The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
David Spares Saul
1 Samuel 24:1–15 — David Spares Saul. 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.
1After Saul had returned from pursuing the Philistines, he was told, “David is in the wilderness of En-gedi.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî ka·’ă·šer šā·’ūl šāḇ mê·’a·ḥă·rê pə·liš·tîm way·yag·gi·ḏū lōw lê·mōr hin·nêh ḏā·wiḏ bə·miḏ·bar ‘ên ge·ḏî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-came-to-pass, when Saul had-returned from-after the-Philistines, they-told to-him, saying: “Behold — David is-in-the-wilderness-of En-gedi.”
Where the English smooths the original
2So Saul took three thousand chosen men from all Israel and went to look for David and his men in the region of the Rocks of the Wild Goats.
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šā·’ūl way·yiq·qaḥ šə·lō·šeṯ ’ă·lā·p̄îm bā·ḥūr ’îš mik·kāl yiś·rā·’êl way·yê·leḵ lə·ḇaq·qêš ’eṯ- dā·wiḏ wa·’ă·nā·šāw ‘al- pə·nê ṣū·rê hay·yə·‘ê·lîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-took Saul three thousand men chosen out-of-all Israel, and-he-went to-seek David and-his-men upon the-face-of the-Rocks-of-the-Wild-Goats.
Where the English smooths the original
3Soon Saul came to the sheepfolds along the road, where there was a cave, and he went in to relieve himself. And David and his men were hiding in the recesses of the cave.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yā·ḇō ’el- haṣ·ṣōn giḏ·rō·wṯ ‘al- had·de·reḵ wə·šām mə·‘ā·rāh šā·’ūl way·yā·ḇō lə·hā·sêḵ ’eṯ- raḡ·lāw wə·ḏā·wiḏ wa·’ă·nā·šāw yō·šə·ḇîm bə·yar·kə·ṯê ham·mə·‘ā·rāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-came unto the-sheepfolds by-the-road, and-there a-cave; and-Saul went-in to-cover his-feet — and-David and-his-men were-sitting in-the-innermost-parts-of the-cave.
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4So David’s men said to him, “This is the day about which the LORD said to you, ‘Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand, that you may do with him as you wish.’” Then David crept up and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul’s robe.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḏā·wiḏ ’an·šê way·yō·mə·rū ’ê·lāw hin·nêh hay·yō·wm ’ăšer- Yah·weh ’ā·mar ’ê·le·ḵā hin·nêh ’ā·nō·ḵî nō·ṯên ʾō·yə·ḇɛ·ḵå̄ ’eṯ- bə·yā·ḏe·ḵā wə·‘ā·śî·ṯā lōw ka·’ă·šer yi·ṭaḇ bə·‘ê·ne·ḵā dā·wiḏ way·yā·qām bal·lāṭ way·yiḵ·rōṯ ’eṯ- kə·nap̄- lə·šā·’ūl ham·mə·‘îl ’ă·šer-
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said the-men-of David unto-him: “Behold the-day of-which YHWH said unto-thee: Behold, I am-giving thine-enemy into-thy-hand, and-thou-shalt-do to-him as-it-is-good in-thine-eyes.” And-David rose and-cut-off the-wing-of the-robe which-was-Saul’s, in-the-secret.
Where the English smooths the original
5Afterward, David’s conscience was stricken because he had cut off the corner of Saul’s robe.
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way·hî ’a·ḥă·rê- ḵên dā·wiḏ ’ō·ṯōw lêḇ- way·yaḵ ‘al ’ă·šer kā·raṯ ’eṯ- kā·nāp̄ ’ă·šer lə·šā·’ūl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-came-to-pass afterward, that-smote the-heart-of David him — because he-had-cut-off the-wing which-was-Saul’s.
Where the English smooths the original
6So he said to his men, “The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the LORD’s anointed. May I never lift my hand against him, since he is the LORD’s anointed.”
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way·yō·mer la·’ă·nā·šāw Yah·weh ḥā·lî·lāh ’im- lî ’e·‘ĕ·śeh ’eṯ- haz·zeh had·dā·ḇār la·ḏō·nî Yah·weh lim·šî·aḥ liš·lō·aḥ yā·ḏî bōw kî- hū Yah·weh mə·šî·aḥ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-said to-his-men: “Profanation-to-me from-YHWH, if I-should-do this thing to-my-lord, to-the-anointed-of-YHWH, to-stretch-out my-hand against-him — for the-anointed-of-YHWH is-he.”
Where the English smooths the original
7With these words David restrained his men, and he did not let them rise up against Saul. Then Saul left the cave and went on his way.
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bad·də·ḇā·rîm dā·wiḏ way·šas·sa‘ ’eṯ- ’ă·nā·šāw wə·lō nə·ṯā·nām lā·qūm ’el- šā·’ūl wə·šā·’ūl qām mê·ham·mə·‘ā·rāh way·yê·leḵ bad·dā·reḵ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David tore-apart his-men with-the-words, and-did-not give-them to-rise-up against Saul; and-Saul rose from-the-cave and-went on-the-road.
