1 Samuel 19:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Samuel 19:1

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Chapter 19 is a chapter of success, followed by one of persecution. David is here learning to wait God's time. He is going to have a long wait before he takes the kingdom. He is going to have to accept a lot of hardness and unfairness. In verse 18 you find him seeking spiritual refuge with Samuel, when he comes under persecution. There are three great lessons we can all learn from this chapter: firstly, wherever God has set us, whatever troubles we are upon us, always we must wait God's time; secondly, be prepared to accept hardness, and even unfairness as part of our spiritual training; and thirdly, with David, seek a spiritual refuge. ‘And Saul spake to Jonathan his son, and to all his servants, that they should kill David.’ Jonathan is under direction to take part in all this, and all the servants. It's a secret of course at court, but it is now the official court policy. ‘But Jonathan Saul's son delighted much in David: and Jonathan told David, saying, Saul my father seeketh to kill thee.’ Jonathan remains faithful to David and tells him of the danger; if necessary he will take David’s side against his father. But although he was right there and heard the instruction to kill David, and knows his father well, he cannot accept that Saul intends to murder David. He has heard him say so; he has been privy to the plan; he is under orders himself, but he cannot believe his father really means this. He is amazingly loyal to his father. Jonathan, although he is undoubtedly a believer, and his heart is knit with David; he is not superman. He is a very fallible chap. He is deluded about his father, dangerously so. He cannot grasp that his father is a fallen man, and desperately wicked. He thinks he can win his father round, and so he sets up this situation where he can raise the matter in private with his father and see how he responds. David must go out of circulation immediately; he is to remain out of sight in a certain field and watch, and Jonathon will bring his father there and speak to him about David, and he will tell David exactly what his father says, hiding nothing. Jonathan is showing David that, even though he does not believe that his father will really do this, if it is in fact true, then he will never betray the oath of friendship between them. But he wants to try one more time to appeal to Saul. The only explanation for this seems to be that Jonathan put all this down to his father's illness. In fact his father wasn't that ill. Yes, he had this despondent, despairing spirit come upon him, and he knew that God had withdrawn his blessing from him, but that in itself didn't make him murderous, savage, and hostile in every way. Jonathan seems to have dealt with all this very generously. ‘My father is ill. He suffers from clinical depression. He doesn't mean to murder David. He just has these fits, and if we can just get him through them, then everything will be all right. We can get them reconciled again.’ This seems to have been Jonathan's position. He is optimistic. He was a godly young man of great faith, but he failed to read his father’s heart. ‘He doesn't really mean it, and he will say it one minute, and then he will get over it.’ He thought he could persuade his father to behave himself and not to do this thing. He could see well enough Saul's rages, his attempts to kill David, and yet he thought he could be talked round.

Application

We can understand Jonathan a little. Well over sixty years ago when I was on military service, in national service, for some little while I was given a task as a sort of Personal Assistant, or administrative helper, to the commanding officer of the unit. This man had a fearful temper – and I was in his room most of the time – sometimes directed against me, but mostly against others. When something went wrong – and it was possibly his own mistake, and he was a man who couldn't recognise that – he would almost fall apart in fury and anger, and he would shout and scream, and pace up and down, and banish everybody, fire everybody from the headquarters and so on. There would be a tempest that would go on for an hour or so. But you knew that if you found a quiet desk and just carried on, that two or three hours later you be called on the phone: ‘Why aren’t you here doing such and such a thing?’, and life would be conducted as though nothing in the world had ever happened; he could pass from raving fury to complete forgetfulness of the whole incident. This would happen at least two or three times a week. So in a sense we can understand Jonathan thinking: ‘This is my father. He wants to murder David, but he'll get over it. All will be calm; things will settle down; we can talk him round.’ So he has a go at talking Saul round, and he succeeds.

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1 Samuel 19:1 Commentary and Bible Study