The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
David Delivers Keilah
1 Samuel 23:1–6 — David Delivers Keilah. 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.
1Now it was reported to David, “Look, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and looting the threshing floors.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yag·gi·ḏū lə·ḏā·wiḏ lê·mōr hin·nêh p̄ə·liš·tîm nil·ḥā·mîm biq·‘î·lāh wə·hêm·māh šō·sîm ’eṯ- hag·go·rā·nō·wṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-told to-David, saying: “Behold, Philistines are-fighting against-Keilah, and-they are-plundering the-threshing-floors.”
Where the English smooths the original
2So David inquired of the LORD, “Should I go and attack these Philistines?” And the LORD said to David, “Go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ way·yiš·’al Yah·weh lê·mōr ha·’ê·lêḵ wə·hik·kê·ṯî hå̄·ʾēl·lɛ·hs bap·pə·liš·tîm Yah·weh way·yō·mer ’el- dā·wiḏ lêḵ wə·hik·kî·ṯā ḇap·pə·liš·tîm wə·hō·wō·ša‘·tā ’eṯ- qə·‘î·lāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David inquired in-YHWH, saying: “Shall-I-go and-strike among-these Philistines?” And-YHWH said to-David: “Go, and-thou-shalt-strike among-the-Philistines, and-thou-shalt-save Keilah.”
Where the English smooths the original
3But David’s men said to him, “Look, we are afraid here in Judah; how much more if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḏā·wiḏ ’an·šê way·yō·mə·rū ’ê·lāw hin·nêh ’ă·naḥ·nū yə·rê·’îm p̄ōh bî·hū·ḏāh wə·’ap̄ kî- nê·lêḵ qə·‘i·lāh ’el- ma·‘ar·ḵō·wṯ pə·liš·tîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-the-men-of David said unto-him: “Behold, we, here in-Judah, are-fearing; and-how-much-more if we-go to-Keilah, unto the-battle-ranks-of the-Philistines?”
Where the English smooths the original
4Once again, David inquired of the LORD, and the LORD answered him: “Go at once to Keilah, for I will deliver the Philistines into your hand.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yō·w·sep̄ ‘ō·wḏ dā·wiḏ liš·’ōl bay·h·wå̄·hs Yah·weh way·yō·mer way·ya·‘ă·nê·hū rêḏ qūm qə·‘î·lāh kî- ’ă·nî nō·ṯên pə·liš·tîm ’eṯ- bə·yā·ḏe·ḵā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David added yet to-inquire in-YHWH, and-YHWH answered-him and-said: “Arise, go-down to-Keilah, for I am-giving the-Philistines into-thy-hand.”
Where the English smooths the original
5Then David and his men went to Keilah, fought against the Philistines, and carried off their livestock, striking them with a mighty blow. So David saved the people of Keilah.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ wə·ʾă·nå̄·šō way·yê·leḵ qə·‘î·lāh way·yil·lā·ḥem bap·pə·liš·tîm way·yin·haḡ miq·nê·hem ’eṯ- way·yaḵ bā·hem ḡə·ḏō·w·lāh mak·kāh dā·wiḏ ’êṯ way·yō·ša‘ yō·šə·ḇê qə·‘î·lāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David went, and-his-men, to-Keilah, and-he-fought against-the-Philistines, and-he-drove-off their-livestock, and-he-struck among-them a-great blow. And-David saved the-inhabitants-of Keilah.
Where the English smooths the original
6(Now Abiathar son of Ahimelech had brought the ephod with him when he fled to David at Keilah.)
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî ’eḇ·yā·ṯār ben- ’ă·ḥî·me·leḵ yā·raḏ ’ê·p̄ō·wḏ bə·yā·ḏōw biḇ·rō·aḥ ’el- dā·wiḏ qə·‘î·lāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-came-to-pass, when-Abiathar son-of-Ahimelech fled unto David to-Keilah: an-ephod came-down in-his-hand.
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 on an unattributed plural: וַיַּגִּ֥דוּ, “and they told.” Cambridge refuses to fill the gap, insisting the Hebrew says “Simply, And they told. There is no mark of time,” and draws from that bare verb the one inference it will bear: “The appeal to David shews that he was growing to be regarded as the champion of Israel.” Gill guesses at the tellers, either the men of Keilah or friends of theirs, and marks his own guess as a guess. Benson and JFB both argue the verb should be read as pluperfect, “now they had told,” because 23:6 shows Abiathar arriving late; Cambridge and K&D read it straight. The Hebrew perfect consecutive genuinely allows either.
