The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
David Flees to Gath
1 Samuel 21:8–15 — David Flees to Gath. 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.
8Then David asked Ahimelech, “Is there not a spear or sword on hand here? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s mission was urgent.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ way·yō·mer la·’ă·ḥî·me·leḵ yeš- wə·’în ḥă·nîṯ ’ōw- ḥā·reḇ ṯa·ḥaṯ- yā·ḏə·ḵā pōh kî ḡam- lā·qaḥ·tî lō- ḥar·bî wə·ḡam- kê·lay ḇə·yā·ḏî kî- ham·me·leḵ ḏə·ḇar- hā·yāh nā·ḥūṣ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said David to-Ahimelech: “And-is-there-not here under thy-hand spear or-sword? For both my-sword and-also my-weapons I-took not in-my-hand, because the-word-of the-king was pressed.”
Where the English smooths the original
9The priest replied, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, is here; it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want, you may take it. For there is no other but this one here.” And David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hak·kō·hên way·yō·mer ḥe·reḇ gā·lə·yāṯ hap·pə·liš·tî ’ă·šer- hik·kî·ṯā bə·‘ê·meq hā·’ê·lāh hin·nêh- hî lū·ṭāh ḇaś·śim·lāh ’a·ḥă·rê hā·’ê·p̄ō·wḏ ’im- ’ō·ṯāh tiq·qaḥ- lə·ḵā qāḥ kî ’ên ’a·ḥe·reṯ zū·lā·ṯāh bā·zeh dā·wiḏ way·yō·mer ’ên kā·mō·w·hā tə·nen·nāh lî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said the-priest: “The-sword-of Goliath the-Philistine, whom thou-smotest in-the-Valley-of Elah — behold-it, wrapped in-the-cloak behind the-ephod. If it thou-wilt-take for-thyself, take; for there-is-none other besides-it in-this-place.” And-said David: “There-is-none like-it — give-it to-me.”
Where the English smooths the original
10That day David fled from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ha·hū bay·yō·wm- dā·wiḏ way·yā·qām way·yiḇ·raḥ mip·pə·nê šā·’ūl way·yā·ḇō ’el- ’ā·ḵîš me·leḵ gaṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-rose David and-fled in-the-day the-that from-before Saul, and-came unto Achish king-of Gath.
Where the English smooths the original
11But the servants of Achish said to him, “Is this not David, the king of the land? Did they not sing about him in their dances, saying: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
‘aḇ·ḏê ’ā·ḵîš way·yō·mə·rū ’ê·lāw zeh hă·lō·w- ḏā·wiḏ me·leḵ hā·’ā·reṣ hă·lō·w ya·‘ă·nū lā·zeh ḇam·mə·ḥō·lō·wṯ lê·mōr šā·’ūl hik·kāh bə·ʾal·pō wə·ḏā·wiḏ bə·ri·ḇə·ḇō·ṯō
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said the-servants-of Achish unto-him: “Is-not this David king-of the-land? Was-it-not of-this-one they-answered in-the-dances, saying: ‘Saul has-smitten in-his-thousands, and-David in-his-ten-thousands’?”
Where the English smooths the original
12Now David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish the king of Gath.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ way·yā·śem ’eṯ- hā·’êl·leh had·də·ḇā·rîm bil·ḇā·ḇōw mə·’ōḏ way·yi·rā mip·pə·nê ’ā·ḵîš me·leḵ- gaṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-set David the-words the-these in-his-heart, and-he-feared exceedingly from-before Achish king-of Gath.
Where the English smooths the original
13So he changed his behavior before them and feigned madness in their hands; he scratched on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down his beard.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·šan·nōw ’eṯ- ṭa‘·mōw bə·‘ê·nê·hem way·yiṯ·hō·lêl bə·yā·ḏām way·ṯaw ‘al- dal·ṯō·wṯ haš·ša·‘ar rî·rōw way·yō·w·reḏ ’el- zə·qā·nōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-changed his-taste in-their-eyes, and-he-made-himself-mad in-their-hand; and-he-scratched-marks upon the-doors-of the-gate, and-he-let-run-down his-spittle unto his-beard.