Where the English smooths the original
8After that, David got up, went out of the cave, and called out to Saul, “My lord the king!” When Saul looked behind him, David bowed facedown in reverence
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’a·ḥă·rê- ḵên dā·wiḏ way·yā·qām way·yê·ṣê min- ham·mə·ʿå̄·rå̄h way·yiq·rā ’a·ḥă·rê- šā·’ūl lê·mōr ’ă·ḏō·nî ham·me·leḵ šā·’ūl way·yab·bêṭ ’a·ḥă·rāw dā·wiḏ way·yiq·qōḏ ’ap·pa·yim ’ar·ṣāh way·yiš·tā·ḥū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David rose afterward and-went-out from-the-cave and-called after Saul, saying: “My-lord the-king!” And-Saul looked behind-him, and-David bowed — nostrils to-the-earth — and-prostrated-himself.
Where the English smooths the original
9and said to Saul, “Why do you listen to the words of men who say, ‘Look, David intends to harm you’?
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dā·wiḏ way·yō·mer lə·šā·’ūl lām·māh ṯiš·ma‘ ’eṯ- diḇ·rê ’ā·ḏām lê·mōr hin·nêh ḏā·wiḏ mə·ḇaq·qêš rā·‘ā·ṯe·ḵā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David said to-Saul: “Why hearest-thou the-words-of man, saying: ‘Behold, David is-seeking thy-hurt’?
Where the English smooths the original
10Behold, this day you have seen with your own eyes that the LORD delivered you into my hand in the cave. I was told to kill you, but I spared you and said, ‘I will not lift my hand against my lord, since he is the LORD’s anointed.’
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hin·nêh haz·zeh hay·yō·wm rā·’ū ‘ê·ne·ḵā ’êṯ ’ă·šer- Yah·weh hay·yō·wm nə·ṯā·nə·ḵā bə·yā·ḏî bam·mə·‘ā·rāh wə·’ā·mar la·hă·rā·ḡă·ḵā wat·tā·ḥās ‘ā·le·ḵā wā·’ō·mar lō- ’eš·laḥ yā·ḏî ba·ḏō·nî kî- hū Yah·weh mə·šî·aḥ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
Behold, this day thine-eyes have-seen how YHWH gave-thee today into-my-hand in-the-cave; and-one-said to-kill-thee, but-[mine-eye] spared upon-thee, and-I-said: I-will-not send my-hand against-my-lord, for the-anointed-of-YHWH is-he.
Where the English smooths the original
11See, my father, look at the corner of your robe in my hand. For I cut it off, but I did not kill you. Know and see that there is no evil or rebellion in my hands. I have not sinned against you, even though you are hunting me down to take my life.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
rə·’êh gam wə·’ā·ḇî rə·’êh ’eṯ- kə·nap̄ mə·‘î·lə·ḵā bə·yā·ḏî kî kə·nap̄ mə·‘î·lə·ḵā bə·ḵā·rə·ṯî ’eṯ- wə·lō hă·raḡ·tî·ḵā da‘ ū·rə·’êh kî ’ên rā·‘āh wā·p̄e·ša‘ bə·yā·ḏî wə·lō- ḥā·ṭā·ṯî lāḵ wə·’at·tāh ṣō·ḏeh ’eṯ- lə·qaḥ·tāh nap̄·šî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-my-father — see, yea see the-wing-of thy-robe in-my-hand! For in-my-cutting-off the-wing-of thy-robe I-killed-thee-not. Know and-see that there-is-no evil in-my-hand nor-rebellion, and-I-have-not sinned against-thee — and-thou art-hunting my-soul to-take-it.
Where the English smooths the original
12May the LORD judge between you and me, and may the LORD take vengeance on you, but my hand will never be against you.
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Yah·weh yiš·pōṭ bê·nî ū·ḇê·ne·ḵā Yah·weh ū·nə·qā·ma·nî mim·me·kā wə·yā·ḏî lō ṯih·yeh- bāḵ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
Judge YHWH between-me and-between-thee, and-avenge-me YHWH from-thee; but-my-hand shall-not be against-thee.
Where the English smooths the original
13As the old proverb says, ‘Wickedness proceeds from the wicked.’ But my hand will never be against you.
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ka·’ă·šer haq·qaḏ·mō·nî mə·šal yō·mar re·ša‘ yê·ṣê mê·rə·šā·‘îm wə·yā·ḏî lō ṯih·yeh- bāḵ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
As says the-proverb of-the-ancient-one: “From-the-wicked goes-out wickedness” — but-my-hand shall-not be against-thee.
Where the English smooths the original
14Against whom has the king of Israel come out? Whom are you pursuing? A dead dog? A flea?
