40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 20:1-42 (Episode 246)

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Jonathan struggles to believe that his father is trying to kill David. A test is agreed upon to determine Saul's intentions. The king is angry, while David and Johnathon are heartbroken. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conferences 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you go to the events page. We've got two events coming up in 2021. One is in Northwest Arkansas on April 16th and 17th. It's a two-day event. Chad will be there.

I'll be there. A whole bunch of other people will be there. Two-day event for $65. I mean, it should be the first really awesome thing that you do in 2021. I mean, 2020 is coming to an end. It's been a year. We'll just say it's been a year. So 2021 should be the year that maybe you go and hang out with Chad and I

a bunch of other people in the beautiful Ozarks in the spring. That should be something on your list. Also, we'll be of course having the Here We Still Stand conference, the general conference in October and you can get tickets for that and you want to do that before the first of the year because it's the early bird special so tickets

are never going to be cheaper so as you're getting caught up in your holiday festivities, make sure that you wander over to 1517 and click on Here We Still Stand and get those tickets before the first of the year so you know, you pay as little as possible so we would love to see you at either or both uh of those events chad what's going on man getting ready winding down these last few days before christmas i know watching

my wife wrap wrap presents she she does all the shopping all the wrapping so i cheer her on you do my presents i'm terrible at presents i do most of the present wrapping actually yeah oh do you yeah i'm pretty good at it i mean i don't mind buying presents as long as somebody tells me like what they want and i'm good yeah i'll be good for you no my wife likes buying presents more more than i do uh i'm not i'm not a big shopper but i end up wrapping the vast majority of the presents because i actually i mean i'm a little brag here but i mean even my daughter is like dad you're really good at wrapping presents i mean i'm i'm a little bit tedious but i mean i want all the angles the same way and i make them real crisp and make sure the

folds are all good they go into the tree i need it to look very picturesque you know so it needs to look everything everything needs to look nice so maybe one side of the uh of the package will look nice if i wrap it you just don't look at the other three you just point that side out yeah yeah rip that paper off in a hurry just don't don't look at it yeah it is it is kind of you've probably been you've been past this stage for a lot of course you're re-entering this stage now because you got the grandkids but uh my daughter is at the stage where it's not as much fun to buy things for as she used to be

because now she's entering her young teenage years. Toys are just way more fun to buy and stuff than this list of athletic gear and devices. The Christmas list is not nearly as fun. It's way more

fun when it's toys and stuff. More and more, the things my wife wants for Christmas and my daughter wants for Christmas are the same. so uh this is you know same shoes same you know headphones all this kind of stuff so not as fun as like i want batman legos or whatever like yeah i mean it's just for grandparents so we can buy the stuff that's like really loud really messy and then we can play with them for a couple days and then say see y'all yeah and then mom or dad are left with the noise and the cleanup yeah yeah

so you've come full circle you're back in the buying toys for christmas uh phase of life huh yeah that's a good place to be yeah that's good that's good i'm gonna be it's gonna be a little while before i'm there but i'm looking forward to buying uh toys because i mean i kind of like to play with toys you know too oh yeah it's a blast yeah i'm enjoying being pop for uh uh for these years yeah that's awesome well uh we are in first samuel chapter 20 uh starting at verse one so we got a long chapter we'll see if we uh can make our way all the way through it or not yeah yeah this is a you know speaking of like family and stuff like that uh this is sort of a this is a bad transition you might say because well i was i was reading through this again i'd

prepared this last week we didn't get quite that far and so i was uh looking through the material again and man this is a this is a sad chapter yeah i mean i mean we've we've had some you know kind of issues with saul and jonathan before uh but when you get to the dialogue between uh jonathan and saul a little bit later in the chapter well that's a that's some tough stuff to read you know my my uh my son is home from the naval academy for for christmas break so it's been been good to spend some time with him and i guess because all that's fresh in my mind when i was reading through this uh this i don't even what it's not a dialogue i mean this kind of a yelling match almost between saul and and and jonathan his son it just uh kind of cut to

the heart because this is a this is a real low point in their in their uh father-son relationship so anyway the whole the chapter's long it's like 42 verses long and it's really three people primarily are involved here you've got jonathan and david and saul and you could the chapter is pretty easily divided into three different scenes i guess we could call them you have jonathan and david talking to each other in the first 23 verses and then Jonathan and Saul talk to each other in the next 10 verses. And then it wraps up with Jonathan and David once more talking to each other. So you got basically three different conversations that frame this chapter.

