The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Jonathan Helps David
1 Samuel 20:1–9 — Jonathan Helps David. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
1Then David fled from Naioth in Ramah. He came to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my iniquity? How have I sinned against your father, that he wants to take my life?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ way·yiḇ·raḥ min·nō·wi·wṯ bā·rā·māh way·yā·ḇō lip̄·nê yə·hō·w·nā·ṯān way·yō·mer meh ‘ā·śî·ṯî meh- ‘ă·wō·nî ū·meh- ḥaṭ·ṭā·ṯî lip̄·nê ’ā·ḇî·ḵā kî mə·ḇaq·qêš ’eṯ- nap̄·šî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-fled David from-Naioth in-Ramah, and-came and-said before the-face-of Jonathan: “What have-I-done? what is-my-iniquity, and-what my-sin before the-face-of thy-father, that he is-seeking my-soul?”
Where the English smooths the original
After the occurrence which had taken place at Naioth, David fled thence and met with Jonathan, to whom he poured out his heart.
The three questions are a virtual assertion of his innocence. Compare the passionate protests of the Seventh Psalm, written probably somewhat later, during his flight, but reflecting the feelings of this time.Cambridge's dating of Psalm 7 to this period is a conjecture, not a datum; the resonance he hears is real even if the date is not established.
His question breathes consciousness of innocence of any hostility to Saul, but unconsciously betrays some defect in his confidence in Jonathan.Maclaren's entry is capped in the brief; this is the sharpest sentence of the portion available, and it reads David's question against David rather than for him.
For Saul was detained, and prophesied a day and a night by God's providence, that David might have time to escape.
2“Far from it!” Jonathan replied. “You will not die. Indeed, my father does nothing, great or small, without telling me. So why would he hide this matter from me? This cannot be true!”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḥā·lî·lāh way·yō·mer lōw lō ṯā·mūṯ hin·nêh lō- ’ā·ḇî ʿå̄·śå̄h dā·ḇār gā·ḏō·wl ’ōw dā·ḇār qā·ṭōn wə·lō yiḡ·leh ’eṯ- ’ā·zə·nî ū·mad·dū·a‘ ’ā·ḇî yas·tîr haz·zeh ’eṯ- had·dā·ḇār mim·men·nî ’ên zōṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-said to-him: “Far-be-it! thou-shalt-not die. Behold, not has-done my-father a-thing great or a-thing small and-not uncovered my-ear — and-why should-my-father hide from-me this thing? It-is-not so.”
Where the English smooths the original
Jonathan's unwillingness to believe evil of his father is one of the many admirable traits in his character.
For Jonathan gave credit to his father’s oath, 1 Samuel 19:6 ; and the worthiest minds are least suspicious and most charitable in their opinions of others.
Filial attachment naturally blinded the prince to defects in the parental character and made him reluctant to believe his father capable of such atrocity.JFB names the cost of Jonathan's virtue: the same filial loyalty that makes him trustworthy makes him, here, wrong.
3But David again vowed, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said, ‘Jonathan must not know of this, or he will be grieved.’ As surely as the LORD lives and as you yourself live, there is but a step between me and death.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ ‘ō·wḏ way·yiš·šā·ḇa‘ way·yō·mer ’ā·ḇî·ḵā yā·ḏō·a‘ yā·ḏa‘ kî- mā·ṣā·ṯî ḥên bə·‘ê·ne·ḵā way·yō·mer yə·hō·w·nā·ṯān ’al- yê·ḏa‘- zōṯ pen- yê·‘ā·ṣêḇ wə·’ū·lām Yah·weh ḥay- nap̄·še·ḵā kî wə·ḥê ḵə·p̄e·śa‘ bê·nî ū·ḇên ham·mā·weṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-swore again David and-said: “Knowing, knows thy-father that I-have-found favor in-thine-eyes, and-he-has-said: ‘Let-not Jonathan know this, lest he-be-grieved.’ But-truly, as-YHWH lives and-as-lives thy-soul, that as-a-stride is between-me and-between the-death.”
