The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Saul Acknowledges His Sin
1 Samuel 26:21–25 — Saul Acknowledges His Sin. 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.
21Then Saul replied, “I have sinned. Come back, David my son. I will never harm you again, because today you considered my life precious. I have played the fool and have committed a grave error!”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šā·’ūl way·yō·mer ḥā·ṭā·ṯî šūḇ ḏā·wiḏ bə·nî- kî lō- ’ā·ra‘ lə·ḵā ‘ō·wḏ ta·ḥaṯ ’ă·šer hay·yō·wm haz·zeh hin·nêh bə·‘ê·ne·ḵā nap̄·šî yā·qə·rāh his·kal·tî har·bêh mə·’ōḏ wā·’eš·geh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said Saul: “I-have-sinned. Return, my-son David; for not will-I-do-evil to-thee again, in-return-for-that was-costly my-soul in-thine-eyes this day. Behold — I-have-made-myself-a-fool, and-I-have-strayed, multiplying exceedingly.”
Where the English smooths the original
He not only confesseth, but aggravateth his fault, because his conscience was fully convinced, though his heart was not changed.
The whole cast of the two incidents is so different that it is impossible to see how the one could have been evolved from the otherMaclaren's entry is an exposition of the whole scene (26:5-12, 21-25), not a note on this verse alone, and this excerpt is his answer to the source-critical claim that 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are two tellings of one event. He argues for two events; the question remains disputed, which is why the corresponding thread is flagged.
Here a sense of vexation seems uppermost, and of annoyance, not merely because his purpose was frustrated, but because his own military arrangements had been so unsoldierlike.
He declared that he would never do any more what he had already so often promised not to do again; and yet he did not fail to do it again and again. He ought rather to have taken refuge with God, and appealed to Him for grace, that he might not fall into such sins again; yea, he should have entreated David himself to pray for himK&D are quoting the Berleburg Bible here, not writing in their own voice; the pastoral sharpness is that pietist commentary's, recorded approvingly.
22“Here is the king’s spear,” David answered. “Let one of the young men come over and get it.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hin·nêh ham·me·leḵ ha·ḥă·nīṯ dā·wiḏ way·yō·mer way·ya·‘an ’e·ḥāḏ mê·han·nə·‘ā·rîm wə·ya·‘ă·ḇōr wə·yiq·qā·ḥe·hā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-answered David and-said: “Behold the-spear, O-king! And-let-cross-over one from-the-young-men and-let-him-take-it.”
Where the English smooths the original
And which perhaps was his sceptre, and which David therefore would not keep, lest it should be thought or said that he had deprived him of an ensign of his royalty, and be interpreted as a token of his design to seize his crown and throne
For he durst not now venture to put himself in Saul’s power, as he appears to have done upon the former occasion.
Behold the king's spear. Rather, "Behold the spear, O king." The other is an unnecessary correction of the Kri.A textual judgment about the Qere, not a devotional remark; it changes how the clause is punctuated and addressed.
23May the LORD repay every man for his righteousness and faithfulness. For the LORD delivered you into my hand today, but I would not extend my hand against the LORD’s anointed.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh yā·šîḇ lā·’îš ’eṯ- ṣiḏ·qā·ṯōw wə·’eṯ- ’ĕ·mu·nā·ṯōw ’ă·šer Yah·weh nə·ṯā·nə·ḵā bə·yāḏ hay·yō·wm wə·lō ’ā·ḇî·ṯî liš·lō·aḥ yā·ḏî Yah·weh bim·šî·aḥ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-YHWH — may-He-turn-back to-the-man his-righteousness and-his-faithfulness: for gave-thee YHWH today into-a-hand, and-not was-I-willing to-stretch-out my-hand against-the-anointed-of YHWH.
