1 Samuel 23 — Strengthened His Hand in God
The Philistines rob the threshingfloors of Keilah. David enquires of the LORD — Shall I go? — and is told to go and save Keilah; his frightened men make him ask again, and the LORD answers: Arise, go down; I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand. He saves the city. Abiathar has come down with an ephod. Saul hears David is in a walled town — God hath delivered him into mine hand — and musters to besiege it. David calls for the ephod: Will Saul come down? He will. Will the men of Keilah deliver me up? They will. So the six hundred leave Keilah and go wherever they can; Saul seeks him every day, but God delivers him not into his hand. In the wood of Ziph Jonathan comes to David and strengthens his hand in God: thou shalt be king, and I next unto thee, and Saul knoweth it. They covenant before the LORD and part. The Ziphites offer to betray David; Saul blesses them for their compassion. On the mountain of Maon Saul's men close round David's — and a messenger comes: the Philistines have invaded. Saul turns back; they call the place Selahammahlekoth. David goes up to Engedi.
“And Jonathan Saul’s son arose, and went to David into the wood, and strengthened his hand in God.”
— 1 Samuel 23:16
- v.1-6 Shall I go and smite these Philistines? — Keilah saved; Abiathar brings the ephod
- v.7-13 Saul musters; David enquires by the ephod; the men of Keilah will deliver thee up
- v.14-18 The wilderness of Ziph — Jonathan strengthens his hand in God; the last covenant
- v.19-29 The Ziphites; the mountain of Maon; Selahammahlekoth; up to Engedi
The narrator pauses to explain how David could enquire so precisely: Abiathar had escaped the massacre at Nob (22:20) with an ephod in his hand — the priestly garment that held the sacred lots by which the LORD was asked yes-or-no questions (Exodus 28:30). The verse reads like a note inserted to explain verse 9; its to Keilah sits a little awkwardly with 22:20-23, where Abiathar reaches David before the Keilah campaign, and readers simply take it as summarising his arrival.
Saul's slaughter of the priests has delivered the priesthood's oracle to David. The king who enquired of the LORD and got no answer (14:37; 28:6) has driven the means of enquiry into his enemy's camp. From here to the end of the book David asks and the LORD answers (vv. 11-12; 30:8; 2 Samuel 2:1), while Saul is reduced to spies (v. 22) and, at last, a witch. Who holds the ephod is a quiet marker of who holds the LORD's favour.
Two questions, two answers, and the second is bitter: the town David has just saved will hand him over. The LORD does not scold Keilah, and neither does David; a walled town facing the king's army with the memory of Nob a chapter old could hardly do otherwise. God's answer is about what will happen if David stays, not a sentence on the townsmen — and David leaves (v. 13), so the betrayal never occurs. The knowledge was given to prevent the event.
Saul's reading of events deserves notice: God hath delivered him into mine hand (v. 7). He uses God's name for his own hunt, as he once said that I may be avenged on mine enemies (14:24). The narrator's verdict comes in verse 14: Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand. The same English word, the opposite outcome. Men announce what God has delivered; God decides.
The summary sentence of these years. Strong holds — the rocky refuges of the Judaean wilderness south and east of Hebron, where Ziph, Maon and Engedi lie. Every day on Saul's side; not on God's. The whole chase is contained in the one clause, and the reader is told the end before the pursuit is described in detail. David's safety is not his cunning (though verse 22 says he dealeth very subtilly) but the LORD's refusal to deliver him.
Psalm 63's heading places it when he was in the wilderness of Judah, and Psalm 54's when the Ziphims came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us? The headings are ancient and are offered here as such, not as proof of date; but they let the reader hear what the chapter does not record — the prayers of a man being hunted every day: my soul thirsteth for thee... in a dry and thirsty land.
Jonathan finds what his father cannot. The crown prince walks into a wood in the wilderness of Ziph, to the man his father is hunting, and strengthened his hand in God — not in David himself, not in his six hundred, but in God. It is the last recorded act of the friendship and perhaps its finest: he brings no troops, no plan, only encouragement rooted in what God has said. Many have observed that this is what a friend is for.
How Jonathan found David when Saul could not, the text does not explain. The narrator calls him Saul's son at this moment on purpose. He goes back to his father afterwards (v. 18) and will die with him on Gilboa (31:2), never having left Saul's side and never having wavered from David. Scripture allows a man to be loyal to a doomed cause out of love and to the LORD's cause out of faith at the same time, and does not demand that he resolve it.