And this is going to be, it's not the last time that David and Jonathan talk. There will be one other occasion in chapter 23 when they have a brief encounter. But this, I guess you could really call this the, you know, goodbye. conversation that Jonathan and David have. And it's also, in a sense, a goodbye to the relationship between Jonathan and Saul as well. So anyway, I don't want to get too far ahead, but that just kind of sets the whole framework for the chapter. David, in the previous chapter, you know, he'd gone to Samuel and told him everything happening with Saul. And then, of course, Saul gets there, and we have this embarrassing scenario where he's stripped off his clothes.

He's lying there naked on the ground. He's prophesying all day, all this kind of eccentric activity going on. So David, it says he fled from there. So he just had to get away. So he runs off, and he goes to see Jonathan, wherever Jonathan was at, Gibeah, I'm assuming. And these are the first words out of his mouth. David goes to Jonathan, and he says, look, what have I done?

what what is my sin or what is my iniquity what is my sin before your father that he is seeking my life now one of the one of the sad components of this chapter is that jonathan in his reply can't really at this point can't bring himself to believe that his dad is actually doing this yeah if you remember back in chapter 19 verse 6 jonathan confronted saul his dad and said you You know, look, why are you after David? He's done nothing wrong. I mean, in fact, he's done lots of good stuff for the kingdom, right? I mean, he's brought about a great deliverance.

So why would you try and shed innocent blood? And at that point, chapter 19, verse 6, Saul listened to Jonathan. And he's like, okay, I will actually vow as the Lord lives, David shall not be put to death. So Saul made that promise. And so at this point, when David goes to Jonathan and says, why is your dad trying to kill me? Jonathan still thinks that his dad is going to be faithful to that vow. So his first words are, when David says this, his first words are, no, no, far from it.

You are not going to die. Look, my father does nothing, either great or small, without telling me about it, without disclosing it to me. So why should my father hide this thing from me? it is not so well this tell this tells you that saul did not disclose to jonathan that he had sent people to his house that he was willing to have him toted up on a cot to have him to kill him in person that he had this discussion with jonathan's sister about uh why she let david flee all this stuff jonathan is completely in the dark about this and one of the things that's sad about it is that jonathan it seems at some point had a very good relationship with his father and

that they told each other everything because jonathan absolutely believes like look my dad talks to me about everything certainly he would talk to me about this there's there's no way that i mean he talks to me about the smallest things there's no way that he wouldn't talk to me about trying to kill you i just talked to him about this not that long ago he's this is not this is not so and so even though jonathan loves david trusts david presumably he very much thinks that david is mistaken he's like he is telling his friend nah man you got this one wrong he's not trying to kill you yeah and this is and the reason that's painful is because jonathan believes it exactly yeah yeah and when you when you believe someone is being trustworthy i mean especially

your own dad i mean a friend would be one thing but this is your own father to to have that trust just destroyed as it's about to be yeah that's it's going to be really it's gonna it's gonna cut pretty pretty deep and then well david goes on to explain what's going on here he says in verse three he says your your father knows he knows well that i have found favor in your sight so he has said don't let jonathan know this lest he be grieved and then he goes on to say but truly as the lord lives and as your soul lives there is hardly a step between me and death. So David is saying in no uncertain terms, look, I mean, I know you think what you think, but listen, uh, your dad is well aware that we have

