Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Vers. 13-20. " And David went over to. the other side, and placed himself upon the top of the mountain afar off (the space between them was great), and cried to the people," etc. Saul had probably encamped with his fighting men on the slope of the hill Ilachilah, so that a valley separated him from the opposite hill, from which David had no doubt reconnoitred the camp and then gone down to it (ver. 6), and to which he returned after the deed was accomplished. The statement that this mountain was far off, so that there was a great space between David and Saul, not only favours the accuracy of the historical tradition, but shows that David reckoned far less now upon any change in the state of Saul's mind than he had done before, when he followed Saul without hesitation from the cave and called after him (ch. xxiv. 9), and that in fact he rather feared lest Saul should endeavour to get him into his power as soon as he woke from his sleep. — Ver. 14. David called out to Abner, whose duty it was as general to defend the life of his king. And Abner replied, u Who art thou, ivlto criest out to the king V9 i.e. offendest the king by thy shouting, and disturbest his rest. — Vers. 15, 1G. David in return taunted Abner with having watched the king carelessly, and made himself chargeable with his death. u For one of the people came to destroy thy lord the king" As a proof of this, he then showed him the spear and pitcher that he had taken away with him. HS"i is to be repeated in thought before nriBVVlN: " look where the kings spear is; and (look) at the pitcher at his head" sc. where it is. These reproaches that were cast at Abner were intended to show to Saul, who might at any rate possibly hear, and in fact did hear, that David was the most faithful defender of his life, more faithful than his closest and most zealous servants.— Vers. 17, 18. When Saul heard David's voice (for he could hardly have seen David, as the occurrence took place before daybreak, at the latest when the day began to dawn), and David had made himself known to the king in reply to his inquiry, David said, " Why doth my lord pursue his servant? for what have I done, and what evil is in my hand?" He then gave him the well-meant advice, to seek reconciliation for his wrath against him, and not to bring upon himself the guilt of allowing David to find his death in a foreign land. The words, u and now let my lord the king hear the saying of his servant" serve to indicate that what follows is important, and worthy of laying to heart. In his words, David supposes two cases as conceivable causes of Saul's hostility: (1) if Jehovah hath stirred thee up against me; (2) if men have done so. In the first case, he proposes as the best means of overcoming this instigation, that He (Jehovah) should smell an offering. The Hiphil n*V only means to smell, not to cause to smell. The subject is Jehovah. Smelling a sacrifice is an anthropomorphic term, used to denote the divine satisfaction (cf. Gen. viii. 21). The meaning of the words, "let Jehovah smell sacrifice" is therefore, " let Saul appease the wrath of God by the presentation of acceptable sacrifices." What sacrifices they are which please God, is shown in Ps. li. 18, 19;

and it is certainly not by accident merely that David uses the word minchakf the technical expression in the law for the bloodless sacrifice, which sets forth the sanctification of life in good works. The thought to which David gives utterance here, namely, that God instigates a man to evil actions, is met with in other passages of the Old Testament. It not only lies at the foundation of the words of David in Ps. li. 6 (cf. Hengstenberg on Psalms), but is also clearly expressed in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, where Jehovah instigates David to number the people, and where this instigation is described as a manifestation of the anger of God against Israel; and in 2 Sam. xvi. 10 sqq., where David says, with regard to Shimei, that God had bade him curse him. These passages also show that God only instigates those who have sinned against Him to evil deeds; and therefore that the instigation consists in the fact that God impels sinners to manifest the wickedness of their hearts in deeds, or furnishes the opportunity and occasion for the unfolding and practical manifestation of the evil desires of the heart, that the sinner may either be brought to the knowledge of his more evil ways and also to repentance, through the evil deed and its consequences, or, if the heart should be hardened still more by the evil deed, that it may become ripe for the judgment of death. The instigation of a sinner to evil is simply one peculiar way in which God, as a general rule, punishes sins through sinners; for God only instigates to evil actions such as have drawn down the wrath of God upon themselves in consequence of their sin. When David supposes the fact that Jehovah has instigated Saul against him, he acknowledges, implicitly at least, that he "himself is a sinner, whom the Lord may be intending to punish, though without lessening Saul's wrong by this indirect confession.

The second supposition is: " if, however, children of men" (sc. have instigated thee against me); in which case " let them be cursed before the Lord; for they drive me now (this day) that I dare not attach myself to the inheritance of Jehovah {i.e. the people of God), saying, Go, serve other gods." The meaning is this: They have carried it so far now, that I am obliged to separate from the people of God, to fly from the land of the Lord, and, because far away from His sanctuary, to serve other gods. The idea implied in the closing words was, that Jehovah could only be worshipped in Canaan, at the sanctuary consecrated to Him, because it was only there that He manifested himself to His people, and revealed His face or gracious presence (vid. Ps. xlii. 2, 3, lxxxiv. 11, cxliii. 6 sqq.). " We are not to understand that the enemies of David were actually accustomed to use these verv words, but David was thinking of deeds rather than words" (Calvin). — Ver. 20. u And now let not my blood, fall to the earth far away from the face of the Lord" i.e. do not carry it so far as to compel me to perish in a foreign land. " For the king of Israel has gone out to seek a single flea (vid. ch. xxiv. 15), as one hunts a partridge upon the mountains." This last comparison does not of course refer to the first, so that " the object of comparison is compared again with something else," as Thenius supposes, but it refers rather to the whole of the previous clause. The king of Israel is pursuing something very trivial, and altogether unworthy of his pursuit, just as if one were hunting a partridge upon the mountains. " No one would think it worth his while to hunt a single partridge that had flown to the mountains, when they may be found in coveys in the fields" (Winer, Bill. 11. W. ii. p. 307). This comparison, therefore, does not presuppose that fcOp must be a bird living upon the mountains, as Thenius maintains, so as to justify his altering the text according to the Septuagint. These words of David were perfectly well adapted to sharpen Saul's conscience, and induce him to desist from his enmity, if he still had an ear for the voice of truth.

Vers. 21-25. Moreover, Saul could not help confessing, u I have sinned: return, my son David; I will do thee harm no more, because my life was precious in thine eyes that day." A good intention, which he never carried out. " 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 him " (Bevleb. Bible). He adds still further, " Behold, I have acted foolishly, and have gone sore astray;" but yet he persists in this folly. " There is no sinner so hardened, but that God gives him now and then some rays of light, which show him all his error. But, alas! when they are awakened by such divine movings, it is only for a few moments; and such impulses are no sooner past, than they fall back again immediately into their former life, and forget ail that they.have promised." — Vers. 22, 23. David then bade the king send a servant to fetch back the spear and pitcher, and reminded him again of the recompense of God: " Jehovah will recompense His righteousness and I lis faithfulness to the man into whose hand Jehovah hath given thee to-day; and (for) I would not stretch out my hand against the anointed of the Lord." — Ver. 24. "Behold, as thy soul has been greatly esteemed in my eyes to-day, so will my soul be greatly esteemed in the eyes of Jehovah, that He will save me out of all tribulation." 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. For even Saul's reply to these words in ver. 25 (u Blessed art thou, my son David: thou wilt undertake, and also prevail:"??W?yy lit. to vanquish, i.e. to carry out what one undertakes) does not express any genuine goodwill towards David, but only an acknowledgment, forced upon him by this fresh experience of David's magnanimity, that God was blessing all his undertakings, so that he would prevail. Saul had no more thoughts of any real reconciliation with David. " David went his way, and Said turned to his place" (cf. Num. xxiv. 25). Thus they parted, and never saw each other again. There is nothing said about Saul returning to his house, as there was when his life was first spared (ch. xxiv. 23). On the contrary, he does not seem to have given up pursuing David; for, according to ch. xxviL David was obliged to take refine in a foreign land, and carry out what he had described in ver. 19 as his greatest calamity.

In his despair of being able permanently to escape the plots of Saul in the land of Israel, David betook himself, with his attendants, to the neighbouring land of the Philistines, to king Achish of Gath, and received from him the town of Ziklag, which was assigned him at his own request as a dwelling-place (vers. 1-7). From this point he made attacks upon certain tribes on the southern frontier of Canaan which were hostile to Israel, but described them to Achish as attacks upon Judah and its dependencies, that he might still retain the protection of the Philistian chief (vers. 8-12). David had fled to Achish at Gath once before; but on that occasion he had been obliged to feign insanity in order to preserve his life, because he was recognised as the conqueror of Goliath. This act of David was not forgotten by the Philistines even now. But as David had been pursued by Saul for many years, Achish did not hesitate to give a place of refuge in his land to the fugitive who had been outlawed by the king of Israel, the arch-enemy of the Philistines, possibly with the hope that if a fresh war with Saul should break out, he should be able to reap some advantage from David's friendship.

Vers. 1-7. The result of the last affair with Saul, after his life had again been spared, could not fail to confirm David in his conviction that Saul would not desist from pursuing him, and that if he stayed any longer in the land, he would fall eventually into the hands of his enemy. With this conviction, he formed the following resolution: " Now shall I be consumed one clay by the hand of Saul: there is no good to me (i.e. it will not be well with me if I remain in the land), but (*3 after a negative) I will flee into the land of the Philistines; so ivill Saul desist from me to seek me further (i.e. give up seeking me) in the whole of the territory of Israel, and I shall escape his hand? — Ver. 2. Accordingly he went over with the 600 men who were with him to Achish, the king of Gath. Achish, the son of Maochy is in all probability the same person not only as the king Achish mentioned in ch. xxi. 11, but also as Achish the son of Maachah (1 Kings ii. 39), since Maoch and Maachah are certainly only different forms of the same name; and a fifty years' reign, which we should have in that case to ascribe to Achish, is not impossible. — Vers. 3, 4. Achish allotted dwellingplaces in his capital, Gath, for David and his wives, and for all his retinue; and Saul desisted from any further pursuit of David when he was informed of his flight to Gath. The Chethibh fpv is apparently only a copyist's error for *\&\ — Vers. 5 sqq. In the capital of the kingdom, however, David felt cramped, and therefore entreated Achish to assign him one of the land (or provincial) towns to dwell in; whereupon he gave him Ziklag for that purpose. This town was given to the Simeonites in the time of Joshua (Josh. xix. 5), but was afterwards taken by the Philistines, probably not long before the time of David, and appears to have been left without inhabitants in consequence of this conquest. The exact situation, in the western part of the Negeb, has not been clearly ascertained (see at Josh. xv. 31). Achish appears to have given it to David. This is implied in the remark, " Therefore Ziklag came to the Icings of Judah {i.e. became their property) unto this day." — Ver. 7. The statement that David remained a year and four months in the land of the Philistines, is a proof of the historical character of the whole narrative. The DNS* before