Where the English smooths the original
14Then Achish said to his servants, “Look, you can see that the man is insane! Why have you brought him to me?
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’ā·ḵîš way·yō·mer ’el- ‘ă·ḇā·ḏāw hin·nêh ṯir·’ū ’îš miš·tag·gê·a‘ lām·māh tā·ḇî·’ū ’ō·ṯōw ’ê·lāy
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said Achish unto his-servants: “Behold, you-see a-man raving-mad! Why do-you-bring him unto-me?”
Where the English smooths the original
15Am I in need of madmen, that you have brought this man to rave in my presence? Must this man come into my house?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’ā·nî ḥă·sar mə·šug·gā·‘îm kî- hă·ḇê·ṯem ’eṯ- zeh lə·hiš·tag·gê·a‘ ‘ā·lāy hă·zeh yā·ḇō·w ’el- bê·ṯî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“Am-I lacking of-madmen, that you-have-brought this-one to-rave upon-me? Shall-this-one come into my-house?”
Where the English smooths the original
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 with a lie and a weapon. David asks תַּחַת־יָדְךָ — what is “under thy hand” — and excuses his empty hands by a dᵉḇar hammelek that was נָחוּץ, a word K&D identifies as a hapax legomenon, “literally, compressed.” Matthew Henry will not let it pass: “David told Ahimelech a gross untruth … it was ill done, and proved of bad consequence; for it occasioned the death of the priests of the Lord.” Ellicott, more charitably, reconstructs the request as a bid to recover “his glorious prize,” the trophy he had once dedicated. The priest's answer is the turn of the whole passage: the sanctuary owns exactly one weapon, and it is Goliath's, לוּטָה — wrapped, in a verb the Hebrew Bible uses in only three verses — and lying behind the ephod. Barnes argues from the definite article that the wrapping is “the cloak, Goliath's military cloak, which was part of the dedicated trophy,” and Pulpit and Ellicott both cite Isaiah 9:5 for the word's military sense. Cambridge states the theology the object was meant to carry: “The monument of God's deliverance in the past was a pledge of His help for the future.” ⚙ And there is the pressure of the scene: the pledge is being handed to a man who is at that moment not trusting it. He takes the sword with the same verb, lâqach, that he had just falsely denied using.
Two verbs carry v. 10, and BSB prints only one of them: wayyāqom, he arose, and wayyiḇraḥ, he bolted — bârach, whose root sense Strong's gives as the shooting of a bar. He goes מִפְּנֵי שָׁאוּל, from Saul's face, to Gath, which is Goliath's own city, carrying Goliath's own sword. Barnes measures the desperation: “Nothing can give a more lively impression of the straits to which David was reduced than the fact of his going to the country of the Philistines.” Pulpit calls the step “a most unwise and precipitate” one; Poole and Gill defend it as the last option left, since every other neighbour was at peace with Saul and would have handed him over. Benson catches the irony that governs the unit: “The king elect is here an exile: anointed to the crown, and yet forced to run his country!” Then the courtiers speak, and the disguise fails before it is even attempted. They call him melek hāʼāreṣ. Cambridge dismisses the title as “The natural exaggeration of popular rumour”; K&D insists they named him king “not because his anointing and divine election were known to them, but on account of his victorious deeds”; Poole and Benson think the news of Saul's rejection had crossed the border. Their evidence is the chant, and the Hebrew verb for it is יַעֲנוּ, ʻânâh — not “sang” but answered, chorus against chorus, exactly as Pulpit describes the Hebrew manner of singing. ⚙ The song that made Saul reach for a spear is now the reason a Philistine court reaches for its own conclusions.