Where the English smooths the original
But David had looked deeper into Saul's heart. He replied with an oath ("he sware again," i.e., a second time), "Thy father knoweth that I have found favour in thine eyes (i.e., that thou art attached to me); and thinketh Jonathan shall not know this, lest he be grieved. But truly, as surely as Jehovah liveth, and thy soul liveth, there is hardly a step (lit. about a step) between me and death.
He stands, as it were, upon the very brink of a precipice.
What a noble and generous turn does David here give to the behaviour of Saul to Jonathan, lest he should think ill of his father, by insinuating that he had kept this a secret from him out of affection, lest it should give him pain.Benson reads David's account of Saul's motive as charity toward Jonathan's feelings; it is also, on any reading, a shrewd way to make an unwelcome accusation bearable.
4Then Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you desire, I will do for you.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
yə·hō·w·nā·ṯān way·yō·mer ’el- dā·wiḏ mah- nap̄·šə·ḵā tō·mar wə·’e·‘ĕ·śeh- lāḵ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said Jonathan to David: “What says thy-soul, and-I-will-do for-thee.”
Where the English smooths the original
Now giving credit to what he had said, and in order to comfort and support him under the apprehensions he had of danger
Jonathan generously offers David his services. This is true friendship. Thus Christ testifies his love to us, Ask, and it shall be done for you; and we must testify our love to him, by keeping his commandments.Henry's block covers vv. 1-10 as a whole, so this sentence is his comment on the unit, not on v. 4 alone.
He does not say, that shall be lawful and honest; for he knew David too well to think he would ask anything that was otherwise.Benson notices what Jonathan does not say; whether the excuse of v. 6 vindicates that trust is precisely what the commentators dispute.
5So David told him, “Look, tomorrow is the New Moon, and I am supposed to dine with the king. Instead, let me go and hide in the field until the third evening from now.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ ’el- way·yō·mer yə·hō·w·nā·ṯān hin·nêh- mā·ḥār ḥō·ḏeš wə·’ā·nō·ḵî yā·šōḇ- ’ê·šêḇ le·’ĕ·ḵō·wl ‘im- ham·me·leḵ wə·šil·laḥ·ta·nî wə·nis·tar·tî ḇaś·śā·ḏeh ‘aḏ haš·šə·li·šîṯ hā·‘e·reḇ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said David to Jonathan: “Behold, tomorrow is-new-moon, and-I sitting shall-sit with the-king to-eat; but-thou-shalt-send-me-away and-I-will-hide-myself in-the-field until the-evening the-third.
Where the English smooths the original
The sacrificial and ceremonial rites were accompanied by a state and family banquet, at which David, as the king’s son-in-law, and also as holding a high post in the royal army, was expected to be present.
As the sequel proved, the plan was well devised for ascertaining whether the lesson of Naioth had wrought any change in Saul, or whether in his sane moments he was now deliberately resolved to kill David.
We may well believe that there was such a festival, and that the fictitious part of Jonathan's story was that David had been summoned to it.Pulpit's comment covers vv. 5-7 together; it is his attempt to locate exactly where the excuse becomes fiction — the feast was real, the summons was not.
6If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David urgently requested my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because there is an annual sacrifice for his whole clan.’
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’im- ’ā·ḇî·ḵā pā·qōḏ yip̄·qə·ḏê·nî wə·’ā·mar·tā ḏā·wiḏ niš·’ōl niš·’al mim·men·nî lā·rūṣ bêṯ- le·ḥem ‘î·rōw kî šām hay·yā·mîm ze·ḇaḥ lə·ḵāl ham·miš·pā·ḥāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
If missing misses-me thy-father, then-thou-shalt-say: ‘Asking, asked of-me David to-run to-Beth-lechem his-city, for a sacrifice of-the-days is there for-all the-clan.’
Where the English smooths the original
We see from these words that David did not look upon prevarication as a sin.
The morality of this request of David is by no means sanctioned by the compiler of the history; he simply relates the story.Ellicott states the interpretive rule that governs this whole unit: the narrator reports, and does not commend.
It is likely it was a custom among pious families to meet together once a year, and praise God for his mercies toward them all.Benson's reconstruction of the custom is inference from this verse and 1 Samuel 1:21, not independent evidence.