What the raiders are doing is told with a rare verb. שֹׁסִ֥ים (shâçâh, H8154) occurs in only 11 verses, and it is the vocabulary of Judges, where spoilers strip Israel until God raises a deliverer. Barnes notes that threshing floors were the natural object of plunder, citing Judges 6:11; Cambridge dates the raid from the same word, “immediately after harvest, when the corn was stacked by the floors ready for threshing.” Pulpit, quoting Conder, explains why the floors were indefensible: they stood on open high ground, chosen for wind, and the grain lay heaped there waiting to be carried home. Keilah is losing a year of food, and the king of Israel is elsewhere, hunting a man.
Twice the text says David שָׁאַל בַּיהוָה, asked in YHWH, and twice it declines to say how. Around that silence the commentators divide sharply, and the division is worth preserving rather than resolving. Ellicott argues the inquiry went through the prophet Gad, since “Abiathar, the high priest who succeeded the murdered Ahimelech, only joined David at Keilah,” and he supports it from 1 Kings 22 and even from the Talmud tractate Yoma. Poole, JFB and Gill follow him, JFB adding that Gad was in David’s camp “probably by the recommendation of Samuel.” K&D flatly asserts the opposite, that David inquired “through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest,” and Cambridge agrees, pointing to 23:6. Pulpit sides with them on the ground that “the prophet Gad had no ephod,” and that Urim and Thummim was the usual mode at this period.
Two proposals in the record go further than exegesis. Cambridge suggests striking the words “to Keilah” from v. 6 outright, or else following the Septuagint. Ellicott records what the Septuagint actually did: “The LXX. here must have deliberately altered the Hebrew text, with the view of escaping what seemed to these translators a grave difficulty.” ⚙ The Masoretic text as it stands is harder than either solution, and the harder text is the one printed above.
The men answer with a formally valid argument. וְאַף֙ כִּֽי־ is an a fortiori: if here, in the highlands of our own tribe, we are יְרֵאִ֑ים, fearful ones, how much more at the border. Poole fills in the strategy, that at Keilah they would have “a potent enemy before us, the Philistines, and, it may be, another behind us, even Saul.” Geneva glosses Judah in the restricted sense, “in the midst of Judah, much more when we come to the borders against our enemies.” Cambridge lands the psychological point: “David’s men exaggerate the marauding bands of Philistines into a regular army.” The word they use, מַֽעַרְכ֖וֹת, means ordered battle ranks, which Pulpit connects to the drawn-up lines of 1 Samuel 17. Fear has promoted a raiding party into an army.
David neither overrules them nor caves. He asks again. Poole reads the second inquiry as made “not for his own, but for his soldiers’ satisfaction and encouragement, as Gideon did,” and Ellicott agrees it was “made for the sake of inspiring his little army with confidence.” The answer comes back with one word intensified: נֹתֵ֛ן is a participle, I am giving, not I will give. Gill weighs it exactly: this is “a promise not only of delivering Keilah out of the hands of the Philistines, but of delivering them into David’s hands.” The fearful get a fuller word than the faithful asked for.
The report is terse and every verb answers an earlier word. He fought (lâcham, the raiders’ own participle from v. 1 now turned against them), he drove off their cattle (וַיִּנְהַג֙, a herdsman’s verb), he struck them a great striking (וַיַּ֥ךְ with its cognate מַכָּ֣ה, the verb God authorised in v. 2), and he saved (וַיֹּ֣שַׁע, the exact Hifil of the promise). K&D summarises the whole sequence in a sentence, and Gill notes the practical fruit, that the cattle sustained David’s men. Benson, quoting Delaney, presses harder and looks ahead: “present dangers quickly obliterate past obligations! Gratitude is, without question, a most lovely virtue, but seldom lives in the extremes either of adversity or success!” ⚙ The Hebrew has already prepared that irony. Those David saves are יֹשְׁבֵ֥י, the ones sitting in Keilah, the settled; within a dozen verses the settled will bargain away the unsettled man who gave them their harvest back.
The unit ends in a parenthesis, and the parenthesis is the theology. Word for word the Hebrew is, as Pulpit renders it, “an ephod came down in his hand,” the verb singular with the vestment for its subject. Gill lists four Latin versions reading ephod descendit in manu sua, and records the Jewish reading from Kimchi and Ben Melech that Abiathar snatched it up almost without knowing, “being so ordered by the providence of God.” Benson sees the same hand: “Thus God, in the course of his providence, gave him an opportunity, while Doeg, the butcher, was killing his brethren, both of escaping himself and of bringing to David the ephod, of which now Saul was justly deprived.” Geneva compresses it to a verdict: “By God’s providence the ephod was preserved and kept with David the true king.” Pulpit draws the constitutional consequence: “By his presence also David had now the approval of the priesthood.” Barnes, working from the opposite reconstruction, sees instead “an additional striking instance of God’s watchful providential care of David in thus sending Abiathar to supply the place of Gad at so critical a moment.” ⚙ The two readings of the mechanism arrive at the same doctrine from opposite premises, which is itself a datum.