וַיָּשֶׂם — David placed those words in his lêbâb, his innermost self, and then feared mᵉʼōd, vehemently. Ellicott notices the reversal: “The life he held so cheaply when in battle with the enemies of his country now, strange to say, in his deep degradation and poverty, became of real value to him.” Benson guesses at the trigger — the sword at his side, “which was, probably, well known at Gath” — and flags his own guess. What follows is described with surgical vocabulary. He changed his טַעְמוֹ, his taste: Pulpit traces the semantic path from the palate to discrimination itself, comparing Latin sapientia; K&D translates “he disguised his understanding.” The verb of the madness is a Hitpael of H1984, so the pretence lies in the stem, not the word. He וַיְתַו — scrawled, a verb found in two verses in the whole canon — on the gate-leaves; Barnes identifies the mark as “the mark of the “tau” (t), which in the ancient Hebrew and Phoenician was in the shape of a cross,” while K&D and Cambridge record that the LXX and Vulgate read a different verb, “he drummed.” And he let his רִירוֹ run into his beard — the beard that Strong's derives from age and honour, and that JFB says it is “an intolerable insult” to foul. Gill defends the whole performance as lawful stratagem; Henry, on the same block of text, calls it wavering faith. ⚙ We record both and choose neither: the narrator reports it without a verdict, and so should we.
Achish's speech is three questions and no name. He calls David אִישׁ — a man, anarthrous — and מִשְׁתַּגֵּעַ, a Hitpael participle of a verb that surfaces in only six verses of the Hebrew Bible. Ellicott supplies the reason the ruse worked: in the East “the insane are looked upon as persons in some peculiar way possessed by, and therefore under the more immediate protection of, Deity,” so “The life then of the hunted fugitive was perfectly safe from the moment the Philistines considered him mad.” Cambridge cites Stanley's parallel of an Arab chief who escaped Acre “pretending to be a mad dervish.” Achish's own grammar divides neatly: his courtiers' madmen are a Pual participle, men driven mad, while David's raving is a Hitpael infinitive, a man making himself mad. Poole hears wounded dignity — “I need wise men, not such fools or madmen as this is” — and Benson hears mercy, judging that Achish saw through it and “being desirous to preserve David, he spoke as if he thought it real.” Gill and Pulpit take the deception at face value; Poole credits God with infatuating the court. The last word is בֵּיתִי, and Cambridge glosses it as employment — “Be taken into my service.” ⚙ The unit began in the house of God and ends at the door of a Philistine's house, refused. K&D notes where the refused man went: “he departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam.”
⚙ What follows is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text and against better readers than itself. This unit is arranged as a chain of reversals, and the Hebrew does the arranging. The hapax nāḥûṣ — the only occurrence in the canon — sits inside a lie. The verb lâqach that David falsely denies is the verb the priest immediately presses on him twice. The dâbâr of a king that supposedly drove him out of Israel is answered by the dᵉḇārîm of Philistine courtiers that drive him out of his senses. The yâd he asked to look under at Nob becomes the yâd he performs in at Gath. The nâkâh that the priest uses to honour him is the nâkâh the chant uses to indict him. He flees mippᵉnê Saul's face only to fear mippᵉnê Achish's. This is not decoration; it is the narrator refusing to let the reader separate David's faith from David's fear. And so the central fact of the unit is a man holding, in one hand, the most eloquent physical proof God ever gave him that the battle is the LORD's — Cambridge is right that the sword was “a pledge of His help for the future” — and using the other hand to scrawl on a gate and drool into his beard. Scripture does not resolve this. It does not tell us the madness was faith, and it does not tell us it was sin. Henry says it was sin; Gill says it was lawful; Poole says God was at work inside it; Benson says a pagan king was kind. All four may be partly right, because the passage is not finally about David's competence at all. Its argument, if it has one, is that the promise survives its bearer. The anointed man behaves in a way that makes the anointing look absurd, and the anointing holds anyway — not because he performed well, but because it was never his performance that secured it. ⚙ And the honest edge of that reading: it offers no technique. It will not tell you when to feign madness. It tells you only that God's word to a man is not falsified by the man's worst hour, which is a comfort and not a permission.