Where the English smooths the original
Thus he protests his innocency toward Saul, not defending his justice in the sight of God, in whose presence none is righteous, Ps 14:3,130:3.The Geneva annotators are guarding the verse against a works-righteousness reading; the note is doctrinal commentary on David's claim, not a gloss on the Hebrew.
may requite David for his upright conduct towards Saul, and by implication punish Saul himself for his unjust conduct.
and this was a prayer of faith; for David doubted not that, though Saul might fail, yet God could not
24As surely as I valued your life today, so may the LORD value my life and rescue me from all trouble.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hin·nêh ka·’ă·šer bə·‘ê·nāy gā·ḏə·lāh nap̄·šə·ḵā hay·yō·wm haz·zeh kên Yah·weh bə·‘ê·nê tiḡ·dal nap̄·šî wə·yaṣ·ṣi·lê·nî mik·kāl ṣā·rāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-behold — as was-great thy-soul this day in-my-eyes, so may-be-great my-soul in-the-eyes-of YHWH, and-may-He-snatch-me-away from-all narrowness.
Where the English smooths the original
These words do not contain any "sounding of his own praises" (Thenius), but are merely the testimony of a good conscience before God in the presence of an enemy, who is indeed obliged to confess his wrong-doing, but who no longer feels or acknowledges his need of forgiveness.K&D are answering Thenius, a nineteenth-century critic who read David's speech as self-congratulation; the rebuttal is a position in a live scholarly argument, not a neutral observation.
he does not say in the eyes of Saul, as it should have been by way of retaliation, and as it might have been expected he would have said; but he had no dependence on Saul, nor expected justice to be done him by him
For the expression cp. 1 Samuel 18:30 , though a different Heb. word is used here: lit. “was great.”
I desire that God would deal no otherwise with me than I have dealt with thee.
25Saul said to him, “May you be blessed, David my son. You will accomplish great things and will surely prevail.” So David went on his way, and Saul returned home.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šā·’ūl way·yō·mer ’el- dā·wiḏ ’at·tāh bā·rūḵ ḏā·wiḏ bə·nî gam ṯa·‘ă·śeh ‘ā·śōh wə·ḡam yā·ḵōl tū·ḵāl dā·wiḏ way·yê·leḵ lə·ḏar·kōw wə·šā·’ūl šāḇ lim·qō·w·mōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said Saul unto David: “Blessed art-thou, my-son David; both doing thou-shalt-do, and-also prevailing thou-shalt-prevail.” And-went David to-his-road, and-Saul turned-back to-his-place.
Where the English smooths the original
Saul perceived that it was in vain to contend any longer against David, whom he saw God intended for great things.Benson reads Saul's remorse as genuine — “God surely now touched his heart” — where Henry, Poole, K&D and Pulpit all read it as hollow. The disagreement is real and the text does not settle it.
Notwithstanding this sudden relenting of Saul, David placed no confidence in his professions or promises, but wisely kept at a distance and awaited the course of Providence.
But he showed no evidence of true repentance towards God. David and Saul parted to meet no more.
Saul is here again ‘among the prophets,’ and foretells David’s exaltation and victory.Ellicott is quoting Bishop Wordsworth, who attaches Julian the Apostate's legendary cry “Vicisti Nazarene” to the verse. That flourish is homiletic and carries no exegetical weight for the Hebrew.
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.
Saul's confession is lexically flawless. He says חָטָ֜אתִי (châṭâʼ, H2398, “I have missed”), he says הִסְכַּ֛לְתִּי (çâkal, H5528, Hiphil: “I have made myself a fool”), and he says וָאֶשְׁגֶּ֖ה הַרְבֵּ֥ה מְאֹֽד (“and I have strayed exceedingly”). Gill observes that this is “more than he acknowledged before.” Benson goes further and believes it: “Nothing can be more full and ingenuous than this confession. God surely now touched his heart.” The commentators are genuinely divided here, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than harmonizing them. Poole grants the words and denies the heart — the fault is confessed and even aggravated “because his conscience was fully convinced, though his heart was not changed.” Henry is blunter: “he showed no evidence of true repentance towards God.” Pulpit hears not sorrow but irritation — “a sense of vexation seems uppermost… because his own military arrangements had been so unsoldierlike” — and Ellicott, following the Dean of Canterbury, thinks Saul is blaming himself for having walked into David's power a second time. K&D hand the verdict to the Berleburg Bible: Saul “ought rather to have taken refuge with God… yea, he should have entreated David himself to pray for him.” ⚙ What the Hebrew itself contributes to this dispute is the rarity of çâkal: eight verses in the entire canon, one of which is Samuel's own sentence over Saul at Gilgal. Saul has learned the prophet's vocabulary. Nothing in the grammar tells us whether he has learned anything else.
