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1 Samuel 24: What the Passage Says

78 claims across 22 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Samuel 24 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Saul hunts David near En-gedi with three thousand men and, without knowing it, enters the very cave where David and his men are hiding. David secretly cuts off a corner of Saul's robe but refuses to harm him, because Saul is the LORD's anointed king. David then calls out to Saul, shows him the cloth as proof, and argues that he has done Saul no wrong. Saul weeps, admits David is more righteous than he is, says he knows David will be king, and asks David to swear he will not wipe out his family.

Claim by Claim

  1. 24:1
    • Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines.
    • Saul was told that David was in the wilderness of En-gedi.
  2. 24:2
    • Saul took three thousand chosen men from all Israel.
    • Saul went to seek David and David's men on the rocks of the wild goats.
  3. 24:3
    • Saul came to the sheepfolds along the road.
    • There was a cave at that place.
    • Saul went into the cave to relieve himself.
    • David and his men were staying in the innermost parts of that cave.
  4. 24:4
    • David's men said to David that this was the day the LORD had spoken of to him.
    • David's men quoted the LORD as saying he would deliver David's enemy into David's hand.
    • David's men quoted the LORD as saying David might do to that enemy whatever seemed good to him.
    • David got up and cut off the corner of Saul's robe.
    • David cut off the corner of the robe secretly.
  5. 24:5
    • Afterward David's heart struck him.
    • David's heart struck him because he had cut off the corner of Saul's robe.
  6. 24:6
    • David said to his men that the LORD forbid that he should do this thing to his master.
    • David called Saul the LORD's anointed.
    • David said he should not stretch out his hand against Saul.
    • David gave as the reason that Saul is the anointed of the LORD.
  7. 24:7
    • David restrained his men with these words.
    • David did not allow his men to rise against Saul.
    • Saul got up and left the cave.
    • Saul went on his way.
  8. 24:8
    • David got up afterward and went out of the cave.
    • David called out after Saul.
    • David addressed Saul as 'my lord the king'.
    • Saul looked behind him.
    • David bowed with his face to the ground.
    • David prostrated himself.
  9. 24:9
    • David said to Saul, asking why Saul listens to the words of men.
    • David quoted those men as saying that David seeks Saul's harm.
  10. 24:10
    • David said that on this day Saul's own eyes had seen that the LORD delivered Saul into David's hand in the cave.
    • David said someone urged him to kill Saul.
    • David said his eye spared Saul.
    • David said he had declared he would not put forth his hand against his lord.
    • David gave as the reason that Saul is the LORD's anointed.
  11. 24:11
    • David addressed Saul as 'my father'.
    • David told Saul to look at the corner of Saul's robe in David's hand.
    • David said he had cut off the corner of Saul's robe.
    • David said he did not kill Saul.
    • David told Saul to know and see that there is no evil or rebellion in David's hand.
    • David said he had not sinned against Saul.
    • David said Saul was hunting David's life to take it.
  12. 24:12
    • David asked that the LORD judge between him and Saul.
    • David asked that the LORD avenge him against Saul.
    • David said his own hand would not be against Saul.
  13. 24:13
    • David cited a proverb of the ancients.
    • The proverb says that wickedness comes from the wicked.
    • David said his own hand would not be against Saul.
  14. 24:14
    • David asked after whom the king of Israel had come out.
    • David asked after whom Saul was pursuing.
    • David said Saul was pursuing a dead dog.
    • David said Saul was pursuing a flea.
  15. 24:15
    • David asked that the LORD be judge.
    • David asked that the LORD judge between him and Saul.
    • David asked that the LORD see.
    • David asked that the LORD plead his case.
    • David asked that the LORD deliver him out of Saul's hand.
  16. 24:16
    • David finished speaking these words to Saul.
    • Saul asked whether this was the voice of David.
    • Saul called David his son.
    • Saul lifted up his voice and wept.
  17. 24:17
    • Saul said to David that David is more righteous than Saul.
    • Saul said David had repaid him with good.
    • Saul said he had repaid David with evil.
  18. 24:18
    • Saul said David had declared this day that he dealt well with Saul.
    • Saul said the LORD had delivered him into David's hand.
    • Saul said David did not kill him.
  19. 24:19
    • Saul asked whether a man who finds his enemy lets him go away unharmed.
    • Saul asked that the LORD reward David with good for what David had done to him this day.
  20. 24:20
    • Saul said he knows that David will surely be king.
    • Saul said the kingdom of Israel will be established in David's hand.
  21. 24:21
    • Saul told David to swear to him by the LORD.
    • Saul asked David to swear not to cut off Saul's offspring after him.
    • Saul asked David to swear not to destroy Saul's name out of his father's house.
  22. 24:22
    • David swore to Saul.
    • Saul went to his house.
    • David and his men went up to the stronghold.