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’a·ḥă·rê mî me·leḵ yiś·rā·’êl yā·ṣā ’a·ḥă·rê mî ’at·tāh rō·ḏêp̄ ’a·ḥă·rê mêṯ ’a·ḥă·rê ke·leḇ ’e·ḥāḏ par·‘ōš
Literal — word-for-word from the original
After whom has-come-out the-king of Israel? After whom art-thou pursuing? After a-dead dog? After one flea?
Where the English smooths the original
15May the LORD be our judge and decide between you and me. May He take notice and plead my case and deliver me from your hand.”
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Yah·weh wə·hā·yāh lə·ḏay·yān wə·šā·p̄aṭ bê·nî ū·ḇê·ne·ḵā wə·yê·re wə·yā·rêḇ ’eṯ- rî·ḇî wə·yiš·pə·ṭê·nî mî·yā·ḏe·ḵā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-YHWH shall-be for-judge, and-shall-judge between-me and-between-thee; and-may-He-see, and-plead my-case, and-judge-me out-of thy-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 a hinge verb: Saul שָׁב (šāḇ, H7725) — he turns back from the Philistines, and turns immediately onto David. Ellicott hears the speed as character: “no sooner was the Philistine raid repulsed than with sleepless animosity he at once set forth.” The force he raises is described with the language of election — three thousand בָּחוּר (bāḥûr, passive participle of bāḥar, H977, “to try, to choose”) — which is the narrator's quiet joke: a rejected king marches his chosen men against the man God chose. JFB is blunter about the futility: “Nothing but the blind infatuation of fiendish rage could have led the king to pursue his outlawed son-in-law among those craggy and perpendicular precipices… But the overruling providence of God frustrated all his vigilance.”
The terrain is named for creatures, not men. הַיְּעֵלִים (yāʻêl, H3277, “an ibex, as climbing”) occurs in only three verses of the Hebrew Bible; Pulpit reads it as a proper name of cliffs near En-gedi, K&D disagrees — “probably not a proper name for some particular rocks, but a general term applied to the rocks of that locality.” The brief does not settle it and neither do we. Poole, quoting an eyewitness, records what the commentators agree on: “These very rocks are exceeding steep, and full of precipices, and dangerous to travellers.”
Then verse 3 puts the king inside the mountain. The Hebrew says only that Saul went in לְהָסֵךְ אֶת־רַגְלָיו — “to cover his feet” — and the ancient versions split. Cambridge and K&D take it as the standard euphemism for the necessities of nature; Poole preserves the dissent, that “the Syriac and Arabic, interpret this place and phrase quite otherwise, that Saul went in to sleep there.” ⚙ Both readings land on one fact, and the narrator seems to want only that fact: the man with three thousand soldiers made himself, for a few minutes, a body without a guard. Opposite him, in the יַרְכְּתֵי (the “thighs,” the far recesses) of the cave, David and his men were יֹשְׁבִים — not “hiding,” as the English has it, but sitting, yāšaḇ (H3427), the verb Strong's glosses “properly, to sit down (specifically as judge).”
David's men speak the most dangerous sentence in the unit: “Behold the day of which YHWH said unto thee.” No such saying exists in 1 Samuel, and the named voices are unanimous. JFB: “God had never made any promise of delivering Saul into David's hand.” K&D: “what follows clearly shows that David had received no such oracle,” and so the men “regarded the leadings of providence… as a divine intimation, and called this intimation a word of Jehovah.” Barnes traces the raw material — the succession oracles of 1 Samuel 15:28 and 16:1, 12, known publicly through Jonathan's words. Maclaren names the technique without mercy: “They put a religious varnish on their advice. It would be almost impious not to kill Saul, for here was the hand of God evidently fulfilling a prophecy!” Geneva makes it a mirror for the reader: “Here we see how ready we are to hasten God's promise, if the occasion serve never so little.”
⚙ Notice the grammar the men chose. נֹתֵן (nōṯên, H5414) is a participle — I am giving, right now — so the alleged oracle is not a remembered promise but a running commentary on the present moment. That is the exact form the temptation takes: not “God once said,” but “God is saying, look.”
What David actually does is smaller and stranger than what they urged. בַּלָּט (ballāṭ, H3909, “in the secrecy”), he cuts (kārat, H3772 — the covenant verb) the כָּנָף (kānāp̄, H3671, a wing) of the royal mᵉʻîl. And then the blow he withheld lands on him: וַיַּךְ (nākāh, H5221, the battlefield verb “to strike”) with the heart of David as its subject. K&D: “his conscience reproached him, because he regarded this as an injury done to the king himself.” Ellicott presses further, that the smiting was “not for what he had done to Saul, but… for the momentary thought that had stained his soul of slaying the Lord's Anointed” — a reconstruction, we should say plainly, of an interior the verse does not open. Geneva supplies the decisive reason in one clause: “For seeing it was his own private cause, he repented that he had touched his enemy.” Poole adds the honest possibility that David “had some secret thought of doing more to him, though he suppressed and overcame it.”