a real close friendship and he knows that we have kind of sworn this promise to each other. And so he's, he's not gonna let you know. He's gonna, he is this great thing or small thing. however you want to look at it he's not going to disclose to you he's going to withhold this this information from you yeah it'd be real real difficult to talk david uh out of the idea that saul's trying to kill him he's like dude this guy's been throwing spears at me got people showing up at my house i'm sorry jonathan but you are mistaken this dude is definitely trying to kill me yeah yeah there's this uh uh pretty graphic image here the universe through there's hardly a step between me and death i mean that that's how close that's how close yeah maybe maybe one brick

in a wall space between me and death that so jonathan to his credit says uh more or less well okay how are we going to figure this out i mean i believe one thing you're saying the opposite so how can we how can we resolve this verse four he says whatever you say i'll do so david comes up with a plan. He says, all right, here's what we're going to do. Tomorrow is going to be the new moon, and I should be sitting down to eat with the king. But let me go that I may hide myself in the field until the third evening. So the new moon is always a big time in Israelite society. In the whole sacrificial system, there's special sacrifices that are offered. Evidently, this is sort of a local type thing when there's a new moon beginning of the month, then they're going

to have some kind of celebration, some kind of feast. And the typical thing would be, of course, if David is one of the kind of in the top echelon, we might say, of Saul's cabinet or whatever, then he should be there, right? So he says, let me go. I'm going to hide myself in the field until the third evening. Verse six, if your father misses me at all, then here's the prepared speech that I want you to give. Now, I want to emphasize this because when we get to when Jonathan actually delivers the speech, he tweaks it. And he tweaks it in a way which actually backfires. It's not good. I'll explain that when we get there. But first of all, so this is what David tells Jonathan that he should say when Saul asks about why he's not there at the feast.

If your father misses me at all, then here's what you should say. David earnestly asked Levi to run to Bethlehem, his city, because it is the yearly sacrifice there for the whole family. So that's the speech. More or less, my family needed me. They asked me to come to Bethlehem for this feast, and so I went. That's what Jonathan is to tell him.

Now, verse 7, David goes on. So if Saul says, okay, that's fine, it's good, then I will be safe. But if your dad gets angry, know that he has decided on evil. So it's a pretty simple test. I'm not going to be there. If you tell him I've gone to Bethlehem and he's not upset, we're probably good. If you tell him I've gone to Bethlehem and he's mad, then there will be your confirmation. And it's sort of baked into this is an understanding that David going to Bethlehem to go be with his family to make a sacrifice shouldn't be that big a deal.

Right. Yeah. Just doing some honoring your father and mother business here. So you got to go. Dad called me home. Got to go sacrifice with the family. But if this sets Saul off, then you can know because it doesn't take much concerning David to set Saul off. So pretty, pretty straightforward test. And then he goes on, verse 8, he says, Therefore deal kindly with your servant, for you have brought your servant. He keeps referring to himself as servant.

So deal kindly with me, for you have brought me into a covenant of the Lord with you. But if there is iniquity in me, put me to death yourself. For why then should you bring me to your father? So this is just kind of an exaggerated claim on David's part to innocence. He's like, hey, if I've done something worthy of death, well, pull your sword out right now and pierce me through. Jonathan replies, no, far be it from you. For if I should indeed learn that evil has been decided by my father to come upon you, then would I not tell you about it? Then, verse 10, David says to Jonathan, who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?

So in other words, you know, how are you going to communicate to me what's happened when we have this whole scenario created at the new moon celebration? And then Jonathan goes on to kind of explain to David what they're going to do. Jonathan says to David, come, let's go out to the field. So they both go out into the field. And then ensues this conversation, kind of a fascinating aspect of this whole conversation, verses 12 through 17. this is a very forward-looking part of the conversation what happens in 12 and following is that jonathan is as it were resigning himself to the fact that one of these days david is going to be king and chances are david will do what a lot of kings did back

then. He will begin to eliminate the competition. And if you turn to 2 Samuel 9 and read what happens there, you'll see that David eliminated a whole lot of the family of Saul. It's going to be the same thing when Solomon becomes the king. He eliminates, when I say eliminate, I mean kill, eliminates a lot of the threats to his throne. This is not unusual when you have some kind of change in the monarchy in in these in this this society this this day and age if anybody was a threat well that threat was just simply annihilated and of course in jonathan's case he knows that if david becomes king he's threat number one in most people's eyes yeah yeah and so what what jonathan is really wanting to do here is he wants to make sure that when that day comes