Vers. 8-12. From Ziklag David made an attack upon the Geshurites, Gerzites, and Amalekites, smote them without leaving a man alive, and returned with much booty. The occasion of this attack is not mentioned, as being a matter of indifference in relation to the chief object of the history; but it is no doubt to be sought for in plundering incursions made by these tribes into the land of Israel. For David would hardly have entered upon such a war in the situation in which he was placed at that time without some such occasion, seeing that it would be almost sure to bring him into suspicion with Achish, and endanger his safety.?V% " he advanced" the verb being used, as it frequently is, to denote the advance of an army against a people or town (see at Josh. viii. 1). At the same time, the tribes which he attacked may have had their seat upon the mountain plateau in the northern portion of the desert of Paran, so that David was obliged to march up to reach them. tX'Q, to invade for the purpose of devastation and plunder. Geshuri is a tribe mentioned in Josh. xiii. 2 as living in the south of the territory of the Philistines, and is a different tribe from the Geshurites in the north-east of Gilead (Josh. xii. 5, xiii. 11, 13; Dent. iii. 14). These are the only passages in which they are mentioned. The Gerzites, or Gizritcs according to the Keri, are entirely unknown. Bonfrere arid Clericus suppose them to be the Gerreni spoken of in 2 Mace. xiii. 24, who inhabited the town of Gerra, between Rhinocolura and Pelusium (Strabo, xvi. 760), or Gerron (Ptol. iv. 5). This conjecture is a possible one, but is very uncertain nevertheless, as the Gerzites certainly dwelt somewhere in the desert of Arabia. At any rate Grotius and Ewald cannot be correct in their opinion that they were the inhabitants of Gezer (Josh. x. 33). The Amalekltes were the remnant of this old hereditary foe of the Israelites, who had taken to flight on Saul's war of extermination, and had now assembled again (see at ch. xv. 8, 9). " For they inliabit the land, where you go from of old to Shur, even to the land of Egypt." The "»$Nj before E?to may be explained from the fact that ^3 is not adverbial here, but is construed according to its form as an infinitive: literally, " where from of old thy coming is to Shur" 1BW cannot have crept into the text through a copyist's mistake, as such a mistake would not have found its way into all the MSS. The fact that the early translators did not render the word proves nothing against its genuineness, but merely shows that the translators regarded it as superfluous.. Moreover, the Alexandrian text is decidedly faulty here, and B?iy is confounded with D?V, airb TeKajjb. Shur is the desert of Jifar, which is situated in front of Egypt (as in ch. xv. 7). These tribes were nomads, and had large flocks, which David took with him as booty when he had smitten the tribes themselves. After his return, David betook himself to Achish, to report to the Philistian king concerning his enterprise, and deceive him as to its true character. — Ver. 10. Achish said, " Ye have not made an invasion to-day, have ye V?$9 like firj, in an interrogative sense; the n has dropped out: vid. Ewald, § 324, b. David replied, " Against the south of Judah, and the south of the Jerahmeelites, and into the south of the Kenites," sc. we have made an incursion. This reply shows that the Geshurites, Gerzites, and Amalekites dwelt close to the southern boundary of Judah, so that David was able to represent the march against these tribes to Achish as a march against the south of Judah, to make him believe that he had been making an attack upon the southern territory of Judah and its dependencies. The Negeb of Judah is the land between the mountains of Judah and the desert of Arabia (see at Josh. xv. 21). The Jerahmeelites are the descendants of

Jerahmeel, the first-born of Ilezron (1 Cliron. ii. 9, 25, 26), and therefore one of the three large families of Judah who sprang from Hezron. They probably dwelt on the southern frontier of the tribe of Judab (yid. ch. xxx. 29). The Kenites were proteges of Judah (see at ch. xv. 6, and Judg. i. 16). In ver. 11 the writer introduces the remark, that in his raid David left neither man nor woman of his enemies alive, to take them to Gath, because he thought " they might report against us, and say, Thus hath David done.19 There ought to be a major point under in nt?y as the following clause does not contain the words of the slaughtered enemies, but is a clause appended by the historian himself, to the effect that David continued to act in that manner as long as he dwelt in the land of the Philistines. L33^p? the mode of procedure; lit. the right which he exercised (see ch. viii. 9). — Ver. 12 is connected with ver. 10; Achish believed David's words, and said (to himself), " He hath made himself stinking (i.e. hated) among his own people, among Israel, and will be my servant (i.e. subject to me) for everT

DAVID IN THE ARMY OF THE PHILISTINES. ATTACK UPON ISRAEL. SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR. — CHAP. XXVIII.

Vers. 1, 2. The danger into which David had plunged through his flight into the land of the Philistines, and still more through the artifice with which he had deceived king Achish as to his real feelings, was to be very soon made apparent to him. For example, when the Philistines went to war again with Israel, Achish summoned him to go with his men in the army of the Philistines to the war against his own people and land, and David could not disregard the summons. But even if he had not brought himself into this danger without some fault of his own, he had at any rate only taken refuge with the Philistines in the greatest extremity; and what further he had done, was only done to save his own life. The faithful covenant God helped him therefore out of this trouble, and very soon afterwards put an end to his persecution by the fact that Saul lost his life in the war. — Ver. 1. uIn those days,'9 i.e. whilst David was living in the land of the Philistines, it came to pass that the Philistines gathered their armies together for a campaign against Israel. And Achish sent word to David that he was to go with him in his army along with his men; and David answered (ver. 2), " Thereby (on this occasion) thou shalt learn what thy servant will do." This reply was ambiguous. The words " what thy servant will do" contained no distinct promise of faithful assistance in the war with the Israelites, as the expression " thy servant" is only the ordinary periphrasis for "/" in conversation with a superior. And there is just as little ground for inferring from ch. xxix. 8 that David was disposed to help the Philistines against Saul and the Israelites; for, as Calovius has observed, even there he gives no such promise, but " merely asks for information, that he may discover the king's intentions and feelings concerning him: he simply protests that he has done nothing to prevent his placing confidence in him, or to cause him to shut him out of the battle." Judging from his previous acts, it would necessarily have been against his conscience to fight against his own people. Nevertheless, in the situation in which he was placed he did not venture to give a distinct refusal to the summons of the king. He therefore gave an ambiguous answer, in the hope that God would show him a way out of this conflict between his inmost conviction and his duty to obey the Philistian king. He had no doubt prayed earnestly for this in his heart. And the faithful God helped His servant: first of all by the fact that Achish accepted his indefinite declaration as a promise of unconditional fidelity, as his answer " so (I5J, itaque, i.e. that being the case, if thy conduct answers to thy promise) / will make thee the keeper of my head " (i.e. of my person) implies; and still more fully by the fact that the princes of the Philistines overturned the decision of their king (ch. xxix. 3 sqq.).

Vers. 3-25. Saul with the witch at Endor. — The invasion of Israel by the Philistines, which brought David into so difficult a situation, drove king Saul to despair, so that in utter helplessness he had recourse to ungodly means of inquiring into the future, which he himself had formerly prohibited, and to his horror had to hear the sentence of his own death. This account is introduced with the remark in ver. 3 that Samuel was dead and had been buried at Ramah (cf. ch. xxv. 1; H^^, with an explanatory vav, and indeed in his own city), and that Saul had expelled " those that had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land" (on the terms employed, oboth and yiddo?iim, see at Lev. xix. 31). He had done this in accordance with the law in Lev. xix. 31, xx. 27, and Deut. xviii. 10 sqq. — Vers. 4, 5. When the Philistines advanced and encamped at Shunem, Saul brought all Israel together and encamped at Gilboa, i.e. upon the mountain of that name on the north-eastern edge of the plain of Jezreel, which slopes off from a height of about 1250 feet into the valley of the Jordan, and is not far from Beisan. On the north of the western extremity of this mountain was Shunem, the present Sulem or Solam (see at Josh. xix. 18); it was hardly two hours distant, so that the camp of the Philistines might be seen from Gilboa. When Saul saw this, he was thrown into such alarm that his heart greatly trembled. As Saul had been more than once victorious in his conflicts with the Philistines, his great fear at the sight of the Philistian army can hardly be attributed to any other cause than the feeling that God had forsaken him, by which he wras suddenly overwhelmed.— Ver. 6. In his anxiety he inquired of the Lord; but the Lord neither answered him by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets, that is to say, not by any of the three media by which He was accustomed to make known His will to Israel. nirP3 pxc5 is the term usually employed to signify inquiring the will and counsel of God through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest (see at Judg. i. 1); and this is the case here, with the simple difference that here the other means of inquiring the counsel of God are also included. On dreams, see at Num. xii. 6. According to Num. xxvii. 21, Urim denotes divine revelation through the high priest by means of the ephod. But the high priest Abiathar had been with the ephod in David's camp ever since the murder of the priests at Nob (ch. xxii. 20 sqq., xxiii. 6, xxx. 7). How then could Saul inquire of God through the Urim? This question, which was very copiously discussed by the earlier commentators, and handled in different ways, may be decided very simply on the supposition, that after the death of Ahimelech and the flight of his son, another high priest had been appointed at the tabernacle, and another ephod made for him, with the choshen or breastplate, and the Urim and Thummim. It is no proof to the contrary that there is nothing said about this. We have no continuous history of the worship at the tabernacle, but onlv occasional notices. And from these it is perfectly clear that the public worship at the tabernacle was not suspended on the murder of the priests, but was continued still. For in the first years of David's reign we find the tabernacle at Gibeon, and Zadok the son of Ahitub, of the line of Eleazar, officiating there as high priest (1 Chron. xvi. 39, compared with ch. v. 38 and vi. 38); from which it follows with certainty, that after the destruction of Nob by Saul the tabernacle was removed to Gibeon, and the worship of the congregation continued there. From this we may also explain in a very simple manner the repeated allusions to two high priests in David's time (2 Sam. viii. 17, xv. 24, 29, 35; 1 Chron. xv. 11, xviii. 16). The reason why the Lord did not answer Saul is to be sought for in the wickedness of Saul, which rendered him utterly unworthy to find favour with God.