7If he says, ‘Good,’ then your servant is safe, but if he is enraged, you will know he has evil intentions.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’im- kōh yō·mar ṭō·wḇ lə·‘aḇ·de·ḵā šā·lō·wm wə·’im- ḥā·rōh ye·ḥĕ·reh lōw da‘ kî- hā·rā·‘āh mê·‘im·mōw ḵā·lə·ṯāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
If thus he-says, ‘Good,’ — peace to-thy-servant; but-if burning it-burns to-him, know that determined is the-evil from-with-him.
Where the English smooths the original
that he has a settled obstinate malice in his heart, which is become implacable and inveterate
for indeed David knew well enough that Saul designed to kill him.
Thenius, on the other hand, observes much more correctly, that "it is perfectly obvious from this that David was not quite clear as to Saul's intentionsK&D reports Thenius against Seb. Schmidt and against Thenius' own earlier claim; the disagreement is over whether David already knew the answer, and the brief preserves K&D's verdict, not a settled consensus.
8Therefore show kindness to your servant, for you have brought me into a covenant with you before the LORD. If there is iniquity in me, then kill me yourself; why should you bring me to your father?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·‘ā·śî·ṯā ḥe·seḏ ‘al- ‘aḇ·de·ḵā kî hê·ḇê·ṯā ’eṯ- ‘aḇ·də·ḵā biḇ·rîṯ ‘im·māḵ Yah·weh wə·’im- yeš- ‘ā·wōn bî hă·mî·ṯê·nî ’at·tāh lām·māh- zeh ṯə·ḇî·’ê·nî wə·‘aḏ- ’ā·ḇî·ḵā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-thou-shalt-do kindness upon thy-servant, for into-a-covenant of-YHWH thou-hast-brought thy-servant with-thee. And-if there-is in-me iniquity — kill-me thou! and-why this shouldst-thou-bring-me unto thy-father?
Where the English smooths the original
If Jonathan felt there was any truth in the charges brought against him by Saul—if he deemed his friend a traitor to the reigning dynasty—let him slay the betrayer himself there and then.
The initiative had been on Jonathan’s side ( 1 Samuel 18:3 ). David calls their league of friendship “a covenant of Jehovah” as being ratified in His name by solemn oath.
David refuses to shelter himself under it if he has incurred guilt, and only asks that Jonathan, by the authority which he exercised as the king's son, should himself put him to death, and not deliver him up to SaulPulpit's reading makes the covenant conditional on David's innocence — a claim about covenant logic that the text implies but does not state.
9“Never!” Jonathan replied. “If I ever found out that my father had evil intentions against you, would I not tell you?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḥā·lî·lāh lāḵ kî yə·hō·w·nā·ṯān way·yō·mer ’im- yā·ḏō·a‘ ’ê·ḏa‘ kî- ’ā·ḇî lā·ḇō·w hā·rā·‘āh mê·‘im ḵā·lə·ṯāh ‘ā·le·ḵā wə·lō ’ō·ṯāh ’ag·gîḏ lāḵ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said Jonathan: “Far-be-it from-thee! for if knowing I-know that determined is the-evil from-with my-father to-come upon-thee — and-not it would-I-tell thee?”
Where the English smooths the original
They betoken the agitation and deep feeling of the chivalrous, indignant speaker.
The words are to be understood as an asseveration on oath, in which the formula of an oath is to be supplied in thought.K&D himself concedes this is a judgment call, preferring it to the alternative reading only because of the conjunctive waw before the negative.
canst thou doubt of my kindness and fidelity? surely thou hast no reason, when such a covenant of friendship subsists between us
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens on a verb of bolting — וַיִּבְרַח (bârach, H1272) — and on a man who arrives before the face of his friend with three questions he cannot answer himself: what have I done, what is my ʻâvôn, what is my chaṭṭâʼâh. Cambridge is right that “the three questions are a virtual assertion of his innocence”; Ellicott hears in them the voice of the Psalms, where David “maintains how bitterly the world had wronged and persecuted a righteous, innocent man.” Maclaren, alone among the voices here, turns the questions back on the questioner: David's words, he says, “breathe consciousness of innocence of any hostility to Saul, but unconsciously betray some defect in his confidence in Jonathan.” Both can be true. ⚙ The Hebrew supports Maclaren's unease in a small way: the accusation is framed with מְבַקֵּשׁ, a Piel participle of bâqash (H1245) — Saul is searching him out, continuously — while David's own certainty arrives only in v. 3 under oath, after Jonathan has flatly contradicted him. A man sure of his friend does not usually need to swear.