David's answer is an act, not an argument. Pulpit argues from the consonantal text that the line should be read as a vocative — “Behold the spear, O king,” not “the king's spear,” the received division being “an unnecessary correction of the Kri.” Either way the object goes home. Gill explains why it must: the spear was possibly Saul's sceptre, and David “would not keep” it “lest it should be thought or said that he had deprived him of an ensign of his royalty.” The man who could have kept the crown's emblem hands it back and asks a boy to walk it over. And yet the same verse measures David's trust exactly. Cambridge: “he durst not now venture to put himself in Saul's power, as he appears to have done upon the former occasion.” Benson agrees, and Gill adds the further calculation that David would not send one of his own men either, “lest they should be seized as traitors.” ⚙ The verb וְיַעֲבֹ֛ר (ʻâbar, H5674, “cross over”) keeps the ravine in the sentence. Reconciliation is offered in words from one side and declined in geography from the other.
David's prayer is built on a root-pun the English cannot carry: Saul commanded שׁ֣וּב (“return”), and David answers יָשִׁ֣יב — may YHWH cause to return to every man his own צִדְקָת֖וֹ and אֱמֻנָת֑וֹ. Cambridge argues the verb should be read as future indicative — “Better, shall render” — and that David “is not sounding his own praises, but… declaring his confidence that God will eventually recompense him,” comparing Psalm 7:8 and Psalm 18:20. Pulpit reads the prayer as double-edged: God will “requite David for his upright conduct towards Saul, and by implication punish Saul himself.” Geneva inserts the indispensable caution, that David “protests his innocency toward Saul, not defending his justice in the sight of God, in whose presence none is righteous.” Gill notices the textual detail that BSB smooths away: the Hebrew is “into a hand,” which he takes of Abishai, “who had it in his power to slay him.” Then v. 24 changes the scale-word. Saul had said David held his life yâqar, costly; David replies with gâdal, great — and Cambridge points out the switch explicitly, “a different Heb. word is used here: lit. ‘was great.’” K&D defend the whole sentence against Thenius's charge of self-praise, calling it “the testimony of a good conscience before God in the presence of an enemy, who is indeed obliged to confess his wrong-doing, but who no longer feels or acknowledges his need of forgiveness.” Gill sees the pointed omission: David “does not say in the eyes of Saul, as it should have been by way of retaliation… but he had no dependence on Saul.” Poole condenses the ethic to a line: “I desire that God would deal no otherwise with me than I have dealt with thee.”
Saul's last recorded word to David is בָּר֤וּךְ, a passive participle — not a wish but a verdict — followed by two infinitive-absolute constructions that Pulpit renders “Thou shalt both do mightily, and thou shalt surely prevail.” Benson takes the moment at face value: Saul “could not forbear blessing him… even in the hearing of his own soldiers.” Ellicott, quoting Bishop Wordsworth, calls Saul here “again ‘among the prophets.’” K&D deny any goodwill in it and call it “an acknowledgment, forced upon him by this fresh experience of David's magnanimity, that God was blessing all his undertakings.” Pulpit supports that reading by comparison: the words are “very general as compared with those in 1 Samuel 24:20, 21,” where Saul had named the kingdom outright and commended his family — evidence, on Keil's judgment, “that Saul's character had deteriorated in the interval.” Then the narrator stops commenting and simply moves two bodies in opposite directions: David walked to his road, Saul turned back to his place. JFB: David “placed no confidence in his professions or promises, but wisely kept at a distance and awaited the course of Providence.” Poole says the same of Saul's “unstable and deceitful heart.” Ellicott writes the epitaph for the scene: “Here the two whom Samuel had anointed as kings… parted for ever.” K&D note the exact wording — nothing is said of Saul returning to his house, as in 1 Samuel 24:22 — and send the reader to Numbers 24:25, where Balaam, after blessing against his will, also “returned to his place.”