⚙ This is the tool’s own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Six verses hold two men who cannot go home. One is anointed and hunted; the other is a priest with his father’s blood still on the road behind him. Between them they carry everything Israel needs and nothing Israel recognises: the kingship and the ephod, both in exile, both in a cave. Meanwhile the man on the throne is doing the one thing a king exists not to do, letting the threshing floors be stripped while he hunts a subject. Saul has the crown and does nothing; David has no commission and asks whether he may act at all. That question, shall I go, is the whole difference between them, and the narrative rewards it twice.
Notice what the second asking means. David had a clear word already. He asked again anyway, not because he doubted but because his men did, and God answered the frightened second time more fully than the faithful first, moving from an imperative to a participle: I am giving them into your hand. That is not indulgence of unbelief. It is a picture of how God actually deals with a following that is willing to go and afraid to go at the same time. The men were not rebuked for saying we are fearful. They were given more word.
And then the sting. The Hebrew calls the rescued those sitting in Keilah, and the next paragraph of the chapter will show them ready to hand their deliverer to the king. A man who saves a town he cannot live in, whose reward for the rescue is a closed gate, is doing something the Bible does not think is unusual for God’s anointed. Matthew Henry saw it and said it plainly in a single line: “David considered himself the protector of the land. Thus did the Saviour Jesus, and left us an example.” ⚙ The example is not that deliverance is thanked. It is that deliverance is given anyway.
He saved a town that would not keep him, and the Bible does not treat that as a surprise. (This line is the tool's own fallible synthesis, not Scripture.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The name קְעִילָה (Qᵉʻîylâh, H7084) appears in only 16 verses of the Hebrew Bible, and this unit uses it six times. Its anchor text is the Judah town list of Joshua 15:44, which nearly every commentator here cites without argument: Benson, Gill, Geneva, JFB, Poole, Cambridge and K&D all reach for it. The list places Keilah in the Shephelah, the low limestone hills bordering the Philistine plain, which is precisely the geography that makes v. 3 a reasonable objection and v. 4’s “go down” a literal instruction. Cambridge adds that the site is fixed by surviving toponym, “about three miles south of Adullam, where the name Kila still survives to mark the site”; Barnes, more cautious, still calls it uncertain.
Joshua 15:44
basis: Verifier: shared rare Hebrew lexeme H7084 Qᵉʻîylâh (in 16 vv) across 1 Samuel 23:1-6 and Joshua 15:44. The link is lexical identity of a rare proper name, not a quotation; the claim is only that the same place is meant, which every commentator in the brief independently asserts.
Keilah appears outside 1 Samuel only three more times. 1 Chronicles 4:19 lists it in a Judahite genealogy; Nehemiah 3:17 and 3:18 name “the ruler of half the district of Keilah” twice over among those who rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem after the exile. ⚙ The synthesis offered here is modest and stated as synthesis: the town David rescued from a harvest raid, and which then moved to hand him over, outlives the crisis and turns up centuries later supplying labour to rebuild the city of David’s line. No commentator in this brief draws that arc, and the Verifier’s link is only the shared name.
1 Chronicles 4:19 · Nehemiah 3:17 · Nehemiah 3:18
basis: Verifier: shared rare Hebrew lexeme H7084 Qᵉʻîylâh (in 16 vv). The lexeme is rare enough to make the identification certain, but there is no shared claim, formula or quotation between the passages, so the connection is tiered thematic, not verbal. The historical arc drawn in the body is ⚙ synthesis and is not asserted by any source in the brief.
This unit’s parenthesis is the hinge of a three-passage sequence. At 1 Samuel 22:20 Abiathar son of Ahimelech escapes (bârach) the slaughter at Nob and flees after David. Here in 23:6 the ephod comes down in his hand. At 1 Samuel 30:7 David says to Abiathar the son of Ahimelech, “bring me the ephod,” and inquires again, this time with the mechanism named explicitly. The Verifier confirms the verbal chain: the two rare names travel together with the vestment. ⚙ Read forward, 30:7 is the strongest external argument for K&D’s and Cambridge’s reconstruction of 23:2 and 23:4, since it shows this is exactly how David inquires once Abiathar is with him. It does not settle what happened before Abiathar arrived, which is what Ellicott, Poole, JFB and Barnes are actually disputing.