Vers. 7-14. Instead of recognising this, however, and searching his own heart, Saul attempted to obtain a revelation of the future in ungodly ways. He commanded his servants (ver. 7) to seek for a woman that had a familiar spirit. Baalathob: the mistress (or possessor) of a conjuring spirit, i.e. of a spirit with which the dead were conjured up, for the purpose of making inquiry concerning the future (see at Lev. xix. 31). There was a woman of this kind at Endor, which still exists as a village under the old name upon the northern shoulder of the Duhy or Little Hermon (see at Josh. xvii. 11), and therefore only two German (ten English) miles from the Israelitish camp at Gilboa. — Ver. 8. Saul went to this person by night and in disguise, that he might not be recognised, accompanied by two men; and said to her, " Divine to me through necromancy, and bring me up whomsoever I tell thee?* The words " bring me up," etc., are an explanation or more precise definition of " divine unto me," etc. Prophesying by the Ob was probably performed by calling up a departed spirit from Sheol, and obtaining prophecies, i.e. disclosures concerning one's own fate, through the medium of such a spirit. On the form "•piDjp (Chethibh), see at Judg. ix. 8. — Ver. 9. Such a demand placed the woman in difficulty. As Saul had driven the necromantists out of the land, she was afraid that the unknown visitor (for it is evident from ver. 12 that she did not recognise Saul at first) might be laying a snare for her soul with his request, to put her to death, i.e. might have come to her merely for the purpose of spying her out as a conjurer of the dead, and then inflicting capital punishment upon her according to the law (Lev. xx. 27). — Vers. 10, 11. But when Saul swore to her that no punishment should fall upon her on that account (W}$) 25*> " shall assuredly not fall upon thee"), an oath which showed how utterly hardened Saul was, she asked him, " Whom shall I bring up to thee?" and Saul replied, u Bring me up Samuel" sc. from the region of the dead, or Sheol, which was thought to be under the ground. This idea arose from the fact that the dead were buried in the earth, and was connected with the thought of heaven as being above the earth. Just as heaven, regarded as the abode of God and the holy angels and blessed spirits, is above the earth; so, on the other hand, the region of death and the dead is beneath the ground. And with our modes of thought, which are so bound up with time and space, it is impossible to represent to ourselves in any other way the difference and contrast between blessedness with God and the shade-life in death. — Yer. 12. The woman then commenced her conjuring arts. This must be supplied from the context, as ver. 12 merely states what immediately ensued. " When the woman saw Samuel, she cried aloud" sc. at the form which appeared to her so unexpectedly. These words imply most unquestionably that the woman saw an apparition which she did not anticipate, and therefore that she was not really able to conjure up departed spirits or persons who had died, but that she either merely pretended to do so, or if her witchcraft was not mere trickery and delusion, but had a certain demoniacal background, that the appearance of Samuel differed essentially from everything she had experienced and effected before, and therefore filled her with alarm and horror. The very fact, however, that she recognised Saul as soon as Samuel appeared, precludes us from declaring her art to have been nothing more than jugglery and deception; for she said to him, " Why hast thou cheated me, as thou art certainly Saul?" i.e. why hast thou deceived me as to thy person? why didst thou not tell me that thou wast kin<r Saul? Her recognition of Saul when Samuel appeared may be easily explained, if we assume that the woman had fallen into a state of clairvoyance, in which she recognised persons who, like Saul in his disguise, were unknown to her by face. — Ver. 13. The king quieted her fear, and then asked her what she had seen; whereupon she gave him a fuller description of the apparition: " / saw a celestial being come up from the earth" Elohim does not signify gods here, nor yet God; still less an angel or a ghost, or even a person of superior rank, but a celestial (super-terrestrial), heavenly, or spiritual being. — Ver. 14. Upon Saul's further inquiry as to his form, she replied, uAn old man is ascending, and he is ivrapped in a mantle." Meil is the prophet's mantle, such as Samuel was accustomed to wear when he was alive (see ch. xv. 27). Saul recognised from this that the person who had been called up was Samuel, and he fell upon his face to the ground, to give expression to his reverence. Saul does not appear to have seen the apparition itself. But it does not follow from this that there was no such apparition at all, and the whole was an invention on the part of the witch. It needs an opened eye, such as all do not possess, to see a departed spirit or celestial being. The eyes of the body are not enough for this.

Vers. 15—22. Then Samuel said, " Why hast thou disturbed me (sc. from my rest in Hades; cf. Isa. xiv. 9), to bring me up?11 It follows, no doubt, from this that Samuel had been disturbed from his rest by Saul; but whether this had been effected by the conjuring arts of the witch, or by a miracle of God himself, is left undecided. Saul replied, " / am sore oppressed, for the Philistines fight against me, and God has departed from me, and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams; then I had thee called (on the intensified form Wipltt, vid. Ewald, § 228, c), to make known to me what I am to do." The omission of any reference to the Urim is probably to be interpreted very simply from the brevity of the account, and not from the fact that Saul shrank from speaking about the oracle of the high priest, on account of the massacre of the priests which had taken place by his command. There is a contradiction, however, in Saul's reply: for if God had forsaken him, he could not expect any answer from Him; and if God did not reply to his inquiry through the regularly appointed media of His revelation, how could he hope to obtain any divine revelation through the help

of a witch? u When living prophets gave no answer, he thought that a dead one might be called up, as if a dead one were less dependent upon God than the living, or that, even in opposition to the will of God, he might reply through the arts of a conjuring woman. Truly, if he perceived that God was hostile to him, he ought to have been all the more afraid, lest His enmity should be increased by his breach of His laws. But fear and superstition never reason" (Clericus). Samuel points out this

contradiction (ver. 16): " Why dost thou ask me, since Jehovah hath departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?" The meaning is: How canst thou expect an answer under these circumstances from me, the prophet of Jehovah? TW, from "W, signifies an enemy here (from T?, fervour); and this meaning is confirmed by Ps. cxxxix. 20 and Dan. iv. 16 (Chald.). There is all the less ground for any critical objection to the reading, as the Chaldee and Vulgate give a periphrastic rendering of " enemy," whilst the Sept., Syr., and Arab, have merely paraphrased according to conjectures. Samuel then announced his fate (vers. 1 7—19): " Jehovah hath performed for himself, as He spake by me (\b, for himself, which the LXX. and Vulg. have arbitrarily altered into T>, aol, tibi (to thee), is correctly explained by Seb. Schmidt, ' according to His grace, or to fulfil and prove His truth'); and Jehovah hath rent the kingdom out of thy hand, and given it to thy neighbour David." The perfects express the purpose of God, which had already been formed, and was now about to be fulfilled. — Ver. 18. The reason for Saul's rejection is then given, as in ch. xv. 23: " Because ("R?K3, according as) thou... hast not executed the fierceness of His anger upon Amalek, therefore hath Jehovah done this thing to thee this day." u This thing" is the distress of which Saul had complained, with its consequences. \P}% that Jehovah may give (= for He will give) Israel also with thee into the hand of the Philistines. u To-morrow wilt thou and thy sons be with me (i.e. in Sheol, with the dead); also the camp of Israel will Jehovah give itito the hand of the Philistines" i.e. give up to them to plunder. The overthrow of the people was to heighten Saul's misery, when he saw the people plunged with him into ruin through his sin (O. v. Gerlach). Thus was the last hope taken from Saul. His day of grace was gone, and judgment was now to burst upon him without delay. — Ver. 20. These words so alarmed him, that he fell his whole length upon the ground; for he had been kneeling hitherto (ver. 14). lie " fell straightway (lit. he hastened and fell) upon the ground. For he was greatly terrified at the words of Samuel: there was also no strength in him, because he had eaten no food the whole day and the whole night" sc. from mental perturbation or inward excitement. Terror and bodily exhaustion caused him to fall powerless to the ground. — Vers. 21, 22. The woman then came to him and persuaded him to strengthen himself with food for the journey wrhich he had to take. It by no means follows from the expression "came unto Saul" that the woman was in an adjoining room during the presence of the apparition, and whilst Samuel was speaking, but only that she was standing at some distance off, and came up to him to speak to him when he had fallen fainting to the ground. As she had fulfilled his wish at the risk of her own life, she entreated him now to gratify her wish, and let her set a morsel of bread before him and eat. " That strength may be in thee when thou goest thy ivay" {i.e. when thou returnest).

This narrative, when read without prejudice, makes at once and throughout the impression conveyed by the Septuagint at 1 Chron. x. 13: eTnjpcoTrjae $aoi>\ iv tw iyyaarpcfivOa) tov fyrrjcrai, koX aireKpivaro avrco SafjuovrjX o 7rpo<j)r)Tr}<;; and still more clearly at Ecclus. xlvi. 20, where it is said of Samuel: u And after his death he prophesied, and showed the king his end, and lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy, to blot out the wickedness of the people." Nevertheless the fathers, reformers, and earlier Christian theologians, with very few exceptions, assumed that there was not a real appearance of Samuel, but only an imaginary one. According to the explanation given by Ephraem Syrus, an apparent image of Samuel was presented to the eye of Saul through demoniacal arts. Luther and Calvin adopted the same view, and the earlier Protestant theologians followed them in regarding the apparition as nothing but a diabolical spectre, a phantasm, or diabolical spectre in the form of Samuel, and Samuel's announcement as nothing but a diabolical revelation made by divine permission, in which truth is mixed with falsehood.1 It was not till the

1 Thus Luther says (in his work upon the abuses of the Mass, 1522):

" The raising of Samuel by a soothsayer or witch, in 1 Sam. xxviii. 11, 12, was certainly merely a spectre of the devil; not only because the Scriptures state that it was effected by a woman who was full of devils (for who could believe that the souls of believers, who are in the hand of God, Ecclus. hi. 1, and in the bosom of Abraham, Luke xvi. 32, were under the power of the devil, and of simple men?), but also because it was evidently in opposition to the command of God that Saul and the woman inquired of the dead. The Holy Ghost cannot do anything against this himself, nor can He help

seventeenth century that the opinion was expressed, that the apparition of Samuel was merely a delusion produced by the witch, without any real background at all. After Reginald Scotus and Balth. Becker had given expression to this opinion, it was more fully elaborated by Ant. van Dale, in his dissert, de divinationibus idololatricis sub V. T.; and in the so-called age of enlightenment this was the prevailing opinion, so that Thenius still regards it as an established fact, not onlv that the woman was an impostor, but that the historian himself regarded the whole thing as an imposture. There is no necessity to refute this opinion at the present day. Even Fr. Boettcher (deinferis, pp. Ill sqq.), who looks upon the thing as an imposture, admits that the first recorder of the occurrence "believed that Samuel appeared and prophesied, contrary to the expectation of the witch;" and that the author of the books of Samuel was convinced that the prophet was raised up and prophesied, so that after his death he wras proved to be the true prophet of Jehovah, although through the intervention of ungodly arts (cf. Ezek. xiv. 7, 9). But the view held by the early church does not do justice to the scriptural narrative; and hence the more modern orthodox commentators are unanimous in the opinion that the departed prophet did really appear and announce the destruction of Saul, not, however, in consequence of the magical arts of the witch, but through a miracle wrought by the omnipotence of God. This is most decidedly favoured by the fact, that the prophetic historian speaks throughout of the appearance, not of

those who act in opposition to it." Calvin also regards the apparition as

only a spectre (Horn. 100 in 1 Sam.): " It is certain," he says, ll that it was

not really Samuel, for God would never have allowed His prophets to be subjected to such diabolical conjuring. For here is a sorceress calling up the dead from the grave. Does any one imagine that God wished His prophet to be exposed to such ignominy; as if the devil had power over the bodies and souls of the saints which are in His keeping? The souls of the saints are said to rest and live in God, waiting for their happy resurrection. Besides, are we to believe that Samuel took his cloak with him into the grave? For all these reasons, it appears evident that the apparition was nothing more than a rpectre, and that the senses of the woman herself were so deceived, that she thought she saw Samuel, whereas it really was not he."

