For Teaching

1 Samuel 26: What the Passage Says

90 claims across 25 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Samuel 26 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Ziphites tell Saul where David is hiding, and Saul comes into the wilderness of Ziph with three thousand men to hunt him. At night David and Abishai walk into Saul's camp while everyone sleeps, and David stops Abishai from killing Saul, taking only Saul's spear and water jug. From a hilltop far off, David shames Abner for failing to guard the king and asks Saul why he keeps chasing him. Saul admits he has sinned and says David will do great things, and the two men part ways.

Claim by Claim

26:1
- The Ziphites came to Saul at Gibeah.
- The Ziphites asked whether David was not hiding on the hill of Hachilah.
- The Ziphites said the hill of Hachilah faces Jeshimon.
26:2
- Saul arose and went down to the wilderness of Ziph.
- Three thousand chosen men of Israel were with Saul.
- Saul went to seek David in the wilderness of Ziph.
26:3
- Saul camped on the hill of Hachilah, which faces Jeshimon, beside the road.
- David was staying in the wilderness.
- David saw that Saul had come after him into the wilderness.
26:4
- David sent out spies.
- David learned that Saul had certainly come.
26:5
- David arose and came to the place where Saul had camped.
- David saw the place where Saul lay down, and where Abner son of Ner lay.
- Abner son of Ner was the commander of Saul's army.
- Saul was lying inside the circle of the camp.
- The troops were camped around Saul.
26:6
- David spoke to Ahimelech the Hittite and to Abishai son of Zeruiah.
- Abishai son of Zeruiah was the brother of Joab.
- David asked who would go down with him to Saul in the camp.
- Abishai said he would go down with David.
26:7
- David and Abishai came to the troops by night.
- Saul was lying asleep inside the circle of the camp.
- Saul's spear was stuck in the ground at his head.
- Abner and the troops were lying around Saul.
26:8
- Abishai said to David that God had delivered David's enemy into his hand that day.
- Abishai asked David to let him strike Saul with the spear, pinning him to the ground with one stroke.
- Abishai said he would not need to strike Saul a second time.
26:9
- David told Abishai not to destroy Saul.
- David asked who could stretch out his hand against the LORD's anointed and be guiltless.
26:10
- David swore by the life of the LORD.
- David said the LORD would strike Saul down.
- David said that alternatively Saul's day would come and he would die.
- David said that alternatively Saul would go down into battle and perish.
26:11
- David said the LORD forbid that he should stretch out his hand against the LORD's anointed.
- David told Abishai to take the spear that was at Saul's head and the jug of water.
- David said they should go.
26:12
- David took the spear and the jug of water from beside Saul's head.
- David and Abishai went away.
- No one saw them.
- No one knew about it.
- No one woke up.
- They were all asleep.
- A deep sleep from the LORD had fallen upon them.
26:13
- David crossed over to the other side.
- David stood on the top of the hill at a distance.
- There was a great space between them.
26:14
- David called out to the troops and to Abner son of Ner.
- David asked whether Abner would not answer.
- Abner answered and asked who he was that called to the king.
26:15
- David asked Abner whether he was not a man.
- David asked who was like Abner in Israel.
- David asked why Abner had not kept watch over his lord the king.
- David said that one of the people had come in to destroy the king, Abner's lord.
26:16
- David said the thing Abner had done was not good.
- David swore by the life of the LORD.
- David said that they deserved to die.
- David said the reason was that they had not kept watch over their lord, the LORD's anointed.
- David told Abner to look where the king's spear was, and the jug of water that had been at his head.
26:17
- Saul recognized David's voice.
- Saul asked whether that was David's voice, calling him his son.
- David said it was his voice, addressing Saul as his lord the king.
26:18
- David asked why his lord was pursuing his servant.
- David asked what he had done.
- David asked what evil was in his hand.
26:19
- David asked his lord the king to hear the words of his servant.
- David said that if the LORD had stirred Saul up against him, may the LORD accept an offering.
- David said that if men had done it, may they be cursed before the LORD.
- David said they had driven him out that day from sharing in the inheritance of the LORD.
- David said they had told him to go serve other gods.
26:20
- David asked that his blood not fall to the ground away from the presence of the LORD.
- David said the king of Israel had come out to seek a single flea.
- David compared this to hunting a partridge in the mountains.
26:21
- Saul said he had sinned.
- Saul told David to return, calling him his son.
- Saul said he would no more do David harm.
- Saul said the reason was that David had held his life precious that day.
- Saul said he had acted foolishly.
- Saul said he had erred exceedingly.
26:22
- David answered and pointed out the king's spear.
- David said one of the young men should come over and fetch it.
26:23
- David said the LORD repays each man his righteousness and his faithfulness.
- David said the LORD had delivered Saul into his hand that day.
- David said he was unwilling to stretch out his hand against the LORD's anointed.
26:24
- David said that as Saul's life had been valued greatly in his eyes that day, so may his own life be valued greatly in the eyes of the LORD.
- David asked that the LORD deliver him out of all trouble.
26:25
- Saul said to David that he was blessed, calling him his son.
- Saul said David would surely do great things.
- Saul said David would surely prevail.
- David went on his way.
- Saul returned to his place.