The sword in his hand was proof that God had already fought for him; the spittle in his beard was proof that he had forgotten — and the promise outlived both.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The verb David's hand performs on the gate-leaves, וַיְתַו (tâvâh, H8427), occurs in exactly two verses in the Hebrew Bible. The other is Ezekiel 9:4, where the man clothed in linen is told to set a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh over Jerusalem's abominations — the mark that spares them from the slaughter. Barnes names the connection and the letter: “Scrabbled - literally, made marks (margin), namely, the mark of the “tau” (t), which in the ancient Hebrew and Phoenician was in the shape of a cross. (See Ezekiel 9:4 .)” Pulpit independently gives the same philology. ⚙ The link is lexical and certain; what it means is not. We note only the strange geometry: in Ezekiel the mark is made by a commissioned man and saves a remnant; here it is made by a king pretending to be mindless, and saves one man. We do not claim the narrator intended the parallel.
Ezekiel 9:4
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H8427 tâvâh, attested in only 2 verses in the canon (this verse and Ezekiel 9:4) — a maximally rare verbal link. It is a shared lexeme, not a quotation; Barnes and Pulpit both draw the same cross-reference independently.
Two of the rarest words in this unit meet again in one verse of Job. רִירוֹ (rîyr, H7388) appears in only two verses in the whole Hebrew Bible; טַעְמוֹ (ṭaʻam, H2940) in twelve. Job 6:6 holds both: “Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?” — where the “white” is rîyr, slime. ⚙ So the two nouns that describe David's self-abasement at the gate of Gath — his discernment and his drool — are the same two nouns Job uses to say that his food, and his life, have gone tasteless. Both men are innocent of the charge that has ruined them; both are reduced to arguing about spittle. Pulpit's semantic note that ṭaʻam runs from the palate to “the power of discrimination generally” is exactly the ambiguity Job is playing on.
Job 6:6
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H7388 rîyr (in 2 vv — the rarest possible attestation short of a hapax) and H2940 ṭaʻam (in 12 vv). Rare double lexeme = verbal link. No quotation is claimed in either direction, and no literary dependence is asserted.
שָׁגַע (shâgaʻ, H7696, “to rave through insanity”) is used in only six verses of the Hebrew Bible, and this unit spends three of its occurrences in two verses. Of the other attestations, one is covenant curse — Deuteronomy 28:34, where Israel is driven mad by what its eyes see — and three attach the word to prophets: Jehu's officers ask “Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee?” (2 Kings 9:11); Hosea reports the verdict of the people, “the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad” (Hosea 9:7); Shemaiah demands that Jeremiah be put in the stocks as “every man that is mad, and maketh himself a prophet” (Jeremiah 29:26). ⚙ The pattern is not incidental to Israel's vocabulary: the word a court uses for someone it will not take seriously is the word that keeps landing on God's messengers. David, at Gath, chooses that word for himself deliberately — and it works, because a raving man is beneath a king's attention.
Deuteronomy 28:34 · 2 Kings 9:11 · Hosea 9:7 · Jeremiah 29:26
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7696 shâgaʻ, attested in only 6 verses canon-wide; all four cross-references are from the Verifier's candidate list at 0.33. A rare shared lexeme, not a quotation — the prophetic association is our ⚙ observation about how the word distributes, not a claim of literary dependence.
The courtiers do not paraphrase; they recite. “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” is the chorus of 1 Samuel 18:7, repeated here word for word, with the same rare noun רְבָבָה (rᵉbâbâh, H7233) set against אֶלֶף (ʼeleph, H505) and the same Hiphil of nâkâh. K&D flags it (“cf. 1 Samuel 18:6-7”), Cambridge flags it (“See on 1 Samuel 18:7”), and Gill gives it as “the burden of their song, 1 Samuel 18:7.” ⚙ In chapter 18 the song is sung by Israelite women and drives Saul to attempted murder; in chapter 21 it is recited by Philistine courtiers and drives David into feigned insanity. The same seven Hebrew words unmake both kings.