The earlier orthodox theologians also disputed the reality of the appearance of the departed Samuel on just the same grounds; e.g. Seb. Schmidt {Comm.')\ Aug. Pfeiffer; Sal. Deyling; and Buddeus, Hist. Eccl. V. T. ii. p. 243, and many more.

a ghost, but of Samuel himself. He does this not only in ver. 12, " When the woman saw Samel she cried aloud," but also in vers. 14, 15, 16, and 20. It is also sustained by the circumstance, that not only do the words of Samuel to Saul, in vers. 16-19, create the impression that it is Samuel himself who is speaking; but his announcement contains so distinct a prophecy of the death of Saul and his sons, that it is impossible to imagine that it can have proceeded from the mouth of an impostor, or have been an inspiration of Satan. On the other hand, the remark of Calvin, to the effect that " God sometimes gives to devils the power of revealing secrets to us, which they have learned from the Lord," could only be regarded as a valid objection, provided that the narrative gave us some intimation that the apparition and the speaking were nothing but a diabolical delusion. But it does nothing of the kind. It is true, the opinion that the witch conjured up the prophet Samuel was very properly disputed by the early theologians, and rejected by Theodoret as " unholy, and even impious;" and the text of Scripture indicates clearly enough that the very opposite was the case, by the remark that the witch herself was terrified at the appearance of Samuel (ver. 12). Shobel is therefore quite

correct in saying: u It was not at the call of the idolatrous king, nor at the command of the witch, — neither of whom had the power to bring him up, or even to make him hear their voice in his rest in the grave, — that Samuel came; nor was it merely by divine ' permission,' which is much too little to say. No, rather it was by the special command of God that he left his grave (?), like a faithful servant whom his master arouses at midnight, to let in an inmate of the house who has wilfully stopped out late, and has been knocking at the door. 6 Why do you disturb me out of my sleep V would always be the question put to the unwelcome comer, although it was not by his noise, but really by his master's command, that he had been aroused. Samuel asked the same question." The prohibition of witch-

craft and necromancy (Deut. xviii. 11; Isa. viii. 19), which the earlier writers quote against this, does not preclude the possibility of God having, for His own special reasons, caused Samuel to appear. On the contrary, the appearance itself was of such a character, that it could not fail to show to the witch and the king, that God does not allow His prohibitions to be infringed with impunity. The very same thing occurred here, which God threatened to idolaters through the medium of Ezekiel (ch. xiv. 4, 7, 8): " If they come to the prophet, I will answer them in my own way." Still less is there any force in the appeal to Luke xvi. 27 sqq., where Abraham refuses the request of the rich man in Hades, that he would send Lazarus to his father's house to preach repentance to his brethren who were still living, saying, u They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." For this does not affirm that the appearance of a dead man is a thing impossible in itself, but only describes it as useless and ineffectual, so far as the conversion of the ungodly is concerned.

The reality of the appearance of Samuel from the kingdom of the dead cannot therefore be called in question, especially as it has an analogon in the appearance of Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration of Christ (Matt. xvii. 3; Luke ix. 30, 31); except that this difference must not be overlooked, namely, that Moses and Elijah appeared u in glory," i.e. in a glorified form, whereas Samuel appeared in earthly corporeality with the prophet's mantle which he had worn on earth. Just as the transfiguration of Christ was a phenomenal anticipation of His future heavenly glory, into which He was to enter after His resurrection and ascension, so may we think of the appearance of Moses and Elijah " in glory" upon the mount of transfiguration as an anticipation of their heavenly transfiguration in eternal life with God. It was different with Samuel, whom God brought up from Hades through an act of His omnipotence. This appearance is not to be regarded as the appearance of one who had risen in a glorified body; but though somewhat spirit-like in its external manifestation, so that it was only to the witch that it was visible, and not to Saul, it was merely an appearance of the soul of Samuel, that had been at rest in Hades, in the clothing of the earthly corporeality and dress of the prophet, which were assumed for the purpose of rendering it visible. In this respect the appearance of Samuel rather resembled the appearances of incorporeal angels in human form and dress, such as the three angels who came to Abraham in the grove at Mamre (Gen. xviii.), and the angel who appeared to Manoah (Judg. xiii.); with this exception, however, that these angels manifested themselves in a human form, which was visible to the ordinary bodily eye, whereas Samuel appeared in the spirit-like form of the inhabitants of Hades. In all these cases the bodily form and clothing were only a dress assumed for the soul or spirit, and intended to facilitate perception, so that such appearances furnish no proof that the souls of departed men possess an immaterial corporeality.1

Vers. 23-25. On Saul's refusing to take food, his servants (i.e. his two attendants) also pressed him, so that he yielded, rose up from the ground, and sat down upon the bed (mittah: i.e. a bench by the wall of the room provided with pillows); whereupon the woman quickly sacrificed (served up) a stalled calf, baked unleavened cakes, and set the food she had prepared before the king and his servants. The woman did all this from natural sympathy for the unhappy king, and not, as Thenius supposes, to remove all suspicion of deception from Saul's mind; for she had not deceived the king at all. — Ver. 25. When Saul and his servants had eaten, they started upon their way, and went back that night to Gilboa, which was about ten miles distant, where the battle occurred the next day, and Saul and his sons fell. u Saul was too hardened in his sin to express any grief or pain, either on his own account or because of the

1 Delitzsch (bibl. Psychol, pp. 427 sqq.) has very properly rejected, not only the opinion that Samuel and Moses were raised up from the dead for the purpose of a transient appearance, and then died again, but also the idea that they appeared in their material bodies, a notion upon which Calvin rests his argument against the reality of the appearance of Samuel. But when he gives it as his opinion, that the angels who appeared in human form assumed this form by virtue of their own power, inasmuch as they can make themselves visible to whomsoever they please, and infers still further from this, " that the outward form in which Samuel and Moses appeared (which corresponded to their form when on this side the grave) was the immaterial production of their spiritual aud psychical nature," he overlooks the fact, that not only Samuel, but the angels also, in the cases referred to, appeared in men's clothing, which cannot possibly be regarded as a production of their spiritual and psychical nature. The earthly dress is not indispensable to a man's existence. Adam and Eve had no clothing before the Fall, and there will be no material clothing in th3 kingdom of glory; for the " fine linen, pure and white," with which the bride adorns herself for the marriage supper of the Lamb, is " the righteousness of saints" (Rev. xix. 8).

fate of his sons and his people. In stolid desperation he went to meet his fate. This was the terrible end of a man whom the Spirit of God had once taken possession of and turned into another man, and whom he had endowed with gifts to be the leader of the people of God" (O. v. Gerlach).

Vers. 1-5. Whilst Saul derived no comfort from his visit to the witch at Endor, but simply heard from the mouth of Samuel the confirmation of his rejection on the part of God, and an announcement of his approaching fate, David was delivered, through the interposition of God, from the danger of having to fight against his own people. — Ver. 1. The account of this is introduced by a fuller description of the position of the hostile army. u The Philistines gathered all their armies together toivards Aphek, but Israel encamped at the fountain in (at) Jezreel." This fountain is the present Ain Jalud (or Ain Jalut, i.e. Goliath's fountain, probably so called because it was regarded as the scene of the defeat of Goliath), a very large fountain, which issues from a cleft in the rock at the foot of the mountain on the north-eastern border of Gilboa, forming a beautifully limpid pool of about forty or fifty feet in diameter, and then flowing in a brook through the valley (Rob. Pal. iii. p. 168). Consequently Aphek, which must be carefully distinguished from the towns of the same name in Asher (Josh. xix. 30; Judg. i. 31) and upon the mountains of Judah (Josh. xv. 53) and also at Ebenezer (1 Sam. iv. 1), is to be sought for not very far from Shunem, in the plain of Jezreel; according to Van de Velde's Mem., by the side of the present el Afuleh, though the situation has not been exactly determined. The statement in the Onom., " near Endor of Jezreel where Saul fought," is merely founded upon the Septuagint, in which ]SV2 is erroneously rendered ev 'EvSwp. — Vers. 2, 3. When the princes of the Philistines {same, as in Josh. xiii. 3) advanced by hundreds and thousands (i.e. arranged in companies of hundreds and thousands), and David and his men came behind with Achish (i.e. forming the rear-guard), the (other) princes pronounced against their allowing David and his men to go with them.

This did not occur at the time of their setting out, but on the road, when they had already gone some distance (compare ver. 11 with ch. xxx. 1), probably when the five princes (Josh. xiii. 3) of the Philistines had effected a junction. To the inquiry, " What are these Hebrews doing?" Achish replied, "Is not this David, the servant of Saul the king of Israel, who has been with me days already, or years already? and I have found nothing in him since his coining over unto this day." STOXDj anything at all that could render him suspicious, or his fidelity doubtful,?BJ, to fall away and go over to a person; generally construed with?N (Jer. xxxvii. 13, xxxviii. 19, etc.) or?JJ (Jer. xxi. 9, xxxvii. 14; 1 Chron. xii. 19, 20), but here absolutely, as the more precise meaning can be gathered from the context. — Ver. 4. But the princes, i.e. the four other princes of the Philistines, not the courtiers of Achish himself, were angry with Achish, and demanded, " Send the man back, that he may return to his place, which thou hast assigned him; that he may not go down with us into the war, and may not become an adversary (satan) to us in the war; for wherewith could he show himself acceptable to his lord (viz. Saul), if not with the heads of these men Vy N^l!? nonne, strictly speaking, introduces a new question to confirm the previous question. " Go down to the battle:" this expression is used as in ch. xxvi. 10, xxx. 24, because battles were generally fought in the plains, into which the Hebrews were obliged to come down from their mountainous land. " TJiese men" i.e. the soldiers of the Philistines, to whom the princes were pointing. — Ver. 5. To justify their suspicion, the princes reminded him of their song with which the women in Israel had celebrated David's victory over Goliath (ch. xviii. 7).