Jonathan's defence is an argument from intimacy: his father does nothing great or small without יִגְלֶה אֶת־אָזְנִי — “uncovering my ear” (Cambridge gives the literal idiom). K&D reconstructs the logic without excusing the error: Saul “had not uttered a single word to him about his deadly hatred,” so Jonathan “might really have regarded his previous attacks upon David's life as nothing more than symptoms of temporary aberration of mind.” Poole traces the error to a virtue — “the worthiest minds are least suspicious and most charitable in their opinions of others” — and JFB to a relation: “Filial attachment naturally blinded the prince to defects in the parental character.” Barnes simply calls the blindness “one of the many admirable traits in his character.” ⚙ Notice how David dismantles the argument without touching the father: he grants Saul a motive of tenderness (“lest he be grieved”). Benson calls this “a noble and generous turn.” The Hebrew word for that grieving, יֵעָצֵב (ʻâtsab, H6087), is carved rather than felt — and the Verifier finds it again at 20:34, where Jonathan does rise from the table grieved. David's kind fiction turns out to be a prophecy.
The unit's most quoted line rests on a rare noun: כְפֶשַׂע (pesaʻ, H6587), a single stride, prefixed with the approximating k-. K&D translates with care — “there is hardly a step (lit. about a step) between me and death” — and Cambridge gives the image: “He stands, as it were, upon the very brink of a precipice.” Geneva flattens it to a gloss: “I am in great danger of death.” Henry alone universalizes it, and his sentence is the reason the phrase entered English devotion: “Sometimes it appears to us that there is but a step between us and death; at all times it may be so, and we should prepare for the event.” ⚙ The oath that carries the line is worth hearing whole: David swears by the life of YHWH and by the life of Jonathan's nephesh in one breath — and nephesh is the very thing Saul is hunting in v. 1. The word that names what David stands to lose is the word he swears by.
Jonathan's answer is an open commission — “what thy nephesh says, I will do” — and Gill notes that he says it only after “giving credit to what he had said.” The plan is built on a seat. David is to be, in the Hebrew's doubled verb, “sitting, I shall sit” with the king; instead he will hide (çâthar, the very root Jonathan swore his father never used on him) in the open field. Ellicott, Barnes, Poole, Cambridge and K&D all fill in the institution: new moon sacrifices with trumpets, a two-day royal and family feast at which the king's son-in-law was expected. Cambridge judges the plan sound — “well devised for ascertaining whether the lesson of Naioth had wrought any change in Saul.” Then comes the excuse, and the voices divide honestly. K&D: “We see from these words that David did not look upon prevarication as a sin.” Cambridge leaves it open — it is unclear “whether he regarded the story as a justifiable deception.” Pulpit splits the difference: the Bethlehem feast was real, and “the fictitious part of Jonathan's story was that David had been summoned to it.” Ellicott lays down the rule the whole unit needs: “The morality of this request of David is by no means sanctioned by the compiler of the history; he simply relates the story.”