Words Worth Explaining

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

26:1: Ziph was a town and its surrounding dry country in the hill land of Judah, south of Hebron. Its inhabitants had already reported David's whereabouts to Saul once before. Gibeah was Saul's home town and the seat of his court. "Jeshimon" is a Hebrew word meaning "the wasteland", the barren country sloping down toward the Dead Sea; the King James treats it as a place name.
26:2: Three thousand "chosen" or hand-picked men means a picked force of regulars, not a general call-up of the militia.
26:4: "In very deed" is old English for "for certain." David is not just told Saul is nearby; he sends scouts to confirm the report before acting on it.
26:5: Abner son of Ner was Saul's cousin as well as the commander of his army, which made him the most powerful man in the kingdom after the king. The word rendered "trench" in the King James does not mean a dug ditch; it refers to the circular enclosure at the center of a camp, where the baggage and the wagons were drawn up and the commander slept, ringed by his troops.
26:6: The Hittites were a non-Israelite people; individual Hittites lived among the Israelites and some, like Ahimelech here and Uriah later, served in David's forces. Abishai and Joab are named by their mother, Zeruiah, rather than their father, unusual in Hebrew narrative; elsewhere she is called David's sister, making these men David's nephews. Joab would become the commander of David's army.
26:7: A spear planted upright in the ground beside a sleeping man marked the spot as his; for a king it also served as a visible badge of his authority, the nearest thing Saul had to a scepter.
26:8: "God has handed your enemy over to you" is the language of holy war: it claims the opportunity itself is a divine verdict against the enemy, so that killing him would carry no guilt.
26:9: Kings in Israel were installed by having olive oil poured over the head, a ritual that transferred them out of ordinary status; "the LORD's anointed" is a standing title for the reigning king that follows from that ceremony. Saul had been anointed by Samuel, and, in the logic David appeals to here, remained protected by that status regardless of his conduct.
26:10: "As surely as the LORD lives" is a fixed oath formula, the strongest form of promise in Hebrew: the speaker stakes his words on the reality of God. It is not a comment on God's being alive.
26:11: In desert country a jug of water was worth a great deal. Taking it from beside the sleeping king proved just how close David had come.
26:12: The Hebrew word behind "deep sleep" denotes an abnormally heavy stupor, not ordinary sleep; the same word is used of the sleep that falls on Adam in Genesis and on Abraham. The narrator's point is that the camp's failure to wake was not merely careless.
26:13: In this hill country a person on one ridge can be clearly heard by people on the next one while remaining well out of reach, since crossing the ravine between them would take a long time. David makes sure of that distance before he says a word.
26:15: Guarding the king's person overnight was the specific duty of his commander. David's mocking question ("who in Israel is your equal?") plays that reputation against the fact that Saul's spear is now in David's hands.
26:16: "You all deserve to die" invokes the penalty a royal bodyguard would face for letting the king be killed; David is passing sentence on Abner in the king's own idiom, with the missing spear and water jug as the evidence.
26:17: Saul is not David's father. David had married Saul's daughter Michal, and an older man often called a younger one "my son."
26:18: David calls himself the king's servant. That was a polite way to talk to a king.
26:19: Two possible causes are laid side by side and left unresolved. If God has incited Saul, the remedy is an offering, a sacrifice to appease and settle the matter. If human informers are behind it, they fall under a curse. The "inheritance of the LORD" is the land of Canaan as parceled out among the Israelite families; a man's share of it was his standing in the community. Because each people was assumed to have its own gods attached to its own territory, driving David off that land was in effect telling him to go and serve someone else's god, which is why he can quote his enemies as saying words they never spoke aloud.
26:20: Blood "falling to the ground" is the idiom for a killing that goes unavenged, the blood soaking away with no one to answer for it. "Far from the LORD's presence" continues the thought of verse 19: to die outside the land is to die away from where God is worshiped. A flea is proverbially the most contemptible thing a man might chase. The partridge was hunted by being flushed and driven across the hills until it was too exhausted to fly, a long, undignified pursuit of very small game.
26:21: "I have sinned" here is a formal admission of wrong done to David, not a general statement of religious feeling; it is the same phrase a subject would use in confessing an offense to a superior.
26:23: The two words are a standard pair: doing what is right, and keeping faith with the obligations one has taken on. David is asking that the reckoning be left to God rather than settled between the two of them.
26:24: "Much set by" means valued highly. "Tribulation" means deep trouble.
26:25: "Blessed be you" is a formal pronouncement of good, close to a farewell blessing, and it is the last exchange the two men ever have; they do not meet again.

Read 1 Samuel 26