Vers. 6-11. After this declaration on the part of the princes, Achish was obliged to send David back. — Vers. 6, 7. With a solemn assertion, — swearing by Jehovah to convince David all the more thoroughly of the sincerity of his declaration, — Achish said to him, " Thou art honourable, and good in my eyes (i.e. quite right in my estimation) are thy going out and coming in (i.e. all thy conduct) with me in the camp, for I have not found anything bad in thee; but in the eyes of the princes thou art not good (i.e. the princes do not think thee honourable, do not trust thee). Turn now, and go in peace, that thou may est do nothing displeasing to the princes of the Philistines." — Ver. 8. Partly for the sake of vindicating himself against this suspicion, and partly to put the sincerity of Achish's words to the test, David replied, " What have I done, and what hast thou found in thy servant, since I was with thee till this day, that I am not to come and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?" These last words are also ambiguous, since the king whom David calls his lord might be understood as meaning either Achish or Saul. Achish, in his goodness of heart, applies them without suspicion to himself; for he assures David still more earnestly (ver. 9), that he is firmly convinced of his uprightness. u I know that thou art good in my eyes as an angel of God," i.e. I have the strongest conviction that thou hast behaved as well towards me as an an^el could; but the princes have desired thy removal. — Ver. 10. " And now get up early in the morning with the servants of thy lord (i.e. Saul, whose subjects David's men all were), icho have come ivith thee; get ye up in the morning when it gets light for you (so that ye can see), andgo^ — Yer. 11. In accordance with this admonition, David returned the next morning into the land of the Philistines, i.e. to Ziklag; no doubt very light of heart, and praising God for having so graciously rescued him out of the disastrous situation into which he had been brought and not altogether without some fault of his own, rejoicing that " he had not committed either sin, i.e. had neither violated the fidelity which he owed to Achish, nor had to fight against the Israelites" (Seb. Schmidt).

Vers. 1-10. During David's absence the Amalekites had invaded the south country, smitten Ziklag and burnt it down, and carried off the women and children whom they found there; whereat not only were David and his men plunged into great grief on their return upon the third day, but David especially was involved in very great trouble, inasmuch as the people wanted to stone him. But he strengthened himself in the Lord his God (vers. 1-6). — Vers. 1-4 form one period, which is expanded by the introduction of several circumstantial clauses. The apodosis to M It came to pass, when," etc. (ver. 1), does not follow till ver. 4, u Then David and the people," etc. But this is formally attached to ver. 3, " so David and his men came," with which the protasis commenced in ver. 1 is resumed in an altered form. u It came to pass, when David and his men came to Ziklag... the Amalehites had invaded... and had carried off the wives... and liad gone their way, and David and his men came into the town (for ' when David and his men came,' etc.), and behold it was burned.... Then David and the people with him lifted up their voice." u On the third day:" after David's dismission by Achish, not after David's departure from Ziklag. David had at any rate gone with Achish beyond Gath, and had not been sent back till the whole of the princes of the Philistines had united their armies (ch. xxix. 2 sqq.), so that he must have been absent from Ziklag more than two days, or two days and a half. This is placed beyond all doubt by vers. 11 sqq., since the Amalekites are there described as having gone off with their booty three days before David followed them, and therefore they had taken Ziklag and burned it three days before David's return. These foes had therefore taken advantage of the absence of David and his warriors, to avenge themselves for David's invasions and plunderings (ch. xxvii. 8). Of those who were carried off, " the women" alone are expressly mentioned in ver. 2, although the female population and all the children had been removed, as we may see from the expression " small and great" (vers. 3, 6). The LXX. were therefore correct, so far as the sense is concerned, in introducing the words koI irdvra before ^3 1EW. " They had hilled no one, but (only) carried away." 3H3, to carry away captive, as in Isa. xx. 4. Among those who had been carried off were David's two wives, Ahinoam and Abigail (vid. ch. xxv. 42, 43, xxvii. 3). — Ver. 6. David was greatly distressed in consequence; " for the people thought (' said,' sc. in their hearts) to stone him" because they sought the occasion of their calamity in his connection with Achish, with which many of his adherents may very probably have been dissatisfied. " For the soul of the whole people was embittered (i.e. all the people were embittered in their souls) because of their sons and daughters," who had been carried away into slavery. " But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God," i.e. sought consolation and strength in prayer and believing confidence in the Lord (vers. 7 sqq.). This strength he manifested in the resolution to follow the foes and rescue their booty from them. To this end he had the ephod brought by the high priest Abiathar (cf. ch. xxiii. 9), and inquired by means of the Urim of- the Lord, "Shall I pursue this troop? Shall I overtake it V These questions were answered in the affirmative; and the promise was added, " and thou wilt rescue" So David pursued the enemy with his six hundred men as far as the brook Besor, where the rest, i.e. two hundred, remained standing (stayed behind). The words Vipy CPTTrtini, which are appended in the form of a circumstantial clause, are to be connected, so far as the facts are concerned, with what follows: whilst the others remained behind, David pursued the enemy still farther with four hundred men. By the word D'nrrian the historian has somewhat anticipated the matter, and therefore regards it as necessary to define the expression still further in ver. 10b. We are precluded from changing the text, as Thenius suggests, by the circumstance that all the early translators read it in this manner, and have endeavoured to make the expression intelligible by paraphrasing it. These two hundred men were too tired to cross the brook and go any farther, (lis, which only occurs here and in ver. 21, signifies, in Syriac, to be weary or exhausted.) As Ziklag was burnt down, of course they found no provisions there, and were consequently obliged to set out in pursuit of the foe without being able to provide themselves with the necessary supplies. The brook Besor is supposed to be the Wady Sheriah, which enters the sea below Ashkelon (see v. Raumer, Pal. p. 52).

Vers. 11—20. On their further march they found an Egyptian lying exhausted upon the field; and having brought him to David, they gave him food and drink, namely u a slice of Jig-cake (cf. ch. xxv. 18), and raisin-cakes to eat; whereupon his spirit of life returned (i.e. he came to himself again), as he had neither eaten bread nor drunk ivater for three days." — Ver. 13. When David asked him whence he had come (to whom, i.e. to what people or tribe, dost thou belong?), the young man said that he was an Egyptian, and servant of an Amalekite, and that he had been left behind by his master when he fell sick three days before (" to-day three," sc. days): he also said, " We invaded the south of the Crethites, and what belongs to Judahy and the south of Caleb, and burned Ziklag with fire." VVpn, identical with BW3 (Ezek. xxv. 16; Zeph. ii. 5), denotes those tribes of the Philistines who dwelt in the south-west of Canaan, and is used by Ezekiel and Zephaniah as synonymous with Philistim. The origin of the name is involved in obscurity, as the explanation which prevailed for a time, viz. that it was derived from Creta, is without sufficient foundation (yid. Stark, Gaza, pp. tib and 99 sqq.). The Negeb " belonging to Judah" is the eastern portion of the Negeb. One part of it belonged to the family of Caleb, and was called Caleb's Negeb (vid. ch. xxv. 3). — Vers. 15, 16. This Egyptian then conducted David, at his request, when he had sworn that he would neither kill him nor deliver him up to his master, down to the hostile troops, who were spread over the whole land, eating, drinking, and making merry, on account of all the great booty which they had brought out of the land of the Philistines and Judah. — Ver. 17. David surprised them in the midst of their security, and smote them from the evening twilight till the evening of the next day, so that no one escaped, with the exception of four hundred young men, who fled upon camels. Nesheph signifies the evening twilight here, not the dawn, — a meaning which is not even sustained by Job vii. 4. The form Q0"JC^ aPPears *° be an adverbial formation, like DBi\ — Vers. 18, 19. Through this victory David rescued all that the Amalekites had taken, his two wives, and all the children great and small; also the booty that they had taken with them, so that nothing was missing. — Ver. 20 is obscure: " And David took all the sheep and the oxen: they drove them before those cattle, and said. This is Davids booty." In order to obtain any meaning whatever from this literal rendering of the words, we must understand by the sheep and oxen those which belonged to the Amalekites, and the flocks taken from them as booty; and by " those cattle" the cattle belonging to David and his men, which the Amalekites had driven away, and the Israelites had now recovered from them: so that David had the sheep and oxen which he had taken from the Amalekites as booty driven in front of the rest of the cattle which the Israelites had recovered; whereupon the drovers exclaimed, " This (the sheep and oxen) is David's booty." It is true that there is nothing said in what goes before about any booty that David had taken from the Amalekites, in addition to what they had taken from the Israelites; but the fact that David had really taken such booty is perfectly obvious from vers. 26-31, where he is said to have sent portions of the booty of the enemies of Jehovah to different places in the land. If this explanation be not accepted, there is no other course open than to follow the Vulgate, alter ^B? into ^?r, and render the middle clause thus: " they drove those cattle (viz. the sheep and oxen already mentioned) before him," as Luther has done. But even in that case we could hardly understand anything else by the sheep and oxen than the cattle belonging to the Amalekites, and taken from them as booty.