David's refusal is not mercy and is not policy. He says חָלִילָה (ḥālîlāh, H2486), a word Strong's traces to a profaned thing — Pulpit renders the idiom “Far be it from me from Jehovah,” for Jehovah's sake — and he follows it with אִם, which K&D identifies as “a particle denoting an oath.” Four times in this unit the title מְשִׁיחַ יְהוָה (mᵉšîaḥ YHWH, H4899) is spoken, twice here and twice to Saul's face in v. 10. Poole draws the whole constitutional argument out of it: the unction made Saul's person “sacred and inviolable, and is so to be accounted by me, and you, and all his subjects… as God only exalted him, and God only could pronounce a sentence of deprivation… so it belongs to God only to execute his own sentence.” Pulpit: “He was Jehovah's Messiah, and as such his person was sacred.”
⚙ The force of the argument is that David is himself already anointed. He is not deferring to an office he does not hold; he is refusing to establish a precedent that would one day be used on him. A throne taken by cutting down an anointed man could be kept only by cutting down the next claimant — and the man saying this will later have to answer for Uriah. He is right here, and the rightness is costly, and it does not make him safe.
The cost is visible in one verb. David וַיְשַׁסַּע (šāsaʻ, H8156, “to split or tear,” Piel) his men with words. Cambridge: “Lit. tore, or lashed: a strong expression”; K&D glosses it verbis dilacere; Pulpit says the verb “means to crush down” and “shows that David had to use all his authority.” Henry's summary is right and quiet: “He not only would not do this bad thing himself, but he would not suffer those about him to do it.” Benson goes further and makes the reading typological on the spot — David rendered good for evil, “and was herein both a type of Christ, who saved his persecutors, and an example to all Christians, not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good.”
David comes out and calls after Saul — אַחֲרֵי, the preposition of the whole pursuit, now reversed by a voice. Ellicott catches the intent of the posture: he called “with an address of the deepest reverence, accompanied too… with an act of the profoundest homage which an inferior could pay to a superior. He would show Saul at least he was no rival king.” The Hebrew for that homage is bodily: אַפַּיִם אַרְצָה, nostrils earthward — the organ that in Hebrew also names wrath, laid in the dirt — followed by wayyištāḥû (šāḥāh, H7812), the verb of worship. Pulpit reads the whole gesture politically: “so far from being a rebel, he still acknowledged Saul's lawful authority.”
Then the indictment, aimed past the king at his court. Poole: “He prudently and modestly translates the fault from Saul to his followers and evil counsellors.” Ellicott names them — Doeg, Cush the Benjamite, the Ziphites; Cambridge ties the situation to Psalm 7, a link that rests on that psalm's superscription and on likeness of language, not on anything in 1 Samuel. ⚙ The Hebrew sharpens the charge past what the English shows: the informers say David is מְבַקֵּשׁ (mᵉḇaqqêš, H1245, Piel) Saul's harm, and that is the exact verb the narrator used in v. 2 for what Saul came to do to David. The accusation is a confession.
Verse 10 contains the unit's hardest clause and its deepest one. וְאָמַר לַהֲרָגֲךָ has no expressed subject: “and he/it said to kill thee.” Ellicott lays out the options honestly — the literal rendering makes Jehovah the speaker, which he rejects as “contrary to the spirit of the whole narrative”; the Syriac and Chaldee supply “one said”; the Vulgate repoints to “I thought.” What follows is unambiguous in every reading: וַתָּחָס (ḥûs, H2347, root sense to cover) — the eye spared. Pulpit states the principle the whole chapter exists to teach: “But what seem to us to be the leadings of Providence are not to be blindly followed.”
And the evidence is produced: “see, yea see the wing of thy robe in my hand.” Gill: “look on it again and again; view it with the eyes of thy body intently… and consider that I could as easily have had thine head in my hand as the skirt of thy robe.” K&D hears the address my father as “childlike reverence and affection… towards the anointed of the Lord,” though Ellicott and Barnes read it instead as the deference of a junior. The counter-charge is technical: Saul is צֹדֶה (ṣōḏeh, H6658), and that rare participle is the word Exodus 21:13 uses for the lying-in-wait that makes a killing murder.
The speech ends in a courtroom. Šāp̄aṭ (H8199) sounds three times in four verses, rîḇ twice in one clause as verb and noun together — “may He contend my contention” — and God is asked to become דַּיָּן (dayyān, H1781), an agent-noun that stands in only one other verse of the Hebrew Bible. Henry states David's resolution exactly: “He declares his fixed resolution never to be his own avenger. If men wrong us, God will right us, at farthest, in the judgment of the great day.” K&D distils v. 12 to a sentence: “Only a wicked man could wish to avenge himself; I do not.” Benson, weighing the tense of ū·nᵉqāmanî, insists David “does not, in these words, pray God to punish Saul… but to justify, clear, and protect himself.” Poole agrees: “I will not execute vengeance on thee, but will leave it wholly to God.”