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text and the fathers. The unit is an argument about who is allowed to settle accounts. Saul settles his own: he audits himself in the right words, prices David's mercy with yâqar, and issues a pardon and a blessing on his own authority — and every one of those acts is legally void, because none of them is addressed to God. He says “I have sinned” to the man he wronged and not one syllable to the God he sinned against; K&D's Berleburg source puts its finger exactly there. David, holding the spear and the advantage, refuses to settle anything. He hands back the sceptre, declines the invitation, and refers the entire case — his righteousness, Saul's guilt, his own future — to a court he cannot convene: may YHWH cause to return to each man his own. The two men part along that line. Saul goes back to his standing place, where nothing will change; David walks onto a road, because a man who has left judgment with God can afford to keep moving. ⚙ And the restraint has a name in the text, not merely a motive: David will not stretch out his hand against מְשִׁ֥יחַ יְהוָה. He spares Saul not because Saul deserves it — Saul manifestly does not — but because the anointing is God's property. That is a harder ethic than mercy and a more durable one, and it is the ethic that will later let David weep over the corpse of the man who hunted him.
Saul confessed to the man he had wronged and never once to the God he had sinned against; that is the whole distance between remorse and repentance. (⚙ This line is the tool's own summary, not a verse of Scripture.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The rare Hiphil הִסְכַּ֛לְתִּי (çâkal, H5528) that Saul turns on himself is the same verb Samuel pronounced over him at Gilgal, and the same verb Hanani used to sentence Asa, and the verb Laban flung at Jacob. The Verifier records it as the shared lexeme with all three passages. ⚙ The bitterness is that Saul's self-diagnosis is verbally identical to the prophetic verdict he received years earlier and never acted on: he can now say the sentence himself, which changes nothing. Pulpit reads even this admission as vexation rather than penitence — “a sense of vexation seems uppermost… because his own military arrangements had been so unsoldierlike.”
1 Samuel 13:13 · 2 Chronicles 16:9 · Genesis 31:28 · Isaiah 44:25
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H5528 çâkal, present in only 8 verses in the whole canon — a genuinely rare word, which is what licenses a verbal tier here. 1 Samuel 13:13 additionally shares H7586 Shâʼûwl (in 335 vv), which carries no weight on its own. No quotation is claimed; the link is lexical identity of a rare root.
After the census, David says to God what Saul here says to David: I have sinned greatly… I have done very foolishly. The Verifier confirms that 2 Samuel 24:10 and its parallel in 1 Chronicles 21:8 share three lexemes with this verse — châṭâʼ, çâkal and mᵉʼôd — the same three Saul strings together. ⚙ The difference is not in the vocabulary, which is nearly identical, but in the addressee and the sequel: David speaks to YHWH and buys a threshing floor to build an altar; Saul speaks to David and goes home. Gill, weighing this very confession, suspects Saul was “like Pharaoh” in Exodus 9:27 — guilty conscience forcing the words out — and Poole allows the confession while denying the change of heart.
2 Samuel 24:10 · 1 Chronicles 21:8 · Exodus 9:27
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H5528 çâkal (in 8 vv — rare), H2398 châṭâʼ (in 220 vv) and H3966 mᵉʼôd (in 279 vv) across 2 Samuel 24:10 and 1 Chronicles 21:8. The rare çâkal carries the verbal tier; the other two are common and corroborative only. Exodus 9:27 is added on Gill's authority as a thematic comparison, not on a Verifier-computed lexeme.
יָקְרָ֥ה (yâqar, H3365) stands in only eleven verses, and the Verifier links this one to nearly all of them. Earlier in the same book, the identical root reports that David's name became costly in Israel's eyes (1 Samuel 18:30) — the beginning of the jealousy that produced this manhunt; here it is David's valuation of Saul's life that Saul must acknowledge. ⚙ The same root ends the story of an anointed king betrayed for a price in Zechariah 11:13, “a goodly price that I was prised at of them,” and denies in Psalm 49:8 that any man can pay the ransom of a soul. Cambridge, reading v. 24, notes that David does not reuse Saul's word but answers with gâdal instead — so the two men do not even weigh on the same scale.
