1 Samuel20:1–9

Naioth in Ramah — the sentence that finishes chapter 19 verbal / quotation — confirmed

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

“Far be it” — the oath-word that refuses a desecration structural / thematic — confirmed

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

“Lest he be grieved” — a fear that becomes a fact verbal / quotation — confirmed

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

Uncovering the ear — the idiom changes owners structural / thematic — confirmed

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

“About a step” — living at the edge of death, in two Testaments structural / thematic — confirmed

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

The protest of innocence and the Seventh Psalm flagged — verify source

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

Bethlehem, the clan sacrifice, and the law of the one altar structural / thematic — confirmed

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

“Whatsoever thy soul saith, I will do for thee” ancient/widely-held

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

Bethlehem, his city ancient/widely-held

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

“What is my sin?” — the innocent under sentence novel

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

A covenant of the LORD, and kindness done upon a servant novel

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