The proverb of v. 13 is an argument from character: mê·rᵉšāʻîm yêṣêʼ rešaʻ, wickedness comes out of the wicked. Cambridge: “A man's character is known by his actions. If I were wicked at heart, I should have shewn it by killing you.” Gill reaches for Gospel language to say the same — “a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruits” — and Ellicott collects the parallels, Grotius on how “actions usually correspond to the quality of the mind,” and Erdmann's Greek proverb about the bad egg from the bad raven. Cambridge is careful where we should be careful too: it is not clear whether the closing refrain, “but my hand shall not be upon thee,” belongs to the proverb or to David.
Then the self-description that the whole army makes ridiculous: a dead dog, one flea. Ellicott presses the numeral BSB omits — “the original is even stronger, after ‘one flea’… if it is caught, is poor game for a royal hunter.” K&D: “a perfectly harmless and insignificant man, of whom Saul had no occasion to be afraid.” Barnes puts it as a question about the crown: “was it consistent with the dignity of the king of Israel to lead armies in pursuit of a weak and helpless individual like David?” The last line asks not for rescue but for verdict — Cambridge, literally, “judge me out of thy hand: give me my right, and set me free.” Ellicott's entry here hands the microphone to Bishop Sanderson, in David's voice: “God can and will in His own due time make good His own promise without my sin.”
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered under Scripture and to be tested by it. The cave at En-gedi is usually preached as a story about mercy. Read from the Hebrew up, it is a story about jurisdiction — about who holds which office, and what a man may do with a door that opens in front of him.
Every party in the chapter agrees on the facts. Saul really is in David's hand; David says so himself in v. 10, using the same verb nāṯan his men had used in v. 4. The disagreement is entirely about what a fact authorises. The men reason from circumstance to command: God gave him to you, therefore God told you. David reasons from office to limit: the man is mᵉšîaḥ YHWH, and what God's oil put there only God's word removes. That is why his refusal is worded as sacrilege (ḥālîlāh, from the root for profaning) rather than as pity. He is not too soft to kill Saul. He is too small to unmake a king.
And Scripture does not let us pretend the restraint was serene. The one verb that describes David handling his own men is šāsaʻ, to tear or split. He did not persuade six hundred armed men in a dark cave; he tore them off the king. Then, having refused the crime, he is convicted by his own heart for the hem — a proportion that only makes sense if the anointing is as real to David as the narrator says it is.
The chapter's last movement is the tell. A man who genuinely believed the door was God's command would have walked through it. A man who believes the case is real but the bench is occupied does what David does: he gathers evidence (the hem, held up twice), states the charge in legal terms (ṣōḏeh, the lying-in-wait of Exodus 21:13), declines to prosecute personally, and files — “let YHWH be dayyān.” Not a man renouncing justice. A man declining to be judge in his own cause.
⚙ Then the honest question this text puts to anyone holding an opportunity: an opened door tells you what is possible. It does not tell you what is permitted. Saul's guard came down; that is providence. What David's hand did with it is obedience or crime, and the circumstance alone will never say which. The line below is our own, not Scripture:
The cave was not a door God opened; it was a knife God set on the table, to see what a king's hand would do with it. (⚙ our line, not a verse.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
David's closing self-description, פַּרְעֹשׁ אֶחָד (parʻōš ʼeḥāḏ, H6550, “one flea”), recurs at 1 Samuel 26:20, where after a second night-time sparing of Saul he says again that the king of Israel has come out “to seek a flea.” The Verifier records the shared lexemes: H6550 parʻôsh, a noun found in only two verses of the whole Hebrew Bible, together with a doubled H1245 bāqaš — the very verb that described Saul's expedition in v. 2 and the slander in v. 9. K&D makes the cross-reference explicitly at v. 14 (“cf. 1 Samuel 26:20”). ⚙ The doubling matters for reading both chapters: the second cave-episode is not a variant of the first but a deliberate repetition of David's argument, down to the vocabulary, after Saul had already wept and sworn once.
1 Samuel 26:20
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6550 parʻôsh (in 2 vv — the two occurrences in the canon are this verse and 1 Samuel 26:20) and H1245 bâqash (in 215 vv, twice shared). The rarity of parʻôsh makes this a true verbal link; it is a self-repetition by the same speaker, not a citation of an earlier text.
