down to the Dead Sea, the lowest and driest country in the region.
23:25: "The rock" is a definite place, a particular crag or rock outcrop used as a refuge, not just any rock.
23:27: A messenger was someone who ran to carry news. There were no phones then.
23:28: Sela-hammahlekoth means something like "the rock of divisions" or "the rock of escapes", a place name that preserved the memory of the two forces parting on either side of the hill. Naming a spot after what happened there is a common way this book marks events.
23:29: En-gedi means "spring of the young goat": a freshwater spring on the western cliffs above the Dead Sea, an oasis in otherwise waterless country, surrounded by caves. Water plus cover made it an ideal refuge.

Read 1 Samuel 23