The plea of v. 8 gathers the unit's vocabulary into one sentence: do (ʻâsâh, the verb of v. 1's accusation) chêçêd upon thy servant, for thou hast brought thy servant into a covenant of YHWH. Cambridge locates the leverage — “The initiative had been on Jonathan's side” — and K&D explains the genitive: it is called a covenant of Jehovah “because he had made it with a solemn invocation of Jehovah.” Benson spells out what that invocation buys: God stands as “the witness of our sincerity therein, and the avenger of perfidiousness in him that breaks it.” Then David does the extraordinary thing. He reopens his own case: if there is ʻâvôn in me — the same noun he protested in v. 1 — “kill me, thou,” with the pronoun added for force. Ellicott, citing Lange, notes that this “supposes that Jonathan had the right to inflict capital punishment”; Pulpit sees David refusing “to shelter himself under it if he has incurred guilt.” Jonathan's answer is the sacral recoil חָלִילָה again, and then a sentence that breaks off unfinished. Ellicott hears the agitation: the broken clauses “betoken the agitation and deep feeling of the chivalrous, indignant speaker.” K&D reads the fracture as an oath whose curse is swallowed. ⚙ Either way, the unit ends with a man quoting his friend's own words back to him — “the evil is determined” — which is the first sign that he finally believes them.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested. Read the nine verses as one argument about knowing. Five times a verb is doubled for certainty — knowing he knows, sitting I shall sit, missing he misses, asking he asked, burning it burns — and the doubling is always about what someone can be sure of. David is sure and cannot prove it; Jonathan can prove his case and is wrong. The unit's resolution is not that Jonathan is persuaded by argument but that he ends up using David's exact words (kâlâh hā·rā·ʻāh, “the evil is determined,” v. 7 repeated in v. 9). Love here does not begin by believing the worst; it begins by refusing to, and then pays the price of learning. That is worth saying carefully, because the chapter is often read as a hymn to friendship and Maclaren nearly reads it as one. But the text is soberer. Jonathan's confidence in his father was a genuine virtue that made him useless to David for two verses. His covenant loyalty, when it finally engages the facts, costs him his place at his father's table (20:34) and, eventually, his throne. ⚙ And there is one more thing the Hebrew will not let us tidy away. David's escape is engineered by a lie — a real Bethlehem feast, a fictitious summons — and scripture reports it without a word of praise or blame. K&D says plainly that David “did not look upon prevarication as a sin”; Ellicott insists the compiler “simply relates the story.” The right response is neither to defend the deception nor to disown the man. The narrative is telling us how the anointed of God actually survived, and it declines to make him tidy. A Bible that only recorded what it approved would be a smaller and less trustworthy book.
Jonathan does not lose the argument; he loses his father — and that, not persuasion, is what makes him David's.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
Verse 1 does not begin a story; it ends one. The three nouns of the opening clause — בָּרַח, נָוִית, רָמָה — are the exact furniture of 1 Samuel 19:18-24, where David fled to Samuel at Ramah and Saul's messengers, and then Saul himself, were overtaken by prophecy. The Verifier confirms the overlap, including the very rare place-name Nâvîyth. Every commentator in the brief reads v. 1 as the continuation: Barnes, “While Saul was under the constraining influence of the spirit of prophecy, David escaped from Naioth”; Geneva, that Saul “was detained, and prophesied a day and a night by God's providence, that David might have time to escape”; K&D notes that Ewald and Thenius thought v. 1 a compiler's seam stitched in to join the chapters, and rejects the conjecture.
1 Samuel 19:18 · 1 Samuel 19:19 · 1 Samuel 19:22 · 1 Samuel 19:23
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H5121 Nâvîyth (in 5 vv — rare), H7414 Râmâh (in 34 vv), H1272 bârach (in 64 vv). The rare place-name carries the link; this is narrative continuity in identical vocabulary, not a quotation of one text by another
Twice in this unit (vv. 2, 9) Jonathan answers with חָלִילָה (châlîylâh, H2486), literally “for a profaned thing.” The Verifier finds the same rare interjection at the decisive refusals of Israel's story: Joseph's brothers denying theft (Genesis 44:7, 17), Joshua's generation refusing other gods (Joshua 24:16), the tribes across Jordan denying rebellion (Joshua 22:29), Samuel refusing to stop praying for the people (1 Samuel 12:23), Job holding his integrity (Job 27:5), and David himself refusing to stretch out his hand against the LORD's anointed (1 Samuel 24:6). ⚙ Most striking is 1 Samuel 14:45, where the people use this very word to ransom Jonathan from his father's death-sentence: “châlîylâh — Jonathan shall not die.” Here Jonathan spends the identical formula on David: “châlîylâh — thou shalt not die.” The word that once saved his life is the word he now lays on his friend's. Pulpit points to 14:45 for the idiom; the reversal is our own observation, offered as such.