that uh his family in particular like i mean like his direct descendants like his children or his grandchildren are are going to be safe so he says to david the lord the god of israel be witness when i have sounded out my father about this time tomorrow or the third day behold if there's if there's if there's if he speaks good towards you shall i not send it to you and make it known to you then verse 13 if it pleased my father to do you harm may the lord do so to jonathan more also if i do not make it known to you and send you away that you may go in safety and may the lord be with you as he has been with my father. So more or less, I'm going to let you know either way, whether it's good news or whether it's bad news. Verse 14, if I'm still alive, will you not

show me the loving kindness of the Lord that I may not die? And you shall not cut off your loving kindness from my house. So he's thinking in the future here, like my descendants forever, not even when the Lord cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth. So in other words, listen, when I'm gone, I want you to show chesed. I want you to show loving kindness or this loyalty to my descendants, just like you have shown it to me. And this will happen later on in one of my favorite but lesser known stories of the Old Testament, where David remembers this entire situation and does just that. Yeah, David is, in fact, he'll refer almost explicitly back to this particular chapter when he does that,

when he shows mercy to Jonathan's. You're thinking of Jonathan's crippled son? Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the one who's dropped and he's not able to walk. And he's afraid of David, that David's going to find out about him and have him killed

because he has some right to the throne and all this. And David has a strange, the only reason I'm bringing it up is because obviously it'll be a long time before we get to it. And since we're talking about this now, it'll still be, you'll forget about it by the time we get there.

i want to remind you again but uh what david does is i love that story because david does basically makes this move where he says is there anyone left the house of giant jonathan that i can show hesed to right i can show loving kindness to and they're like well there's just one guy but he's crippled and it's you know he's a mess and like he's hiding out and david's like let's do that it's this great picture that in the midst of david's reign and all kinds of other things going on it's like he has his memory jogged right and he says oh yeah you know what i want to do i want to show kindness to anyone that is in the house of jonathan yeah yeah because you i mean you do see uh everything from his marriage to mccall to you know he's taken out of of abner i mean there's

not his but abner's death there's there's a whole lot of there's a whole lot of death in the house of king saul let's put it that way when david becomes david becomes king but he shows loving kindness to Jonathan's son. And then we have verse 15 and 16. We kind of have a, I guess you'd call it a play on words. Three times the verb for cut is used. Verse 15, you shall not cut off your loving kindness from my house, not even when the Lord cuts off every one of your enemies.

Verse 16 has Jonathan cutting a covenant with the house of David. Most of your translation is going to say, so Jonathan made a covenant. But I think if we had translated that literally, we would have caught the connection between 15 and 16. So don't cut off your loving kindness from my house, even when the Lord has cut off every one of your enemies. And so on the basis of this, Jonathan cuts a covenant with the house of David. and then verse 17 Jonathan made David vow again because of his love that is because of David's love for Jonathan because David loved Jonathan as he loved his own life so three occurrences in that verse of the word for for love and of course we know that Jonathan loved David we know that

David loved Jonathan we've already talked about that a couple of a couple different times interesting isn't it that uh so jonathan yohonatan in hebrew is the is the hebrew equivalent of john in the gospels so in greek would be yoanes so hebrew yohonatan jonathan in greek yoanes and when you think of john the apostle he is the disciple whom jesus loved yeah it's kind of interesting here that Jonathan is the man whom David loved. So kind of a cool connection there between those two accounts in the Old and New Testament. Okay, 18 and following, what's going to happen? So Jonathan says to him, more or less, this is going to be the way I'm going to signal to you. We'll just kind of summarize this section. Your seat's going to be missed, and after I find