Fear not — the word God speaks to His servants, here on a friend's lips. Jonathan states three things as settled: Saul will not find him, David will be king, and Saul my father knoweth it too (as 20:31 and 24:20 confirm). This is the clearest statement in the book that Jonathan understood David to be God's chosen king, and he says it without bitterness. The one who had everything to lose from it speaks it as good news.
I shall be next unto thee — the one hope of Jonathan's that did not come true. He died before David reigned. Readers have long felt the sorrow of it, and the text does not soften it; but the covenant of verse 18 did reach his son, and Jonathan's name is honoured in David's lament (2 Samuel 1:26) and David's court. Not every promise a faithful man makes about his own future is kept; what he gave to another was.
The Ziphites of David's own tribe offer to deliver him up (vv. 19-20), and Saul blesses them of the LORD and thanks them for their compassion. The verse is almost unbearable in its inversion: pity is for the king with an army at his back, and the LORD's blessing is pronounced on betrayal. Saul's religious vocabulary has not left him; it simply attaches now to whatever serves his fear. The Ziphites will inform again in 26:1.
Verses 22-23 show the king's method: spies, lurking places, the certainty — Saul gathers intelligence where David asks the LORD. He is right that David dealeth very subtilly; but David's cunning is not what has saved him (v. 14). The chapter sets two ways of knowing side by side — the ephod and the informer — and lets the outcome judge between them. Psalm 54, headed with the Ziphites' words, answers: God is mine helper.
Saul has David surrounded on a mountain in the wilderness of Maon (v. 26) — one side, the other side, compassed round about — and the hunt is all but over, when a messenger arrives: the Philistines have invaded the land (v. 27). Saul must turn, and David is free. The text gives no angel and no miracle, only a timing that the narrator plainly ascribes to the God who delivered him not (v. 14). Providence in Scripture is usually this ordinary and this exact.
Selahammahlekoth is simply the Hebrew name carried over; the KJV margin gives the rock of divisions, the traditional sense — the rock where Saul and David were parted, or where Saul's men were divided from the chase. Some take it instead as the rock of escape or of slipperiness; the Hebrew allows a play on more than one of these, and the study need not settle it. What the name preserved was the memory: at the last ledge, God intervened. Verse 29 moves David to Engedi, where the next chapter waits.
Ask before you go — and ask again if the people with you are afraid; God answered David twice without complaint. Then do not be bitter about Keilah. People you have helped will not always stand by you when the king's army is at the gate, and God may tell you so in advance precisely so you can leave quietly rather than be betrayed loudly. Be Jonathan to someone this week: walk into their wood and strengthen their hand in God, not in yourself — remind them what God has said, and go home. And when you are surrounded on the mountain, with one side and the other side closing in, remember that the messenger who turned Saul around was no miracle, just the LORD's timing. He has not delivered you into their hand.
The anointed king who saves a city that will then hand him over; the one hunted every day and never delivered up; the friend who comes into the wilderness to strengthen his hand in God — the church has read this chapter as a sketch of the Son of David, who healed and fed the very towns that would cry for His death, who passed through the midst of those who tried to seize Him because his hour was not yet come, and to whom angels came and ministered in another wilderness (Matthew 4:11). Jonathan's thou shalt be king over Israel, spoken in a wood by the heir who gave up his claim, is for Christian readers a picture of John the Baptist's he must increase, but I must decrease. And the ephod carried from the slaughtered priesthood to the rejected king points, in the church's reading, to a priesthood that finds its home with Christ.
A hunted man with some six hundred ragged followers (v. 13) hears that a town of Judah is being plundered at harvest and asks God whether he should go and fight for it. Keilah lay in the lowland (Joshua 15:44), near Adullam; defending it was the king's job, and the king was busy hunting David. The outlaw does the king's work. David enquired of the LORD — the phrase that marks him off from Saul, who in this very chapter makes his plans by his own calculation (v. 7).
His men object (v. 3) — they are afraid even in Judah — and David does not override them with his first answer; he enquired of the LORD yet again (v. 4), and the second word is fuller: I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand. Asking twice is not unbelief here but care for frightened men who need to hear the promise too. The result (v. 5) is a great slaughter and the city saved; the deliverer is the one Saul calls a rebel.