1 Samuel 14:45 · 1 Samuel 24:6 · Genesis 44:7 · Joshua 24:16 · 1 Samuel 12:23 · Job 27:5
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H2486 châlîylâh (in 19 vv — comparatively rare). The link is a shared oath-formula across a common motif of refusing sacrilege; no text here quotes another, so the tier is held below verbal
In v. 3 David reports Saul's supposed reasoning: let not Jonathan know, פֶּן־יֵעָצֵב, “lest he be grieved” (ʻâtsab, H6087 — a root meaning to carve, hence grief cut into a man). The Verifier finds the same lexeme at 1 Samuel 20:34, where Jonathan leaves his father's table in fierce anger and is grieved for David, because his father had shamed him. ⚙ The clause David invents to spare Jonathan's feelings is fulfilled to the letter within the same chapter, and by the same rare verb. Gill, commenting on v. 3, anticipates the double cause of that grief: Jonathan would be grieved “both for the evil his father would be guilty of, and the danger David, his beloved friend, would be in.”
1 Samuel 20:34
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6087 ʻâtsab (in 17 vv — rare) and H3083 Yᵉhôwnâthân (in 74 vv), same chapter. The rare verb links the predicted grief of v. 3 to the narrated grief of v. 34
Jonathan's whole defence in v. 2 is the idiom גָּלָה אֶת־אֹזֶן, “uncover the ear” (gâlâh H1540 + ʼôzen H241): his father tells him everything. Cambridge notes the literal sense and points forward — “and so in 1 Samuel 20:12,” where the Verifier confirms the same pair of lexemes recurs, this time in Jonathan's oath to David: I will send and uncover thine ear. Pulpit likewise flags the repetition. ⚙ Between v. 2 and v. 12 the idiom migrates: the confidence Jonathan claimed as a son he will now extend as a covenant partner, and in doing so he chooses which of the two relationships governs him.
1 Samuel 20:12 · 1 Samuel 9:15
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H1540 gâlâh (in 167 vv) and H241 ʼôzen (in 179 vv) with H3083 Yᵉhôwnâthân (in 74 vv) at 20:12. Both lexemes are common; the link is the fixed idiom and its reversal of addressee, not rare vocabulary. 1 Samuel 9:15 is added on Cambridge's cross-reference, not on computed overlap
The rare noun פֶּשַׂע (pesaʻ, H6587, “a stride”) with the approximating k- gives David's most-quoted line, and Henry immediately generalizes it beyond David: “Sometimes it appears to us that there is but a step between us and death; at all times it may be so, and we should prepare for the event.” He couples it at once with a second claim — “though dangers appear most threatening, we cannot die till the purpose of God concerning us is accomplished.” ⚙ Both halves recur in the apostolic writings: Paul's “I die daily” names the same permanent proximity, and Hebrews names the bondage that proximity produces and the deliverance from it. This is a cross-Testament link, so no shared Strong's number is possible and none is claimed; the connection is a shared motif, carried into the New Testament by writers facing the same danger, and drawn out here by Henry before us.
1 Corinthians 15:31 · Hebrews 2:14-15
basis: Greek↔Hebrew: shared Strong's lexemes cannot exist across the Testaments, so no verbal tier is possible. The recorded basis is a shared motif — the believer's standing nearness to death and its resolution — plus Matthew Henry's own generalizing comment on this verse; no quotation of 1 Samuel 20:3 is claimed by either New Testament text
Cambridge, on the three questions of v. 1, writes: “Compare the passionate protests of the Seventh Psalm, written probably somewhat later, during his flight, but reflecting the feelings of this time.” Ellicott makes the same move more broadly: David's words here “are found in substance in not a few of his Psalms.” ⚙ The resonance is real and the connection is old, but the basis is a commentator's judgment about the Psalm's occasion, not a computed verbal link — the Verifier returned no shared-lexeme basis for it, and Psalm 7's superscription names Cush the Benjamite, not Saul or this incident. We record it as the commentators' cross-reference and flag it accordingly.