1 Samuel 22:20 · 1 Samuel 30:7
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H54 ʼEbyâthâr (in 28 vv) and H288 ʼĂchîymelek (in 16 vv) with 1 Samuel 22:20, plus H1272 bârach (in 64 vv); and H646 ʼêphôwd (in 39 vv) with H54 and H288 together at 1 Samuel 30:7. Two rare proper names carried alongside a rare cultic noun; a genuine verbal chain within one narrative, not a quotation of one text by another.
Judges 2:16 states the formula of the whole judges era: the LORD raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. The Verifier finds both of this unit’s governing verbs there together. שָׁסָה (shâçâh, H8154) is rare, only 11 verses, and it is what the Philistines do to the threshing floors in v. 1; יָשַׁע (yâshaʻ, H3467) is what God promises in v. 2 and David performs in v. 5. ⚙ The synthesis: 1 Samuel 23 runs the Judges cycle one more time, with a deliberate break in it. The deliverer here is not raised up by God against a foreign oppressor while Israel has no king. Israel has a king, and the king is the reason the cycle is running. That is the indictment Matthew Henry draws from these six verses: “When princes persecute God’s people, let them expect vexation on all sides.”
Judges 2:16
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H8154 shâçâh (in 11 vv, rare) and H3467 yâshaʻ (in 198 vv). The rare verb makes the verbal contact real, but neither passage quotes or cites the other, so the tier is held at thematic. The Judges-cycle reading in the body is ⚙ synthesis.
The rare verb of v. 1 turns up in the mouth of Assyria at Isaiah 10:13, where the king boasts of what his own hand and wisdom have done, that he has removed the bounds of the peoples and plundered their treasures. The Verifier records the shared lexemes. ⚙ Set the two speeches side by side: the plunderer says I have done it, by the strength of my hand; the deliverer asks shall I go, and is told I am giving them into your hand. The same word for plunder and the same figure of the hand, inverted. The connection is offered as a reading, not as a claim that either text has the other in view.
Isaiah 10:13
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H8154 shâçâh (in 11 vv, rare) and H3381 yârad (in 345 vv, common). Rare-verb contact only; no citation, no shared formula, and no commentator in the brief connects the passages. The contrast drawn is ⚙ synthesis and is deliberately tiered below verbal.
Every commentator who identifies the ephod of v. 6 reaches for Exodus 28:30, the institution of the Urim and Thummim in the breastpiece of judgment. JFB: “an ephod, in which was the Urim and Thummim (Ex 28:30).” Poole: “the high priest’s ephod, in which were the Urim and Thummim, Exodus 28:30.” Gill distinguishes it from the plain linen ephod worn by ordinary priests. ⚙ This is an identification made by the commentators, not by 1 Samuel 23:6, which says only ʼêphôwd without the article. The reading is old, unanimous in this brief, and almost certainly right; it is flagged here because the link is interpretive rather than verifier-computed, and because the brief’s own thread candidates do not return Exodus 28:30.
Exodus 28:30
basis: No Verifier-computed shared-lexeme basis: Exodus 28:30 does not appear among the thread candidates for this unit, and the connection rests on the commentators' identification of the anarthrous ʼêphôwd (H646) of 23:6 with the high priestly vestment of Exodus 28. Attested by JFB, Poole, Gill, Benson, Cambridge, K&D and Pulpit; flagged because it is inference, not verbal linkage.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The hinge word of this unit is יָשַׁע (yâshaʻ, H3467), whose root sense the lexicon gives as “to be open, wide or free,” and so to bring into open space, to deliver. God speaks it as promise in v. 2, and thou shalt save Keilah; the narrator repeats it as fact in v. 5, so David saved the inhabitants of Keilah. It is the root behind Joshua and behind Hosanna, and behind the name the angel gives in Matthew 1:21, “thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” ⚙ The line from Keilah to Matthew is not a prediction; it is a vocabulary. Israel learned what the word save meant by watching men like David lift a siege off a harvest town, and that is the word the angel reaches for when the reality arrives. What changes in Matthew is the enemy: not a raiding band on the threshing floors but the sins of his people, which no cavalry charge can drive off.