Vers. 21-31. When David came back to the two hundred men whom he had left by the brook Besor (D3W? they made them sit, remain), they went to meet him and his warriors, and were heartily greeted by David. — Ver. 22. Then all kinds of evil and worthless men of those who had gone with David to the battle replied: " Because they have not gone with us {lit. with me, the person speaking), we will not give them any of the booty that we have seized, except to every one his wife and his children: they may lead them away, and go" — Vers. 23, 24. David opposed this selfish and envious proposal, saying, " Do not so, my brethren, with that (DN, the sign of the accusative, not the preposition; see Ewald, § 329, a: lit. with regard to that) which Jehovah hath done to us, and He hath guarded us (since He hath guarded us), and given this troop which came upon us into our hand. And who will hearken to you in this matter % But (^, according to the negation involved in the question) as the portion of him that went into the battle, so be the portion of him that stayed by the things; they shall share together." "mil is a copyist's error for Tl*?' — Ver. 25. So was it from that day and forward; and he (David) made it (this regulation as to the booty) " the law and right for Israel unto this day." — Vers. 26-31. When David returned to Ziklag, he sent portions of the booty to the elders of Judah, to his friends, with this message: u Behold, here ye have a blessing of the booty of the enemies of Jehovah" (which we took from the enemies of Jehovah); and this he did, according to ver. 31, to all the places in which he had wandered with his men, i.e. where he had wandered about during his flight from Saul, and in which he had no doubt received assistance. Sending these gifts could not fail to make the elders of these cities well disposed towards him, and so to facilitate his recognition as king after the death of Saul, which occurred immediately afterwards. Some of these places may have been plundered by the Amalekites, since they had invaded the Negeb of Judah (ver. 14). The cities referred to were Bethel, — not the Bethel so often mentioned, the present Beitin, in the tribe of Benjamin, but Bethuel (1 Chron. iv. 30) or Bethul, in the tribe of Simeon (Josh. xix. 4), which Knobel supposes to be Elusa or el Khalasa (see at Josh. xv. 30). The reading BaiOaovp in the Septuagint is a worthless conjecture. Ramah of the south, which was allotted to the tribe of Simeon, has not yet been discovered (see at Josh. xix. 8). Jattir has been preserved in the ruins of Attir, on the southern portion of the mountains of Judah (see at Josh. xv. 48). Aroer is still to be seen in ruins, viz. in the foundations of walls built of enormous stones in Wady Arara, where there are many cavities for holding water, about three hours e.s.e. of Bersaba, and twenty miles to the south of Hebron (via1. Rob. Pal. ii. p. 620, and v. de Velde, Mem. p. 288). Siphmoth (or Shiphmoth, according to several MSS.) is altogether unknown. It may probably be referred to again in 1 Chron. xxvii. 27, where Zabdi is called the Shiphmlte; but it is certainly not to be identified with Sepham, on the north-east of the sea of Galilee (Num. xxxiv. 10, 11), as Thenius supposes. JEshtemoa has been preserved in the village of Semua, with ancient ruins, on the south-western portion of the mountains of Judah (see at Josh. xv. 50). Racal is never mentioned again, and is entirely unknown. The LXX. have five different names instead of this, the last being Carmel, into which Thenius proposes to alter Racal. But this can hardly be done with propriety, as the LXX. also introduced the Philistian Gath, which certainly does not belong here; whilst in ver. 30 they have totally different names, some of which are decidedly wrong. The cities of the Jerahmeelites and Kenites were situated in the Negeb of Judah (ch. xxvii. 10), but their names cannot be traced. — Ver. 30. Hormah in the Negeb (Josh. xv. 30) is Zephath, the present Zepata, on the western slope of the Rakhma plateau (see at Josh. xii. 14). Cor-ashan, probably the same place as Aslian in the Shephelah, upon the border of the Negeb, has not yet been discovered (see at Josh. xv. 42). Ailiach is only mentioned here, and quite unknown. According to Thenius, it is probably a mistaken spelling for Ether in the tribe of Simeon

The end of the unhappy king corresponded to his life ever since the day of his rejection as king. When he had lost the battle, and saw his three sons fallen at his side, and the archers of the enemy pressing hard upon him, without either repentance or remorse he put an end to his life by suicide, to escape the disgrace of being wounded and abused by the foe (vers. 1-7). But he did not attain his object; for the next day the enemy found his corpse and those of his sons, and proceeded to plunder, mutilate, and abuse them (vers. 8-10). However, the king of Israel was not to be left to perish in utter disgrace. The citizens of Jabesh remembered the deliverance which Saul had brought to their city after his election as king, and showed their gratitude by giving an honourable burial to Saul and his sons (vers. 11-13). There is a parallel to this chapter in 1 Chron. x., which agrees exactly with the account before us, with very few deviations indeed, and those mostly verbal, and merely introduces a hortatory clause at the end (vers. 13, 14).

Vers. 1-7. The account of the war between the Philistines and Israel, the commencement of which has already been mentioned in ch. xxviii. 1, 4 sqq., and xxix. 1, is resumed in ver. 1 in a circumstantial clause; and to this there is attached a description of the progress and result of the battle, more especially with reference to Saul. Consequently, in 1 Chron. x. 1, where there had been no previous allusion to the war, the participle EWpp is changed into the perfect. The following is the way in which we should express the circumstantial clause: " Now when the Philistines were fighting against Israel, the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and slain men fell in the mountains of Gilboa" (yid. ch. xxviii. 4). The principal engagement took place in the plain of Jezreel. But when the Israelites were obliged to yield, they fled up the mountains of Gilboa, and were pursued and slain there. — Vers. 2-4. The Philistines followed Saul, smote (i.e. put to death) his three sons (see at ch. xiv. 49), and fought fiercely against Saul himself. When the archers (n^P? D^JN is an explanatory apposition to D"Hten) Mt him, i.e. overtook him, he was greatly alarmed at them (?rv, from W or 'Ifi),1 and called upon his armour-bearer to pierce him with the sword, " lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and play with me" i.e. cool their courage upon me by maltreating me. But as the armour-bearer would not do this, because he was very much afraid, since he was supposed to be answerable for the king's life, Saul inflicted death upon himself with his sword; whereupon the armourbearer also fell upon his sword and died with his king, so that on that day Saul and his three sons and his armour-bearer all died; also u all his men" (for which we have " all his house" in the Chronicles), i.e. not all the warriors who went out with him to battle, but all the king's servants, or all the members of his house, sc. who had taken part in the battle. Neither Abner nor his son Ishbosheth was included, for the latter was not in the battle; and although the former was Saul's cousin and commander-in-chief (see ch. xiv. 50, 51), he did not belong to his house or servants. — Ver. 7. When the men of Israel upon the sides that were opposite to the valley (Jezreel) and the Jordan saw that the Israelites (the Israelitish troop) fled, and Saul and his sons wrere dead, they took to flight out of the cities, whereupon the Philistines took possession of them. "UJJ is used here to signify the side opposite to the place of conflict in the valley of Jezreel, which the writer assumed as his stand-

1 The LXX. have adopted the rendering x.xl irpotv^ocriaetv tig tot. v7ro%6vlpix, they wounded him in the abdomen, whilst the Vulgate rendering is vulneratus est vehementer a sagittariis. In 1 Chron. x. 3 the Sept. rendering is kocI \7r6vtoiv civo ran/ r6£,ay, and that of the Vulgate et vulneraverunt jaculis. The translators have therefore derived yjv from?">n = HPn, and then given a free rendering to the other words. But this rendering is overthrown by the word TNft, very, vehemently, to say nothing of the fact that the verb ppn or rftn cannot be proved to be ever used in the sense of wounding. If Saul had been so severely wounded that he could not kill himself, and therefore asked his armour-bearer to slay him, as Thenius supposes, he would not have had the strength to pierce himself with his sword when the armour-bearer refused. The further conjecture of Thenius, that the Hebrew text should be read thus, in accordance with the LXX., D'HlEin PK bns1, " he was wounded in the region of the gall," is opposed by the circumstance that vKoxovlpicc is not the gall or region of the gall, but what is under the xovUpog, or breast cartilage, viz. the abdomen and bowels.

point (cf. cli. xiv. 40); so that Ppy? "OP is the country to the west of the valley of Jezreel, and H"!.? ^V tne country to the west of the Joudan, i.e. between Gilboa and the Jordan. These districts, i.e. the whole of the country round about the valley of Jezreel, the Philistines took possession of, so that the whole of the northern part of the land of Israel, in other words the whole land with the exception of Pera?a and the tribe-land of Judah, came into their hands when Saul was slain.

Vers. 8-10. On the day following the battle, when the Philistines stripped the slain, they found Saul and his three sons lying upon Gilboa; and having cut off their heads and plundered their weapons, they sent them (the heads and weapons) as trophies into the land of the Philistines, i.e. round about to the different towns and hamlets of their land, to announce the joyful news in their idol-temples (the writer of the Chronicles mentions the idols themselves) and to the people, and then deposited their weapons (the weapons of Saul and his sons) in the Astarte-houses. But the corpses they fastened to the townwall of Beth-shean, i.e. Beisan, in the valley of the Jordan (see at Josh. xvii. 11). Beth-azabbim and jBeth-ashtaroth are composite words: the first part is indeclinable, and the plural form is expressed by the second word: idol-houses and Astarte-houses, like beth-aboth (father s-houses: see at Ex. vi. 14). On the Astartes, see at Judg. ii. 13. It is not expressly stated indeed in vers. 9, 10, that the Philistines plundered the bodies of Saul's sons as well, and mutilated them by cutting off their heads; but it^&ri and Vy35 his (i.e. Saul's) head and his weapons, alone are mentioned. At the same time, it is very evident from ver. 12, where the Jabeshites are said to have taken down from the wall of Beth-shean not Saul's body only, but the bodies of his sons also, that the Philistines had treated the corpses of Saul's sons in just the same manner as that of Saul himself. The writer speaks distinctly of the abuse of Saul's body only, because it was his death that he had chiefly in mind at the time. To the word IIVJ^ we must supply in thought the object te'Ni and V^>3 from the preceding clause. W? and fiha (vers. 10 and 12) are the corpses without the heads. The fact that the Philistines nailed them to the town-wall of Beth-shean presupposes the capture of that city, from which it is evident that they had occupied the land as far as the Jordan. The definite word

Beth-ashtaroth is changed by the writer of the Chronicles into Beth-elohim, temples of the gods; or rather he has interpreted it in this manner without altering the sense, as the Astartes are merely mentioned as the principal deities for the idols generally. The writer of the Chronicles has also omitted to mention the nailing of the corpses to the wall of Beth-shean, but he states instead that u they fastened his skull in the temple of Dagon," a fact which is passed over in the account before us. From this we may see how both writers have restricted themselves to the principal points, or those which appeared to them of the greatest importance (yid, Bertheau on 1 Chron. x. 10).