David's charge in v. 11 is not a metaphor for harassment. צֹדֶה (ṣōḏeh, H6658 tsāḏāh, “to chase, to lie in wait”) stands in only three verses of the Hebrew Bible, and one of them is Exodus 21:13 — the statute in which lōʼ ṣāḏāh, “he did not lie in wait,” is the legal test separating unintentional killing (for which a city of refuge is appointed) from murder (for which the altar itself gives no asylum). The third occurrence is Zephaniah 3:6, where the Verifier also records the shared H3772 kārat, the “cutting off” verb of vv. 4, 5 and 11. ⚙ Read against Exodus 21, David's sentence is drafted like a pleading: he has just proved he did not lie in wait (he had the sleeping man and cut cloth), and he applies the statute's own participle to the king. That is why the speech can move straight into a demand for a judge in vv. 12 and 15.
Exodus 21:13 · Zephaniah 3:6
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6658 tsâdâh (in 3 vv) with Exodus 21:13 and Zephaniah 3:6; the Zephaniah link additionally shares H3772 kârath (in 280 vv, twice). The rarity of tsâdâh (three verses canon-wide) carries the verbal tier; no commentator in the brief draws the Exodus 21 connection, so the legal reading of it is ⚙ ours and is offered to be tested.
In v. 15 David does not ask God to be his rescuer but his דַּיָּן (dayyān, H1781, “a judge or advocate”), an agent-noun the Verifier finds in only two verses of the Hebrew Bible. The other is Psalm 68:5 — “a father of the fatherless and a dayyān of widows is God in His holy habitation.” ⚙ The title is therefore not the generic word for a magistrate; in its only other canonical use it names God as the court of those who have no legal standing and no one to plead for them. David, outlawed by the state and slandered at court, asks for exactly that bench — and the request is consistent with the refusal in v. 12: he does not want vengeance in his hand, he wants a hearing he cannot get from Saul.
Psalm 68:5
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H1781 dayân (in 2 vv) — this verse and Psalm 68:5 are its only canonical occurrences. A rare shared lexeme, not a quotation in either direction; the theological inference drawn from the pairing is ⚙ ours.
The chase runs over צוּרֵי הַיְּעֵלִים, the cliffs of the yāʻêl (H3277), a noun the Verifier finds in only three verses. The other two are Job 39:1 — “Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth?”, part of God's interrogation of Job about the creatures no man tends — and Psalm 104:18, “the high hills are a refuge for the wild goats.” Gill himself cites Job 39:1 at this verse. ⚙ Both parallels put the ibex where no human authority reaches: beyond Job's knowledge, and in a refuge God assigns. Saul takes three thousand infantry into the one landscape Scripture uses as an emblem of what the powerful cannot administer, and comes out of it having lost a piece of his robe. The link is lexical and thematic; neither Job nor the Psalm is being cited here.
Job 39:1 · Psalm 104:18
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3277 yâʻêl (in 3 vv) with Job 39:1 and Psalm 104:18 — a rare lexeme, but a shared common noun with no quotation in either direction, so we tier it structural rather than verbal. Gill names Job 39:1 at this verse.
Four of the named commentators attach psalms to this episode: Pulpit and Benson cite Psalm 57 and Psalm 142, JFB quotes Psalm 142:1 (“his prayer when he was in the cave”), Barnes attaches a psalm to the cave as well, and Cambridge attaches Psalm 7 to v. 9 and Psalm 35 to v. 15. The Verifier can confirm only a weak lexical overlap for Psalm 57 — H7586 Šāʼûl and H4631 mᵉʻārāh, “cave” — and both of those occur in the superscription rather than the psalm's body. ⚙ We flag this rather than assert it: the whole tradition rests on the psalm titles, whose antiquity and authority are genuinely disputed, and Benson himself hedges (“which, it is supposed, he composed”). The connection may well be right; it is not established by the text of 1 Samuel 24, and no sourced fact in this brief establishes it.
Psalm 57:1 · Psalm 142:1 · Psalm 7:1
basis: Verifier: Psalm 57:1 shares H7586 Shâʼûwl (in 335 vv, thrice) and H4631 mᵉʻârâh (in 36 vv) — both words standing in the psalm's superscription, not its body; Psalm 142 and Psalm 7 return no shared-lexeme basis at all. The link is carried entirely by the superscriptions and by commentator tradition (JFB, Pulpit, Benson, Barnes, Cambridge), whose provenance is contested. Flagged accordingly.
David cut the hem בַּלָּט (ballāṭ, H3909, “in secrecy”), a rare adverbial noun the Verifier finds in six verses — one of them Ruth 3:7, where Ruth comes ballāṭ to a sleeping man's uncovered feet, in a scene that also turns on what is good (H3190 yāṭaḇ, shared here with v. 4's “as it is good in thine eyes”). ⚙ The resonance runs deeper than the Verifier's computed basis: Saul went in to cover his feet, and a man came secretly and took his kānāp̄ — while in Ruth 3:9 (a verse the Verifier does not include in its basis, and which we therefore mark as our own observation) a woman asks a man to spread his kānāp̄ over her. In Ruth the wing is spread and a house is built; in the cave the wing is cut and a house is ending. We name the pattern and claim no more: the two texts share two lexemes and a scene-shape, not a citation.