1 Samuel 18:30 · Psalm 49:8 · Zechariah 11:13 · Psalm 139:17 · Isaiah 43:4
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3365 yâqar (in 11 vv — rare) across all five references; 1 Samuel 18:30 additionally shares H3966 mᵉʼôd (in 279 vv) and H7586 Shâʼûwl (in 335 vv). The rarity of yâqar is the basis. No quotation and no literary dependence is claimed between these passages — only shared possession of an uncommon root.
K&D, commenting on this unit, send the reader to Numbers 24:25 for the closing formula: after blessing Israel against his own intention and his employer's wishes, Balaam “rose up, and went and returned to his place.” Saul, having blessed David against his own intention, does exactly the same, and K&D stress that unlike 1 Samuel 24:22 the text pointedly does not say he returned to his house. ⚙ The pattern is a narrative one: a man who has just been made to speak God's verdict on someone else's future, and who is then moved offstage without comment. Pulpit reaches the same judgment by a different route, noting how much thinner Saul's blessing is than the one at 1 Samuel 24:20–21.
Numbers 24:25 · 1 Samuel 24:22
basis: The link is a shared closing formula and narrative shape, recorded by K&D in the sourced commentary ("cf. Numbers 24:25"), not a Verifier-computed lexeme — Numbers 24:25 does not appear in the thread candidates, so no shared-Strong's basis is claimed for it. Tiered structural on the strength of the commentator's citation plus the parallel scene-shape.
David's refusal is not passivity: he states a principle — may YHWH cause to return to the man his righteousness — and then acts on it by returning the spear. ⚙ The New Testament argues the same ethic in Greek: Paul forbids self-avenging on the ground that repayment belongs to God, and Peter describes Christ as one who, being reviled, “kept entrusting himself to Him who judges justly.” Gill reads David's line as “a prayer of faith; for David doubted not that, though Saul might fail, yet God could not.”
Romans 12:19 · 1 Peter 2:23
basis: Cross-Testament (Hebrew ↔ Greek), so no shared Strong's number is possible and no verbal tier is claimed. The basis is a shared ethical structure — vengeance renounced and recompense deferred to God — which is a motif link, not a quotation. The New Testament passages do not cite this verse.
Cambridge simply notes at v. 21, “Compare and contrast 1 Samuel 24:16 ff.” Maclaren addresses the harder issue head on: “It is fashionable at present to regard this incident and the other instance of David's sparing Saul, when in his power, as two versions of one event,” and he argues against it — the hunted outlaw could well have sheltered twice in the same country, and “the whole cast of the two incidents is so different that it is impossible to see how the one could have been evolved from the other.” ⚙ This entry is flagged deliberately. Whether 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are two events or two tellings is a live source-critical dispute that the Hebrew text itself does not adjudicate, and the answer changes how every comparison between the chapters should be read. Pulpit and K&D assume two events and build an argument about Saul's moral deterioration between them; that argument stands or falls with the assumption.
1 Samuel 24:16 · 1 Samuel 24:20 · 1 Samuel 24:22
basis: Contested provenance. The link between the chapters is asserted by the sourced commentators (Cambridge's "compare and contrast", Maclaren's explicit defence of two distinct events, Pulpit's and K&D's comparison of Saul's two speeches), but the underlying question — one event or two — is disputed and unresolved in the sources themselves. 1 Samuel 24 is not in the Verifier candidate list, so no computed shared-lexeme basis supports it. Verify before relying on any comparative argument built on it.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The reason David gives is a single word: מְשִׁ֥יחַ יְהוָה (mâshîyach, H4899), the LORD's anointed — the noun the Greek Old Testament renders Christos. That identification is not a devotional stretch; it is the apostolic church's own reading, which prays Psalm 2's “against the LORD and against His Anointed” and applies it directly to “Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed” in Acts 4. ⚙ David's restraint therefore rests on a category the New Testament inherits whole: the anointed one belongs to God, and a hand raised against him is raised past him. The dark side of the type is that when hands finally were laid on the true Anointed, Peter preaches that this too happened by God's determined counsel — so the category David honoured was not, in the end, a shield. What David refused to do to a failed anointed king, Israel's rulers did to the faithful one.