Vers. 11-13. When the inhabitants of Jabesh in Gilead heard this, all the brave men of the town set out to Bethshean, took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall, brought them to Jabesh, and burned them there. " But their bones they buried under the tamarisk at Jabesh, and fasted seven days" to mourn for the king their former deliverer (see ch. xi.). These statements are given in a very condensed form in the Chronicles (vers. 11, 12). Not only is the fact that " they went the whole night " omitted, as being of no essential importance to the general history; but the removal of the bodies from the town-wall is also passed over, because their being fastened there had not been mentioned, and also the burning of the bodies. The reason for the last omission is not to be sought for in the fact that the author of the Chronicles regarded burning as ignominious, according to Lev. xx. 14, xxi. 9, but because he did not see how to reconcile the burning of the bodies with the burial of the bones. It was not the custom in Israel to burn the corpse, but to bury it in the ground. The former was restricted to the worst criminals (see at Lev. xx. 14). Consequently the Chaldee interpreted the word " burnt" as relating to the burning of spices, a custom which we meet with afterwards as a special honour shown to certain of the kings of Judah on the occasion of their burial (2 Chron. xvi. 14, xxi. 19; Jer. xxxiv. 5). But this is expressed by HB^)? P)1K>? " to make a burning for him," whereas here it is stated distinctly that " they burnt them." The reason for the burning of the bodies in the case of Saul and his sons is to be sought for in the peculiarity of the circumstances; viz. partly in the fact that the bodies were mutilated by the removal of the heads, and therefore a regular burial of the dead was impossible, and partly in their anxiety lest, if the Philistines followed up their victory and came to Jabesh, they should desecrate the bodies still further. But even this was not a complete burning to ashes, but merely a burning of the skin and flesh; so that the bones still remained, and they were buried in the ground under a shady tree. Instead of u under the (well-known) tamarisk" (cshel), we have n?Kn nC^ (under the strong tree) in 1 Chron. x. 11. David afterwards had them fetched away and buried in Saul's family grave at Zela, in the land of Benjamin (2 Sam. xxi. 11 sqq.). The seven days' fast kept by the Jabeshites was a sign of public and general mourning on the part of the inhabitants of that town at the death of the king, who had once rescued them from the most abominable slavery.

In this ignominious fate of Saul there was manifested the righteous judgment of God in consequence of the hardening of his heart. But the love which the citizens of Jabesh displayed in their treatment of the corpses of Saul and his sons, had reference not to the king as rejected by God, but to the king as anointed with the Spirit of Jehovah, and was a practical condemnation, not of the divine judgment which had fallen upon Saul, but of the cruelty of the enemies of Israel and its anointed. For although Saul had waged war almost incessantly against the Philistines, it is not known that in any one of his victories he had ever been guilty of such cruelties towards the conquered and slaughtered foe as could justify this barbarous revenge on the part of the uncircumcised upon his lifeless corpse.

HIS book contains the history of David's reign, arranged according to its leading features: viz. (1) the commencement of his reign as king of Judah at Hebron, whereas the other tribes of Israel adhered to the house of Saul (ch. i.-iv.); (2) his promotion to be king over all Israel, and the victorious extension of his sway (ch. v.-ix.); (3) the decline of his power in consequence of his adultery (ch. x.-xx.); (4) the close of his reign (ch. xxi.-xxiv.). Parallels and supplements to this history, in which the reign of David is described chiefly in its connection with the development of the kingdom of God under the Old Testament, are given in ch. xi.-xxviii. of the first book of Chronicles, where we have an elaborate description of the things done by David, both for the elevation and organization of the public worship of God, and also for the consolidation and establishment of the whole kingdom, and the general administration of government.

When David received the tidings at Ziklag of the defeat of Israel and the death of Saul, he mourned deeply and sincerely for the fallen king and his noble son Jonathan (ch. i.). He then returned by the permission of God into the land of Judah, namely to Hebron, and was anointed king of Judah by the elders of that tribe; whereas Abner, the cousin and chief general of Saul, took Ishbosheth, the only remaining son of the fallen monarch, and made him king over the other tribes of Israel at Mahanaim (ch. ii. 1-11). This occasioned a civil war. Abner marched to Gibeon against David with the forces of Ishbosheth, but was defeated by Joab, David's commanderin-chief, and pursued to Mahanaim, in which pursuit Abner slew Asahel the brother of Joab, who was eagerly following him (ch. ii. 12—32). Nevertheless, the conflict between the house of David and the house of Saul continued for some time longer, but with the former steadily advancing and the latter declining, until at length Abner quarrelled with Ishbosheth, and persuaded the tribes that had hitherto adhered to him to acknowledge David as king over all Israel. After the negotiations with David for effecting this, he was assassinated by Joab on his return from Hebron, — an act at which David not only expressed his abhorrence by a solemn mourning for Abner, but declared it still more openly by cursing Joab's crime (ch. iii.). Shortly afterwards, Ishbosheth was assassinated in his own house by two Benjaminit.es; but this murder was also avenged by David, who ordered the murderers to be put to death, and the head of Ishbosheth, that had been delivered up to him, to be buried in Abner' s tomb (ch. iv.). Thus the civil war and the threatened split in the kingdom were brought to an end, though without any complicity on the part of David, but rather against his will, viz. through the death of Abner, the author of the split, and of Ishbosheth, whom he had placed upon the throne, both of whom fell by treacherous hands, and received the reward of their rebellion against the ordinance of God. David himself, in his long school of affliction under Saul, had learned to put all his hope in the Lord his God; and therefore, when Saul was dead, he took no steps to grasp by force the kingdom which God had promised him, or to remove his rival out of the way by crime.

david's conduct on hearing of saul's death, his elegy upon saul and jonathan. — chap. i.

David received the intelligence of the defeat of Israel and the death of Saul in the war with the Philistines from an Amalekite, who boasted of having slain Saul and handed over to David the crown and armlet of the fallen king, but whom David punished with death for the supposed murder of the anointed of God (vers. 1-16). David mourned for the death of Saul and Jonathan, and poured out his grief in an elegiac ode (vers. 17-27). This account is closely connected with the concluding chapters of the first book of Samuel.

Vers. 1-16. David receives the news of Saul's death. — Vers. 1-4. After the death of Saul, and David's return to Ziklag from his campaign against the Amalekites, there came a man to David on the third day, with his clothes torn and earth strewed upon his head (as a sign of deep mourning: see at 1 Sam. iv. 12), who informed him of the flight and overthrow of the Israelitish army, and the death of Saul and Jonathan. — Ver. 1 may be regarded as the protasis to ver. 2, so far as the contents are concerned, although formally it is rounded off, and 3K?.\ forms the apodosis to W1: " It came to pass after the death of Saul, David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites (1 Sam. xxx. 1-26), that David remained at Ziklag two days. And it came to pass on the third day" etc. Both of these notices of the time refer to the day, on which David returned to Ziklag from the pursuit and defeat of the Amalekites. Whether the battle at Gilboa, in which Saul fell, occurred before or after the return of David, it is impossible to determine. All that follows from the juxtaposition of the two events in ver. 1, is that they were nearly contemporaneous. The man " came from the army from with Saul" and therefore appears to have kept near to Saul during the battle. — Ver.. 4. David's inquiry, " How did the thing happen?" refers to the statement made by the messenger, that he had escaped from the army of Israel. In the answer, "iKW serves, like ^3 in other passages, merely to introduce the words that follow, like our namely (vid. Ewald, § 338, b). " The people fled from the fight; and not only have many of the people fallen, but Saul and Jonathan his son are also dead" DM... DM: not only... but also. — Vers. 5 sqq. To David's further inquiry how he knew this, the young man replied (vers. 6-10), " / happened to come (K"ii?3 = mg3) up to the mountains of Gilboa, and saw Saul leaning upon his spear; then the chariots (the war-chariots for the charioteers) and riders were pressing upon him, and he turned round and saw me,... and asked me, Who art thou? and I said, An Amalekite; and he said to me. Come hither to me, and slay me, for the cramp (yiW according to the Rabbins) hath seized me (sc. so that I cannot defend myself, and must fall into the hands of the Philistines); for my soul ( in v life) is still whole in me. Then I went to him, and slew him, because I knew that after his fall he would not live; and took the crown upon his head, and the bracelet upon his arm, and brought them to my lord" (David). "After his fall " does not mean " after he had fallen upon his sword or spear" (Clericus), for this is neither implied in v23 nor in ^n^rwV \W} (" supported, i.e. leaning upon his spear"), nor are we at liberty to transfer it from 1 Sam. xxxi. 4 into this passage; but " after his defeat" i.e. so that he would not survive this calamity. This statement is at variance with the account of the death of Saul in 1 Sam. xxxi. 3 sqq.; and even apart from this it has an air of improbability, or rather of untruth in it, particularly in the assertion that Saul was leaning upon his spear when the chariots and horsemen of the enemy came upon him, without having either an armour-bearer or any other Israelitish soldier by his side, so that he had to turn to an Amalekite who accidentally came by, and to ask him to inflict the fatal wound. The Amalekite invented this, in the hope of thereby obtaining the better recompense from David. The only part of his statement which is certainly true, is that he found the king lying dead upon the field of battle, and took off the crown and armlet; since he brought these to David. But it is by no means certain whether he was present when Saul expired, or merely found him after he was dead. — Vers. 11, 12. This information, the substance of which was placed beyond all doubt by the king's jewels that were brought, filled David with the deepest sorrow. As a sign of his pain he rent his clothes; and all the men with him did the same, and mourned 'with weeping and fasting until the evening u for Saul and for Jonathan his son, for the people of Jehovah, and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword" (i.e. in battle). " The people of Jehovah" and the " house or people of Israel" are distinguished from one another, according to the twofold attitude of Israel, which furnished a double ground for mourning. Those who had fallen were first of all members of the people of Jehovah, and secondly, fellow-countrymen. " They were therefore associated with them, both according to the flesh and according to the spirit, and for that reason they mourned the more" (Seb. Schmidt). " The only deep mourning for Saul, with the exception of that of the Jabeshites (1 Sam. xxxi. 11), proceeded from the man whom he had hated and persecuted for so many years even to the time of his death; just as David's successor wept over the fall of Jerusalem, even when it was about to destroy Himself" (O. v. Gerlach). — Ver. 13. David then asked the bringer of the news for further information concerning his own descent, and received the reply that he was the son of an Amalekite stranger, i.e. of an Amalekite who had emigrated to Israel. — Ver. 14. David then reproached him for what he had done: " How wast thou not afraid to stretch forth thine hand to destroy the Lord?s anointed?" and commanded one of his attendants to slay him (vers. 15 sqq.), passing sentence of death in these words: u Thy blood come upon thy head (cf. Lev. xx. 9, Josh. ii. 19); for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the Lord's anointed." 1 David regarded the statement of the Amalekite as a sufficient ground for condemnation, without investigating the truth any further; though it was most probably untrue, as he could see through his design of securing a great reward as due to him for performing such a deed (yid. ch. iv. 10), and looked upon a man who could attribute such an act to himself from mere avarice as perfectly capable of committing it. Moreover, the king's jewels, which he had brought, furnished a practical proof that Saul had really been put to death. This punishment was by no means so severe as to render it necessary to "estimate its morality according to the times," or to defend it merely from the standpoint of political prudence, on the ground that as David was the successor of Saul, and had been pursued by him as his rival with constant suspicion and hatred, he ought not to leave the murder of the king unpunished, if only because the people, or at any rate his own opponents among the people, would accuse him of complicity in the murder of the king, if not of