Ruth 3:7
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3909 lâṭ (in 6 vv) and H3190 yâṭab (in 110 vv) with Ruth 3:7. The kānāp̄ (H3671) parallel at Ruth 3:9 is ⚙ our own observation and is NOT part of the Verifier's computed basis. No quotation is claimed in either direction.
Cambridge annotates v. 13 with “Cp. Matthew 7:16-20,” and Gill paraphrases the proverb in nearly the Gospel's own words: “a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruits, an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things.” The Hebrew maxim mê·rᵉšāʻîm yêṣêʼ rešaʻ and the Lord's “by their fruits ye shall know them” make the same inference — from output back to source — and David uses it forensically: if I were the man your informers describe, you would be dead. ⚙ No verbal basis can be computed here: the link crosses from Hebrew to Greek, so shared Strong's numbers are impossible in principle, and the New Testament makes no citation of 1 Samuel 24:13. What the two share is a form of argument and a moral principle, named by two of our commentators.
Matthew 7:16-20 · Matthew 12:34-35
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): shared Strong's lexemes are impossible by definition, so no verbal tier is available and none is claimed. The basis is a shared maxim-form (character inferred from what proceeds out of a man), named independently by [Cambridge] (“Cp. Matthew 7:16-20”) and echoed in [Gill]'s paraphrase. No NT quotation of this verse exists.
Three of the named voices independently read this unit through Romans 12. Henry: “He declares his fixed resolution never to be his own avenger. If men wrong us, God will right us, at farthest, in the judgment of the great day.” JFB says David “rather wished to overcome evil with good, and heap coals of fire upon his head” — Paul's phrase from Romans 12:20. Henry and Benson both end on “not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good,” which is Romans 12:21 verbatim. ⚙ The direction of dependence runs from Deuteronomy 32:35 through Paul, not from 1 Samuel; what David does in the cave is the narrative instance of the ethic Paul later commands. We tier it structural for the same reason as the thread above: across Testaments and languages, no shared-lexeme basis can be computed, and Paul does not cite this chapter.
Romans 12:19-21 · 1 Peter 2:23
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong's lexemes are possible, and no NT citation of 1 Samuel 24 exists, so the verbal tier is excluded. The basis is a shared ethical structure — refusing self-avenging and committing the case to God as judge — named in the brief by [Henry], [JFB] and [Benson], the latter two quoting Romans 12:20-21 language directly in their comments.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The governing word of the unit is מְשִׁיחַ יְהוָה (mᵉšîaḥ YHWH, H4899) — the LORD's Messiah — spoken four times in ten verses. Poole draws out the logic: “as God only exalted him, and God only could pronounce a sentence of deprivation of his kingdom against him; so it belongs to God only to execute his own sentence.” Benson states the typology outright at v. 7: David “rendered good for evil to him, from whom he had received evil for good; and was herein both a type of Christ, who saved his persecutors.” Henry reads the chapter as an example “to all who are called Christians, not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good.”
⚙ What the Hebrew adds is the strange doubleness of the moment: the man refusing to strike the Messiah is himself the Messiah in waiting, already anointed at Bethlehem and not yet enthroned. Here is an anointed king, in the hands of his enemies' geography, declining to seize by force a kingdom already promised him — and reproved by his own heart for so much as a hem. The pattern is the one the Gospels will make explicit when a greater Son of David, offered the kingdoms of the world without a cross, answers that the Father's throne is not taken on the tempter's terms; and again in the garden, when a sword is drawn on his behalf and he tells his man to put it back. The cave and the garden are two rooms with the same argument in them.
1 Samuel 24:6 · Matthew 4:8-10 · Matthew 26:52-54 · Psalm 2:7-8
David ends his speech in a court, not a duel: šāp̄aṭ three times, rîḇ as both verb and noun, and God asked to become דַּיָּן — Judge — while “my hand will never be against you.” K&D distils it: “Only a wicked man could wish to avenge himself; I do not.” Poole: “I will not execute vengeance on thee, but will leave it wholly to God.” Ellicott's page ends with Bishop Sanderson in David's mouth: “God can and will in His own due time make good His own promise without my sin.”
⚙ Peter describes the same posture in the crucified Christ in almost these terms — reviled, he did not revile again; suffering, he did not threaten, but handed himself over to the One who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23). The apostle is not quoting 1 Samuel and we do not claim he is. What he names is the settled disposition that this chapter narrates: innocence that declines to vindicate itself by force, because it expects a real verdict from a real Judge. David asks to be “judged out of thy hand” (v. 15); Christ is vindicated out of the hand of death, and the resurrection is the verdict.