1 Samuel 18:7
basis: An explicit intra-canonical quotation: the chant of 1 Samuel 18:7 is repeated verbatim, with shared lexemes H7586 Shâʼûwl, H5221 nâkâh, H505 ʼeleph, H1732 Dâvid and H7233 rᵉbâbâh. Honesty note: 1 Samuel 18:7 was NOT in the Verifier's candidate list for this unit; the basis here is the verbatim repetition itself plus the concurring citations of K&D, Cambridge and Gill.
לוּטָה (lûwṭ, H3874, “to wrap up”) occurs in only three verses. At 1 Kings 19:13 Elijah wraps his face in his mantle at the mouth of the cave and is asked, using the same adverb פֹּה (pôh) that David uses here, “What doest thou here?” At Isaiah 25:7 the LORD destroys “the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations,” with the same root. ⚙ The three passages share a verb and a situation rather than an argument: something is covered in a holy place, and the covering is the point. Here the wrapped thing is a testimony to a past deliverance, kept out of sight behind the ephod. We claim the shared vocabulary; we do not claim the author of 1 Samuel had Horeb or Isaiah in view, and we downgrade accordingly.
1 Kings 19:13 · Isaiah 25:7
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3874 lûwṭ (in 3 vv — rare) with both refs, plus H6311 pôh (in 57 vv) with 1 Kings 19:13. The lexeme is rare enough to support a verbal tier, but the connection between the passages is motif-level (a fugitive of God, a covered thing, a holy place), so we deliberately under-claim at structural/thematic.
David comes to Achish king of Gath twice, and the second time works. Cambridge draws the contrast sharply: “In the present case David went alone, was ill received, and was compelled to feign madness for safety and escape as soon as possible: later on when his breach with Saul was notorious, he went with a numerous following, was received and established at Ziklag, and remained for more than a year” (1 Samuel 27:2-3). K&D uses the same difference to answer critics who take this chapter for a doublet of chapter 27. A generation later the same city and the same royal name reappear: Shimei's servants flee — bârach, the verb of v. 10 — to Achish of Gath, and Shimei's pursuit of them costs him his life under Solomon (1 Kings 2:39-40). ⚙ Gath functions in the narrative as the place Israelites go when Israel has become unlivable, and it is never safe twice in the same way.
1 Samuel 27:2 · 1 Samuel 27:3 · 1 Kings 2:39 · 1 Kings 2:40
basis: Verifier: shared lexemes H397 ʼĂkîysh (in 20 vv), H1661 Gath (in 31 vv), and with 1 Kings 2:39 also H1272 bârach (in 64 vv). Deliberately NOT tiered verbal: the shared lexemes are proper nouns, which establish a common setting rather than a verbal allusion. Cambridge and K&D both treat the two Gath episodes as distinct events, not variants.
Almost every commentator in this brief attaches Psalm 34 to this scene, and several add Psalm 56. Barnes: “It appears from the title that Psalm 34 was composed on this occasion.” Pulpit says Psalm 34 was “written by David in grateful commemoration of his escape” and calls it a guarantee of the narrative's historicity. K&D leans on it as “a firm historical support in Psalm 34:1.” Gill argues from the Psalms that David cannot have been genuinely epileptic. But the sources also disagree with each other. Ellicott concedes the acrostic form “suggests a later date than the time of David” and allows that a later temple musician gave it its present shape. Cambridge is blunter: Psalm 34 “is ascribed by its title to this occasion, but the contents do not bear out the reference.” And the title names Abimelech, not Achish, which Ellicott, Pulpit and K&D all harmonise by treating Abimelech as a Philistine dynastic title — a plausible harmonisation that is itself an inference. ⚙ We therefore flag, rather than assert, this link: the connection is ancient and well attested in the superscriptions, and its provenance is genuinely contested inside our own source set.