Words Worth Explaining

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

24:1
The Philistines were a people living in five cities along the coastal plain southwest of Israel; they were Israel's main military rival throughout Saul's reign, and Saul's campaigns against them are the background to this whole part of the story. En-gedi is a freshwater spring and oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, surrounded by steep desert cliffs riddled with caves, good country to hide in and hard country to search.
24:2
"Chosen men" means picked troops, not conscripts. The number is worth holding onto: earlier chapters put David's following at about six hundred men, so Saul is hunting him with a force five times his size.
24:3
The King James "went in to cover his feet" is a polite idiom of the Hebrew, not a description of anything to do with feet: it means he went in to relieve himself, and the long robes of the period would have been gathered around the legs. "Sheepcotes" are sheepfolds: rough stone enclosures beside the road where shepherds penned flocks overnight. The caves in these cliffs can run back a long way and turn dark within a few steps, so men at the back would be invisible to someone standing just inside the entrance.
24:4
No earlier passage records the LORD making this promise in these words; David's men are either citing something not written down or reading the situation as the fulfillment of God's general promises about David. The narrator reports their claim without endorsing it. The "corner" (King James "skirt") is the hem or edge of the outer robe. In this culture the hem of a garment carried a man's identity and standing, hems were used to seal documents, and cutting one was a recognized way of stripping a person of authority. That is why the act is not trivial and why David's conscience troubles him afterward.
24:5
In the King James, "David's heart smote him" uses "heart" the way Hebrew does, for the mind and will and the place where decisions are made, not for the emotions alone. The phrase means his conscience struck him.
24:6
"The LORD's anointed" refers to the ceremony in which oil was poured over a new king's head to mark him as chosen and set apart for the office. Saul had been anointed by Samuel, and so had David in secret; the title made the king's person legally untouchable, which is the whole force of David's argument here.
24:7
"Suffered them not" means did not allow them. "Servants" here means David's followers and fighting men rather than household slaves.
24:8
Bowing with the face to the ground was the standard gesture of a subject before a king. By performing it in the open, at a distance, David is publicly declaring that he still regards Saul as his rightful sovereign.
24:9
David is talking about Saul's courtiers and advisers, the men around the throne who had been feeding him accusations. The book has already shown one of them, Doeg the Edomite, informing on David and then carrying out a massacre on Saul's orders.
24:11
"My father" is partly a respectful form of address to an older man and a king, and partly literal: David had married Saul's daughter Michal, making Saul his father-in-law. The King James "transgression" here translates a word meaning revolt or rebellion against a ruler, David is denying the specific charge of treason, not making a general claim of innocence.
24:12
The language is legal, not personal. "Avenge me of thee" means give me justice against you. David is asking God to act as the judge in a case, which is his way of saying he refuses to settle the matter himself with a weapon.
24:13
David quotes a saying already old in his own day. Its sense is that wrongdoing comes out of the character of the wrongdoer, so if David were the traitor Saul thinks he is, the evidence would already be lying in the cave, Saul's corpse.
24:14
Both are stock expressions of worthlessness. Dogs in this culture were scavengers, not pets, and a dead one was the lowest thing imaginable; a flea is something so small that chasing it is beneath a grown man, let alone a king with three thousand troops. David is saying the pursuit is not just unjust but undignified.
24:15
The language here is courtroom language: "plead my cause" means argue my case as an advocate would. David is asking God to act as judge in a formal lawsuit between two parties, since no human court could try a subject's case against the king.
24:16
Saul called David "my son" because David had married his daughter. Crying out loud in front of others was normal then. People did not hide their tears.
24:17
"Thou art more righteous than I" is a verdict rather than a compliment about David's character in general. In this legal dispute between the two of them, Saul is conceding that David is the one in the right.
24:20
Saul is saying out loud the thing he has been fighting since David's rise: that the throne will pass to David and not to his own son Jonathan. Jonathan had told David the same thing in the previous chapter.
24:21
When a new dynasty took a throne in the ancient Near East, killing the previous king's descendants was routine practice, since any surviving heir was a standing claim to the crown. Saul is asking for legal protection for his family. "Wipe my name out of my father's house" means to end the family line entirely: a man's name survived through his descendants and their hold on his ancestral land, so extinguishing the line erased the man himself from memory and record.
24:22
"The hold" is a stronghold, a fortified refuge in the high, broken country, defensible and hard to approach. David swears the oath but does not go home with Saul; the reconciliation does not extend to trusting him.

Read 1 Samuel 24