Matthew 1:21 · 1 Samuel 23:2 · 1 Samuel 23:5
Matthew Henry states the typology in one sentence, covering all six verses at once: “David considered himself the protector of the land. Thus did the Saviour Jesus, and left us an example.” ⚙ The synthesis presses it into the Hebrew. The saved are יֹשְׁבֵי, those sitting in Keilah, the settled; David is the man with nowhere to sit. He asks God twice whether he may risk his six hundred for them, spends the risk, drives off the enemy, feeds his men from the spoil, and the chapter that follows reports the townsmen prepared to deliver him up to Saul. Benson’s source names the moral with unusual bite: “Gratitude is, without question, a most lovely virtue, but seldom lives in the extremes either of adversity or success!” John 1:11 states the same sequence of the Word made flesh, and Luke 19:41 shows him weeping over the city that will hand him over, having come to it uninvited and unthanked. The typology is old and widely held; the specific route through yâshab is the tool’s own.
John 1:11 · Luke 19:41
Geneva reads v. 6 as a verdict: “By God’s providence the ephod was preserved and kept with David the true king.” Pulpit draws the consequence, that David now had “the approval of the priesthood.” ⚙ The picture is worth holding still. Saul murdered the priests of Nob to secure his throne, and the effect was to drive the ephod, the one instrument by which Israel’s king could ask God anything, into the camp of the man he was hunting. From 23:6 onward the anointed king and the surviving high priest are in the same exile, sharing the same wilderness, and the kingship and the priesthood are for a season lodged in one company of outlaws. Hebrews 7:14 observes that our Lord sprang out of Judah, a tribe of which Moses said nothing concerning priesthood, and Psalm 110:4 has David himself sing of a priest-king after another order entirely. The joining of the two offices in one person is the ancient and apostolic reading; ⚙ treating the cave at Keilah as an early rehearsal of it is this tool’s own suggestion, and it is offered as suggestion. Note also the honest counter-evidence: Abiathar’s line ends deposed by Solomon, so the pairing here is provisional, not a fulfilment.
Psalm 110:4 · Hebrews 7:14
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. The Hebrew here is stable but its syntax is contested at two points. In 23:4 the interlinear supplied in the brief lists rêḏ (H3381) before qûm (H6965); the literal rendering above follows the received order “arise, go down,” since both are bare Qal imperatives and the sense is unaffected. In 23:6 the subject of the singular perfect יָרַ֥ד is genuinely ambiguous: Pulpit, Gill and the Latin versions Gill cites (Pagninus, Montanus, Munster, Piscator) read “an ephod came down in his hand,” with the vestment as subject; BSB and Benson make Abiathar the subject. Both are defensible; the literal above prints the former and the divergence note records the choice.
Versions. The Septuagint at 23:6 differs materially from the Masoretic text, reading that Abiathar “came down with David to Keilah, having an ephod in his hand.” Ellicott states plainly that “the LXX. here must have deliberately altered the Hebrew text, with the view of escaping what seemed to these translators a grave difficulty.” Cambridge goes further and proposes either striking “to Keilah” from the Hebrew or adopting the Greek. ⚙ This synthesis prints the Masoretic text and does not adopt either emendation; readers should know that a respected nineteenth-century commentary in this very brief recommends changing the text at this verse.
What is genuinely uncertain. (1) How David inquired in 23:2 and 23:4. Ellicott, Poole, JFB, Barnes and Gill say through the prophet Gad; K&D, Cambridge and Pulpit say through the ephod and the Urim. The Hebrew formula shâʼal b-YHWH specifies no mechanism, and this synthesis does not decide. (2) When Abiathar joined David: at Keilah (Ellicott), or before the march (K&D, Pulpit, Cambridge). (3) Whether 23:1 should be read as pluperfect, “now they had told” (Benson, JFB, Poole), or as simple narrative (Cambridge). (4) The exact site of Keilah: Cambridge and Pulpit identify it with Kila near the valley of Elah on Conder's survey; Barnes and K&D, writing earlier, call the site undiscovered.
Sources. Scripture text BSB (CC0). Interlinear surfaces, transliterations, Strong's numbers, parsings and lexeme frequencies from the Berean data supplied in the brief. All ✦ quotations are verbatim contiguous substrings of the public-domain commentaries named, resolved mechanically from anchors; the editors quoted are Ellicott (1878), Benson (1810s), Henry (1706), Barnes (1834), JFB (1871), Gill (1746-63), Geneva (1599), Cambridge (1880s), Pulpit (1880s), Keil & Delitzsch (1860s) and Poole (1685). Benson's most quotable lines in 23:2 and 23:5 are themselves quotations of Patrick Delaney and are marked as such. Cross-reference bases are Verifier-computed shared Strong's lexemes with frequencies; the Exodus 28:30 thread has no such basis and is flagged accordingly. Everything marked ⚙ is this tool's fallible synthesis and carries no authority.
✦ = 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)