Psalm 7:3 · 1 Samuel 24:9
basis: No Verifier-computed lexeme overlap. The link rests entirely on Cambridge's and Ellicott's conjecture about the occasion of Psalm 7; the psalm's own heading does not name this episode
The excuse of v. 6 assumes an institution the Torah had regulated: a yearly זֶבַח for the whole מִשְׁפָּחָה at Bethlehem. Ellicott states the tension squarely — Deuteronomy 12:5 “strictly required these great sacrificial feasts to be kept at the Tabernacle,” but since Shiloh's destruction there had been no central sanctuary. K&D concurs: “According to the law in Deuteronomy 12:5, they ought to have been kept at the tabernacle; but at this time, when the central sanctuary had fallen into disuse, they were held in different places, wherever there were altars of Jehovah — as, for example, at Bethlehem (cf. 1 Samuel 16:2).” Cambridge calls it “a partial observance” under neglected obligation. ⚙ The same Bethlehem altar is where Samuel found and anointed David (1 Samuel 16); the pretext that hides him now is the town that made him king.
Deuteronomy 12:5 · 1 Samuel 16:2 · 1 Samuel 1:21
basis: Not a computed lexeme link; the basis is the named commentators' own cross-references (Ellicott and K&D both cite Deuteronomy 12:5; K&D cites 1 Samuel 16:2; Geneva cites 1 Samuel 1:21) for a shared institution, with no quotation claimed
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Two of the voices in this brief read Jonathan's open commission in v. 4 as a figure of Christ's promise, and they do it independently and in nearly identical words. Henry: “Jonathan generously offers David his services. This is true friendship. Thus Christ testifies his love to us, Ask, and it shall be done for you; and we must testify our love to him, by keeping his commandments.” Benson, on the same verse: “This is true friendship. Thus Christ testifies his love to us; Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do. And we must testify ours to him by keeping his commandments.” ⚙ The Hebrew makes the figure tighter than the English does: what Jonathan offers to serve is David's נֶפֶשׁ — the very nephesh that Saul is seeking to take in v. 1. The friend meets the hunted soul at the point of its danger and puts himself at its disposal. That the analogy has limits is obvious: Jonathan can promise, and cannot save. The promise that matches this one is kept by someone who can.
John 14:13-14 · John 15:14
Gill, commenting on the words “to Bethlehem his city,” writes that it was “the place of his birth, called the city of David, where he was born and had lived,” and cites Luke 2:4. ⚙ The detail is not decoration. In v. 6 Bethlehem is the cover story that keeps the anointed alive while the reigning king hunts him; the town appears in this narrative precisely as a place of sacrifice and of refuge for the one God has chosen and man has rejected. When the evangelist names it again, it is as “the city of David” to which another son of that house comes, again under a reigning king's murderous attention. The identification of Bethlehem as the city of David and the birthplace of Messiah is as old as the prophets and is assumed by the gospel writers; the reading is not ours to invent.
Luke 2:4 · Micah 5:2
The unit begins and ends with the same noun. In v. 1 David asks what his עָוֺן is; in v. 8 he offers his life over it — “if there is ʻâvôn in me, kill me, thou.” Ellicott hears David's Psalms in the protest: he “maintains how bitterly the world had wronged and persecuted a righteous, innocent man.” Cambridge calls the three questions “a virtual assertion of his innocence.” Henry sets the suffering in its providential frame: the Lord does not put his people “into immediate possession of the kingdom, but leads them to it through much tribulation.” ⚙ The figure that emerges — the rightful king, anointed and unenthroned, hunted by the reigning power, protesting an innocence no court will hear, and offering himself to the sword rather than be handed over — is the shape the gospels will report of Jesus before Pilate and Herod. The type of David-in-suffering as a figure of Christ is ancient and everywhere in Christian reading; the particular link between David's three questions and the governor's “Why, what evil hath he done?” is our own ⚙ observation, and we mark it as such. It should also be marked that the analogy breaks where David's does: David proposes a deception to escape, and Christ does not.