Psalm 2:2 · Acts 4:26 · Acts 2:23
David refuses to be his own judge and lodges the case with God — and the New Testament makes that deferral a doctrine with a date attached: the Son of Man will come and “render to every man according to his works,” and the risen Christ says “My reward is with Me, to render to each one according to what he has done.” ⚙ The verb David uses is shûwb in the Hiphil, “cause to return”; the Greek apodidōmi carries the same commercial logic of paying back. Henry draws the christological conclusion for the whole unit rather than for the clause: “No reconciliation among men is firm, which is not founded in an cemented by peace with God through Jesus Christ” — which is exactly why Saul's reconciliation held for one night. Geneva's caution belongs here too: the righteousness David claims is his innocence toward Saul, “not defending his justice in the sight of God, in whose presence none is righteous.”
Matthew 16:27 · Romans 2:6 · Revelation 22:12
Saul pronounces בָּר֤וּךְ אַתָּה and predicts, in two emphatic infinitive-absolute constructions, that David will both act and prevail — and it is true, and he has no intention of helping it come true. Ellicott, quoting Bishop Wordsworth, calls him here “again ‘among the prophets.’” K&D call it acknowledgment “forced upon him.” ⚙ Scripture has a recognizable category for this: the unwilling true prophecy, Balaam blessing the people he was hired to curse (to which K&D compare this verse's ending), and Caiaphas declaring that one man should die for the people — which John says “he did not say of himself.” The pattern points forward: the verdict on the true Anointed's kingship is spoken most publicly by his enemies, in a title nailed above his head by the governor who condemned him. This last step is the tool's own figural reading and is offered as such, not as a claim any of the sourced commentators make about this verse.
Numbers 24:25 · John 11:49 · John 19:19
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 and translation. The base English is the Berean Standard Bible (CC0); the interlinear, Strong's numbers and morphological parsings are the Berean data. Two places in this unit where the English makes a choice the Hebrew leaves open are recorded above: at v. 22 the received division gives “the king's spear,” while Pulpit argues from the consonantal text for the vocative “Behold the spear, O king,” calling the alternative “an unnecessary correction of the Kri”; and at v. 23 the Hebrew בְּיָ֔ד is unsuffixed — literally “into a hand” — where BSB supplies “my,” a point Gill raises explicitly, citing Pagninus and Montanus, and takes of Abishai's hand rather than David's.
Sources. All ✦ material is verbatim public-domain commentary quoted from the brief: Ellicott, Maclaren, Benson, Henry, Barnes, JFB, Poole, Gill, Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit and Keil & Delitzsch. Three secondhand attributions should be tracked rather than absorbed: K&D's most pointed paragraph on v. 21 is a quotation from the Berleburg Bible, not their own prose; Ellicott's remark on v. 25 is a quotation from Bishop Wordsworth, including the Julian legend, which is homiletic ornament with no bearing on the Hebrew; and Henry's note is his Concise commentary on the whole span 26:21–25, so it appears against several verses in the source and should not be read as a comment on any single one.
What is uncertain. (1) The commentators genuinely disagree about Saul's sincerity, and the text does not settle it: Benson holds that “God surely now touched his heart,” while Poole, Henry, Pulpit and K&D all read the confession as conviction without change. We have recorded the disagreement rather than resolving it. (2) Whether 1 Samuel 24 and 1 Samuel 26 report two events or two versions of one is disputed; Maclaren argues for two, and every comparative argument in this unit — including Keil's claim, reported by Pulpit, that Saul's character had deteriorated in the interval — depends on that. The relevant thread is tiered “flagged — verify source” for this reason. (3) Barnes's note in the brief and JFB's both belong to 26:19–20, the verses immediately preceding this unit, and are reproduced by the source against these verses; neither has been quoted here as commentary on 26:21–25 except JFB's own note at v. 25. (4) No thread in this unit claims a New Testament quotation of these verses, because there is none; the two cross-Testament entries are tiered structural and typological accordingly, and the christological readings are marked ancient/widely-held or novel as honestly as we can judge.
✦ = 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)