1 Peter 2:21-23 · Romans 12:19 · 1 Samuel 24:15
David describes himself with two figures of nothing: keleḇ mêṯ and parʻōš ʼeḥāḏ, a dead dog and one flea. Cambridge: they “express what is absolutely contemptible, harmless, and insignificant.” K&D: “a perfectly harmless and insignificant man.” This is the anointed heir to Israel's throne, describing himself in the one vocabulary that admits no threat at all.
⚙ We mark this reading as novel: no commentator in the brief draws it. The self-emptying shape is nevertheless hard to unsee — the true King describing himself as despised and of no account (Isaiah 53:3), refusing to grasp what was rightly his (Philippians 2:6-8), and holding up in evidence not a weapon but a piece of cloth. There is a further irony we offer only as an observation, not a claim: the wing of the royal robe, cut away in the dark, is the last visible sign of Saul's covering to change hands — and the kingdom, in the chapters that follow, goes the same way the hem went. A reader may press the figure toward a garment touched in a crowd or a robe cast lots for; we do not press it, and we would rather under-claim here than build doctrine on a hem.
1 Samuel 24:14 · Isaiah 53:3 · Philippians 2:6-8
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 of this chapter is numbered one verse ahead in the Masoretic Text (MT 24:2 = English 24:1), because MT attaches 1 Samuel 23:29 to chapter 24. References here follow the English numbering used by the BSB and by all the commentaries quoted.
The disputed idiom, v. 3. לְהָסֵךְ אֶת־רַגְלָיו occurs only here and at Judges 3:24. Cambridge, K&D, the Vulgate and the Targum take it as a euphemism for relieving nature; the Syriac and Arabic versions, defended at length by Poole and reported by Gill, take it as “he lay down to sleep.” K&D explicitly rejects the sleep-reading (“there is apparently no reason why any such euphemistic expression should have been chosen for sleep”), while Benson, Poole and Ellicott all find the siesta-reading helpful because it explains how David could cut the robe unnoticed. We have recorded the division rather than resolved it. BSB's “to relieve himself” takes one side.
The unexpressed subjects, v. 10. Two clauses in this verse have no stated subject in the Hebrew. (1) wᵉʼāmar lahărāḡăḵā: the versions divide between “one said,” “they said” (K&D), “I thought” (Vulgate, by repointing) and the bare literal “[Jehovah] bade kill thee,” which Ellicott lays out and then rejects. (2) wattāḥās is feminine singular with no antecedent; K&D and Poole supply “mine eye” from the parallel idiom at Deuteronomy 7:16 and Genesis 45:20. Both supplements are editorial, in the Hebrew text as in every English Bible.
The alleged oracle, v. 4. No saying of YHWH matching the men's quotation exists anywhere in 1 Samuel. Barnes, JFB, K&D, Poole, Cambridge and Benson all say so independently; Ellicott alone allows the possibility of an unrecorded prophecy through a prophet such as Gad, and Maclaren mentions and doubts the same. The unit's ⚙ reading follows the majority, and the point does not depend on it: the narrative's own verdict is delivered in v. 6, where David treats the proposal as sacrilege.
Voices. Two attributions need qualification. At v. 15 the words printed under [Ellicott] are a quotation of Bishop Sanderson via Wordsworth, not Ellicott's own composition; at v. 13 Gill's paraphrase borrows New Testament wording that is not in the Hebrew. Both are flagged in the relevant editorial_note. [JFB] and [Poole] share an entry at 24:1 in the source (the JFB block there ends with Poole's chapter summary and the line “No text from Poole on this verse”), so we have quoted neither author from that particular entry. The Ellicott entries at 24:3 and the Poole and Maclaren entries at 24:3–4 are capped in the brief; we quoted only from the visible portion and did not request the full text, since nothing in the capped remainder was load-bearing for a claim made here.
Threads. Every verbal-tier badge above rests on a Verifier-computed shared lexeme whose canonical frequency is stated. The two cross-Testament threads (Matthew 7, Romans 12) carry no lexeme basis and could not: Greek and Hebrew share no Strong's numbers, and no New Testament writer quotes this chapter. The psalm-superscription thread is flagged, not asserted. Where an inference is ours and not a commentator's — the Exodus 21:13 reading of ṣōḏeh, the Psalm 68:5 sense of dayyān, the Ruth 3:9 kānāp̄ parallel — it is marked ⚙ in the thread body and excluded from the recorded basis.
What remains uncertain. Whether the cave was near Ain-Jidy or in the Wady Chareitun (Ellicott, JFB, K&D and Van de Velde favour the latter; K&D concedes the distance is a real difficulty); whether “rocks of the wild goats” is a place-name; whether the closing refrain of v. 13 belongs to the proverb or to David; and whether “my father” in v. 11 is kinship, deference, or both. None of these is settled by the sourced material, and no reading offered above depends on settling them.
✦ = 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)