Psalm 34:1 · Psalm 56:1
basis: Provenance disputed within the brief's own voices: Barnes, Pulpit, K&D, Gill and Benson treat the Psalm 34 superscription as historical; Ellicott (acrostic form, later date) and Cambridge (“the contents do not bear out the reference”) dispute it. The Abimelech/Achish identification rests on a proposed dynastic title, not on this text. No Verifier lexeme basis was computed for this pair.
⚙ This is a cross-Testament link and therefore cannot rest on shared Strong's numbers: the Hebrew shâgaʻ and the Greek existēmi / mainomai are unrelated lexemes, and we make no verbal claim. The link is structural. In 1 Samuel 21 the man Israel's own women had sung about is judged insane by a foreign court and released for it. In Mark 3:21 Jesus' own family go out to seize him, “for they said, He is beside himself”; in John 10:20 the crowd says “He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?”; and in Acts 26:24 Festus tells Paul “thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.” Note the difference as carefully as the likeness: David's madness is a device he adopts to save his life, while in the Gospels the charge is brought against a man who has done nothing to invite it. The shared shape is the reception, not the behaviour — the verdict “mad” is repeatedly the verdict the world reaches about the one God has sent.
Mark 3:21 · John 10:20 · Acts 26:24
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew), so no shared Strong's basis is possible and none is claimed. The recorded basis is a shared narrative pattern: the divinely designated figure dismissed as insane by the authority before whom he stands. The asymmetry (David feigns; Christ and Paul are falsely charged) is stated in the body so the pattern is not overread.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
This unit is the back half of a single visit to the sanctuary at Nob, and the front half is the one Old Testament episode Christ cites in his own defence: “Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat?” (Matthew 12:3-4; Mark 2:25-26). Matthew Henry draws exactly this line in his note on the block that includes our v. 8: “David asked of Ahimelech bread and a sword. Ahimelech supposed they might eat the shew-bread. The Son of David taught from it, that mercy is to be preferred to sacrifice; that ritual observances must give way to moral duties.” ⚙ Two honest qualifications. First, the Lord's citation is of vv. 1-6, not of vv. 8-15; our unit is the continuation of the same hour, not the text quoted. Second, the point Christ makes is about the rights of the anointed-but-rejected king and those with him — and that is precisely the status this unit dramatises. The man who gets the bread in v. 6 is the man refused a house in v. 15. Jesus' argument depends on the reader knowing that David at Nob was the true king in hiding, which is what these eight verses show.
Matthew 12:3-4 · Mark 2:25-26 · 1 Samuel 21:6
⚙ The single most concrete object in this unit is a weapon taken from a defeated enemy, dedicated in the sanctuary as a memorial, and then returned to the victor in his need. Cambridge states the logic plainly: “The monument of God's deliverance in the past was a pledge of His help for the future.” JFB says the same, that it was kept “as a memorial of the divine goodness in delivering Israel,” and was for David “a pledge of the divine favor to him, and a constant stimulus to his faith.” ⚙ Our reading, offered as synthesis and not as received doctrine: the New Testament describes the cross in these terms. Christ “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15), and he destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” by taking hold of death itself (Hebrews 2:14-15) — the enemy's own weapon turned into the trophy of the victory. Where the figure genuinely holds, it holds at this point: the instrument of the adversary becomes the permanent evidence against him. Where it does not hold, say so plainly — David slew Goliath with Goliath's sword and then, in this chapter, failed to trust the God who gave him the victory. The type is in the object and the pattern, not in the man handling it.