Matthew 27:23 · John 18:38 · Acts 2:23
David's plea in v. 8 is not for pity but for חֶסֶד under a בְּרִית יְהוָה — a covenant named for Jehovah because, as K&D says, “he had made it with a solemn invocation of Jehovah.” Cambridge notes that “the initiative had been on Jonathan's side”; Benson, that God is invoked in it as witness and as “the avenger of perfidiousness in him that breaks it.” ⚙ Two things follow that the New Testament will take up. First, the ground of the appeal is not David's worth but the covenant's existence, and the covenant exists because the greater party proposed it — which is the logic of every covenant of grace in scripture. Second, the loyalty asked for is a thing done (ʻâsâh chêçêd), not a thing felt; and it is done by the heir who thereby forfeits the throne to the man he shelters. That a king's son should bind himself by oath to the one who will take his place, and keep the oath at his own cost, is a pattern the church has long read forward. We keep the tier honest: the commentators here make the covenant a real covenant of Jehovah, and the christological extension beyond that is ours.
1 Samuel 18:3 · Hebrews 7:22 · Luke 22:20
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. Two places in this unit rest on a disputed consonantal text. At v. 2 the Ketiv is לוֹ (“to him”) where the sense requires לֹא (“not”); Ellicott reports that “the commentators and the versions—LXX., Vulg., and Cbaldee—all agree to read” the negative, and K&D prefers the Ketiv ʻāśāh over the Qere yaʻăśeh, yielding “My father has hitherto done nothing at all which he has not told to me.” Pulpit says the Qere “properly corrects” the written text. The interlinear's gloss “does nothing” already assumes the correction. At v. 3 the Septuagint, per Cambridge, lacks the oath entirely and reads simply “And David answered Jonathan and said” — so the striking “David sware moreover” is not in every witness.
Grammar. The second-person suffix לָךְ at vv. 4 and 9 (twice) is pointed as feminine singular in the transmitted text where masculine is expected of Jonathan and David. The parse in the brief records this; no commentator in the brief remarks on it, and nothing interpretive should be built on it. Verse 9 is grammatically incomplete in Hebrew: the conditional has no stated apodosis. K&D supplies an oath formula; Pulpit supplies the Syriac's “then Jehovah do so to me, and more also”; BSB reads it as a rhetorical question. All three are readings, not the text.
Sources. Twelve public-domain commentators are represented, but not evenly: Henry's entry is a single block on 20:1-10 repeated at each verse, as is Barnes' note on the new moon and JFB's on vv. 1-3 and v. 5, so those authors speak to the unit rather than to the verse under which they appear. Maclaren's exposition is capped in the brief (roughly 9,000 further characters were not available here), and the sentence quoted at v. 1 is drawn from the portion supplied. Ellicott's note at v. 6 quotes O. von Gerlach via Lange, and his note at v. 8 quotes Lange directly and reports Ewald's conjecture about the source of these private conversations — conjecture, not evidence.
What is uncertain. Three things. (1) Whether Jonathan genuinely knew nothing of chapter 19's events: Gill finds it “strange that Jonathan should know nothing,” K&D thinks it “possible enough that he might not have been with his father just at that time.” (2) Whether David's Bethlehem story was a lie, a half-truth, or a plan he actually intended: Gill argues he really might have gone, Pulpit holds the feast real and the summons invented, Cambridge leaves it open, K&D concludes David “did not look upon prevarication as a sin,” and Ellicott insists the compiler neither sanctions nor condemns. (3) Whether David already knew what the test would prove: Seb. Schmidt says yes, Thenius (quoted approvingly by K&D) says the closing words show he did not. Our synthesis follows Ellicott's rule — report, do not sanction — and where the voices divide, we have named the division rather than picked a winner.
Machine layer. Every ⚙ observation above (the migration of the root çâthar from v. 2 to v. 5; the five doubled verbs as a pattern; the reversal of châlîylâh from 1 Samuel 14:45; the mouth-to-mouth repetition of “the evil is determined” from v. 7 in v. 9; the shâʼal/Saul wordplay in v. 6) is a synthesis drawn from the interlinear and lexicon supplied in the brief. The lexeme identifications are sourced; the significance claimed for them is fallible and is offered to be tested.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)