1 " Thy mouth hath testified against thee, and out of it thou art judged (Luke xix. 22), whether thou hast done it or not. If thou hast done it, thou receivest the just reward of thy deeds. If thou hast not done it, then throw the blame upon thine own lying testimony, and be content with the wages of a wicked flatterer; for, according to thine own confession, thou art the murderer of a king, and that is quite enough to betray thine evil heart. David could see plainly enough that the man was no murderer: he would show by his example that flatterers who boast of such sins as these should get no hearing from their superiors." — Berleb. Bible.

actually instigating the murderer. David would never have allowed such considerations as these to lead him into unjust severity. And his conduct requires no such half vindication. Even on the supposition that Saul had asked the Amalekite to give him his death-thrust, as he said he had, it was a crime deserving of punishment to fulfil this request, the more especially as nothing is said about any such mortal wounding of Saul as rendered his escape or recovery impossible, so that it could be said that it would have been cruel under such circumstances to refuse his request to be put to death. If Saul's life was still " full in him," as the Amalekite stated, his position was not so desperate as to render it inevitable that he should fall into the hands of the Philistines. Moreover, the supposition was a very natural one, that he had slain the king for the sake of a reward. But slaying the king, the anointed of the Lord, was in itself a crime that deserved to be punished with death. What David might more than once have done, but had refrained from doing from holy reverence for the sanctified person of the king, this foreigner, a man belonging to the nation of the Amalekites, Israel's greatest foes, had actually done for the sake of gain, or at any rate pretended to have done. Such a crime must be punished with death, and that by David who had been chosen by God and anointed as Saul's successor, and whom the Amalekite himself acknowledged in that capacity, since otherwise he would not have brought him the news together with the royal diadem.

Vers. 17-27. David's elegy upon Saul and Jonathan. — An eloquent testimony to the depth and sincerity of David's grief for the death of Saul is handed down to us in the elegy which he composed upon Saul and his noble son Jonathan, and which he had taught to the children of Israel. It is one of the finest odes of the Old Testament; full of lofty sentiment, and springing from deep and sanctified emotion, in which, without the slightest allusion to his own relation to the fallen king, David celebrates without envy the bravery and virtues of Saul and his son Jonathan, and bitterly laments their loss. a lie said to teach," i.e. he commanded the children of Judah to practise or learn it. ritrp, bow; i.e. a song to which the title Kesheth or bow was given, not only because the bow is referred to (ver. 22), but because it is a martial ode, and the bow was one of the principal weapons used by the warriors of that age, and one in the use of which the Benjaminites, the tribe-mates of Saul, were particularly skilful: cf. 1 Chron. viii. 40, xii. 2; 2 Chron. xiv. 7, xvii. 17. Other explanations are by no means so natural; such, for example, as that it related to the melody to which the ode was sung; whilst some are founded upon false renderings, or arbitrary alterations of the text, e.g. that of Ewald (Gesch. i. p. 41), Thenius, etc. This elegy was inserted in u the book of the righteous*' (see at Josh. x. 13), from which the author of the books of Samuel has taken it.

The ode is arranged in three strophes, which gradually diminish in force and sweep (viz. vers. 19-24, 25-20, 27), and in which the vehemence of the sorrow is gradually modified, and finally dies away. Each strophe opens with the exclamation, uHow are the mighty fallen!" The first contains all that had to be said in praise of the fallen heroes; the deepest mourning for their death; and praise of their bravery, of their inseparable love, and of the virtues of Saul as king. The second commemorates the friendship between David and Jonathan. The third simply utters the last sigh, with which the elegy becomes silent. The first strophe runs thus:

Yer. 19. The ornament, 0 Israel, is slain upon thy heights! Oh how are the mighty fallen!

20. Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,

Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph!

21. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let not dew or rain be upon you, or fields of first-fruit offerings: For there is the shield of the mighty defiled, The shield of Saul, not anointed with oil.

22. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan turned not back,

And the sword of Saul returned not empty.

23. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and kind, in life And in death they are not divided.

Lighter than eagles were they; stronger than lions.

24. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in purple with delight; Who put a golden ornament upon your apparel!

The first clause of ver. 19 contains the theme of the entire ode. *33fn does not mean the gazelle here (as the Syriac and Clericus and others render it), the only plausible support of which is the expression "upon thy heights," whereas the parallel D'niaa shows that by ^Jfn we are to understand the two heroes Saul and Jonathan, and that the word is used in the appellative sense of ornament. The king and his noble son were the ornament of Israel. They were slain upon the heights of Israel. Luther has given a correct rendering, so far as the sense is concerned {die Edelsten, the noblest), after the inclyti of the Vulgate. The pronoun " thy high places" refers to Israel. The reference is to the heights of the mountains of Gilboa (see ver. 21). This event threw Israel into deep mourning, which commences in the second clause. — Ver. 20. The tidings of this mourning were not to be carried out among the enemies of Israel, lest they should rejoice thereat. Such rejoicing would only increase the pain of Israel at the loss it had sustained. Only two of the cities of Philistia are mentioned by name, viz. Gath, which was near, and Askelon, which was farther off by the sea. The rejoicing of the daughters of the Philistines refers to the custom of employing women to celebrate the victories of their nation by singing and dancing (cf. 1 Sam. xviii. 6). — Ver. 21. Even nature is to join in the mourning. May God withdraw His blessing from the mountains upon which the heroes have fallen, that they may not be moistened by the dew and rain of heaven, but, remaining in eternal barrenness, be memorials of the horrible occurrence that has taken place upon them. V2?p2 *in is an address to them; and the preposition 3 with the construct state is poetical: u mountains in Gilboa " (vid. Ewald, § 289, b). In M^g... £>K the verb W is wanting. The following words, rta"in Hfefij are in apposition to the foregoing: " and let not fields of first-fruit offerings be upon youy" i.e. fields producing fruit, from which offerings of first-fruits were presented. This is the simplest and most appropriate explanation of the words, which have been very differently, and in some respects very marvellously rendered. The reason for this cursing of the mountains of Gilboa was, that there the shield of the heroes, particularly of Saul, had been defiled with blood, namely the blood of those whom the shield oujdit to defend. 7JJ3 does not mean to throw away (Dietrich.), but to soil or defile (as in the Chaldee), then to abhor. " Not anointed with o//," i.e. not cleansed and polished with oil, so that the marks of Saul's blood still adhered to it. v3 poetical for vh. The interpolation of the words "as though" (quasi non esset unctus oleo, Vulgate) cannot be sustained. — Ver. 22. Such was the ignominy experienced upon Gilboa by those who had always fought so bravely, that their bow and sword did not turn back until it was satisfied with the blood and fat of the slain. The figure upon which the passage is founded is, that arrows drink the blood of the enemy, and a sword devours their flesh (vid, Deut. xxxii. 42; Isa. xxxiv. 5, G; Jer. xlvi. 10). The two principal weapons are divided between Saul and Jonathan, so that the bow is assigned to the latter and the sword to the former. — Ver. 23. In death as in life, the two heroes were not divided, for they were alike in bravery and courage. Notwithstanding their difference of character, and the very opposite attitude which they assumed towards David, the noble Jonathan did not forsake his father, although his fierce hatred towards the friend whom Jonathan loved as his own soul might have undermined his attachment to his father. The two predicates, SilfcH, loved and amiable, and D*yj, affectionate or kind, apply chiefly to Jonathan; but they were also suitable to Saul in the earliest years of his reign, when he manifested the virtues of an able ruler, which secured for him the lasting affection and attachment of the people. In his mourning over the death of the fallen hero, David forgets all the injury that Saul has inflicted upon him, so that he only brings out and celebrates the more amiable aspects of his character. The light motion or swiftness of an eagle (cf. Hab. i. 8), and the strength of a lion (vid. ch. xvii. 10), were the leading characteristics of the great heroes of antiquity. — Lastly, in ver. 24, David commemorates the rich booty which Saul had brought to the nation, for the purpose of celebrating his heroic greatness in this respect as well. W was the scarlet purple (see at Ex. xxv. 4). " With delights," or with lovelinesses, i.e. in a lovely manner.

The second strophe (vers. 25 and 26) only applies to the friendship of Jonathan:

Ver. 25. Oh how are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan (is) slain upon thy heights! 26. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Thou wast very kind to me: Stranger than the love of woman was thy love to me!

26) denotes the pinching or pressure of the heart consequent upon pain and mourning. nnK?B3j third pers. fem., like a verb rrt with the termination lengthened (vid. Ewald, § 194, b), to be wonderful or distinguished. in^iJK, thy love to me. Comparison to the love of woman is expressive of the deepest earnestness of devoted love.

The third strophe (ver. 27) contains simply a brief aftertone of sorrow, in which the ode dies away:

Oh how are the mighty fallen, The instruments of war perished!

" The instruments of war" are not the weapons; but the expression is a figurative one, referring to the heroes by whom war was carried on (vid. Isa. xiii. 5). Luther has adopted this rendering (die Streitbaren).

DAVID KING OVER JUDAH, AND ISHBOSHETH KING OVER ISRAEL. BATTLE AT GIBEON. — CHAP. II.

After David had mourned for the fallen king, he went, in accordance with the will of the Lord as sought through the Urim, to Hebron, and was there anointed king by the tribe of Judah. He then sent his thanks to the inhabitants of Jabesh, for the love which they had shown to Saul in burying his bones (vers. 1-7), and reigned seven years and a half at Hebron over Judah alone (vers. 10 and 11). Abner, on the other hand, put forward Ishbosheth the son of Saul, who still remained alive, as king over Israel (vers. 8 and 9); so that a war broke out between the adherents of Ishbosheth and those of David, in which Abner and his army were beaten, but the brave Asahel, the son-in-law of David, was slain by Abner (vers. 12-32). The promotion of Ishbosheth as king was not only a continuation of the hostility of Saul towards David, but also an open act of rebellion against Jehovah, who had rejected Saul and chosen David prince over Israel, and who had given such distinct proofs of this election in the eyes of the whole nation, that even Saul had been convinced of the appointment of David to be his successor upon the throne. But David attested his unqualified submission to the guidance of God, in contrast with this rebellion against His clearly revealed will, not only by not returning to Judah till he had received permission from the Lord, but also by the fact that after the tribe of Judah had acknowledged him as king, he did not go to war with Ishbosheth, but contented himself with resisting the attack made upon him by the supporters of the house of Saul, because he was fully confident that the Lord would secure to him in due time the whole of the kingdom of Israel.