Colossians 2:15 · Hebrews 2:14-15 · 1 Samuel 17:51
The unit ends with a door: “הֲזֶה יָבוֹא אֶל־בֵּיתִי — shall this one come into my house?” Cambridge glosses it as employment, “Be taken into my service,” and Pulpit calls it “a strong negative taking the form of a question.” K&D records where the refused man went: “he departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam.” Benson names the paradox running under the whole passage: “The king elect is here an exile: anointed to the crown, and yet forced to run his country! So do God's providences sometimes run counter to his promises, for the trial of our faith.” ⚙ The Gospels place the Son of David in the same posture: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20), and “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). The correspondence is a figural reading, not a quotation, and the differences are real — David is refused by a foreign king he was trying to deceive, Christ by the nation he came to save. But the shape that Benson identifies, a promise held out while its bearer is homeless, is the shape the New Testament says was completed in Christ, and the Davidic pattern of the rejected-then-enthroned king is among the oldest lines of Christian reading of Samuel.
Matthew 8:20 · John 1:11 · Hebrews 11:38
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. BSB (CC0) with the Berean interlinear and Strong's numbering. Two artefacts in the source data are worth flagging rather than silently repairing: at 21:10 the interlinear leaves וַיָּקָם (index 3) glossed “vvv,” an empty slot where BSB simply does not render the verb “and he arose”; and at 21:11 the parse for דָוִד (index 6) reads “Article | Noun - feminine singular,” which is plainly a tagging error for a masculine proper noun without an article. Several words at 21:11 (indices 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15) carry Strong's numbers with no parse string at all. Our notes on those words rest on the lexeme and the visible form, not on a parse we do not have.
Versions. Two places in this unit divide the ancient witnesses, and neither is settled here. At 21:13 the Hebrew וַיְתַו (tâvâh, “to make marks”) is rendered by the LXX and Vulgate as “he drummed” (ἐτυμπανίζειν, impingebat); K&D suggests they read wayyitōp̄ from tâpap. Cambridge judges drumming “a more suitable gesture for a raving madman”; Barnes and Pulpit defend the marks. Also at 21:13, Gill reports that the Vulgate and Septuagint present David's condition as a real seizure rather than a feigned one, and that the Greek of v. 14 reads “ye see the man is an epileptic.” At 21:9 the LXX adds, per Ellicott, “and he gave it to him.” At 21:9 Gill preserves the Targum's temporal rather than spatial reading of אַחֲרֵי, which would make the phrase a record of an oracular inquiry.
What the commentators disagree about. Whether the madness was feigned or real (Ellicott, Pulpit, Cambridge, Gill: feigned; the LXX/Vulgate tradition and “some of the older commentators,” per Pulpit: real). Whether Achish was deceived (Gill, Pulpit) or knowingly merciful (Benson). Whether the courtiers meant to praise David or to denounce him (K&D says the words themselves cannot decide; Poole says denounce; Ellicott says admire). Whether the flight to Gath was unwise (Pulpit) or the only remaining option (Poole, Gill, K&D). Whether Psalm 34's superscription is historical (Barnes, Pulpit, K&D, Gill) or secondary (Cambridge, with Ellicott conceding a later form). We have preserved these divisions rather than harmonising them.
What is ⚙ and fallible. Every lexical chain traced in the notes — dâbâr from v. 8 to v. 12, lâqach from v. 8 to v. 9, yâd from v. 8 to v. 13, nâkâh from v. 9 to v. 11, mippᵉnê from v. 10 to v. 12, hinnêh from v. 9 to v. 14 — is our synthesis. The lexemes and parses are sourced; the claim that the narrator arranged them is an inference from the Hebrew, not a statement any commentator in this brief makes. The reading of H1984's Hitpael against the root's associations with praise is likewise ⚙, and readers should test it against a full lexicon; our brief's entry for H1984 is truncated at “to be clear.” The christological sections are marked for attestation: only the Nob/shewbread link and the rejected-king pattern are widely held; the sword-as-spoils reading is ours and is labelled novel. The Psalm-title thread is flagged, not asserted. Verse counts of lexeme frequency (“in N vv”) are the Verifier's, and 1 Samuel 18:7 is included as a thread despite not appearing in the Verifier's candidate list — its basis is the verbatim repetition of the chant, stated as such in the badge.
✦ = 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)