out how my, my dad reacts to this whole situation, then I want you to be hiding out this particular place. I'm going to come out with my bow and my quiver of arrows. I'm going to shoot three arrows at a target. And my, my, my, my, my servant with me, this kid, I'm going to tell him, Hey, you know, go, go get the arrows. And if, if I say the arrows are on this side of me or on this side of where actually shot them then david is going to be overhearing this and that's going to be the signal to david that everything's cool everything's good but jonathan says if i tell the lad no they're farther out go farther then that's going to be the signal that things are not good and that you need to find safety so anyway that's that's uh that's the straightforward plan okay uh verse 24

we kind of entering the second section here this is where we're going to have this dialogue between jonathan and his and his dad so david hides in the field and when the new moon came the king sat down to eat food the king sat in his usual spot and uh jonathan and abner they come in they get they go to their places but david's place it says was empty so verse 26 says that that first day saul didn't say anything because he thought, my translation has, he thought it's an accident. He, that is David, David is not clean. Surely he is not clean. So what Saul thinks is probably David had some sort of ritual impurity. You know, maybe it was a nocturnal emission or something like that. One of these things that render a person for one day ritually unclean. So Saul is kind of

think to himself okay i don't want to get too terribly suspicious because yeah maybe something happened and because of that he's not able to eat because he's not ritually pure yet it's probably what's going on so he doesn't blow his top immediately right different reasons for being a day late back then yeah a lot more options yes yeah very the leviticus uh makes everything a little bit uh culturally awkward verse 27 next day uh the the second day of the new moon david's place is empty once more so at this point you could you can probably guess that saul has kind of been uh either musing or uh or fuming about this all day wondering what's going on so at this point second day saul says to jonathan why has the son of jesse not come to the meal either

yesterday or today now notice throughout this whole dialogue that saul will never refer to him as david yeah it's weird like he can't even bring himself to say his name this is a good opportunity he says that the son of jesse uh jonathan can be like speaking of that that's exactly where he went uh right yeah a good segue dad thanks yeah yeah three times he's going to call him the son of jesse uh but never refers to him as david so where's the where's the son of jesse at he wasn't here yesterday he's not here today and this is where i mean i i started to say this is where jonathan slips up i mean he does because i'll explain why he does but i don't I really don't think there's anything that Jonathan could have said

that would have gone over well with his dad. But this is what he does say. Remember that David already gave him this prepared speech to give, right? But he's going to switch it up a little bit. David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem, Jonathan said. He told me, please let me go since our family has a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has commanded me to attend. And now, if I have found favor in your sight, please let me get away that I may see my brothers.

And it's for that reason that he's not come to the king's table. If you remember what David told him to say, this is, first of all, this is like at least twice as long, the speech. David kept it really clear. I mean, real short, like, okay, I want you to tell your dad that my family has this thing, and they wanted me there, and so I went. Kind of period. but Jonathan's got to like ham it up a little bit oh well you know

his brother his brother like made him come and they had all this these things going on and then Jonathan tries to make it sound a little more urgent

right like where it's not just that his parents requested and so he wanted to go and so that's what happened he's like his brother said

he was going to straight beat him up if he didn't come if he didn't come but here's where I think Jonathan really messed up Because when he said, please let me get away, at least that's my translation, please let me get away that I may see my brothers, he used the Hebrew word malat, which is the word that is used repeatedly throughout these chapters for when David would slip away or get away or flee from Saul. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. This is more of a fleeing. You have to imagine if someone said this to you, like, hey, where's Chad? Oh, he asked if he could flee to his parents' house. That's not exactly the same as going to see mom and dad for the holiday. Like, flee? What? Flee implies from something or someone.

Yeah. So one of the commentators called this Jonathan's Freudian slip. It was not a properly chosen verb to use because whether it was the whole conversation, the whole made up story, or whether it was that particular verb, whatever it was, things at this point are going to go downhill precipitously. verse 30 uh i i don't really know the best way to uh we talked about this last week i'm not exactly the sure about the best way to translate this uh you know this this show is this podcast is is by and large pg-13 uh let me just read you what the new american standard has and then i'll give you an english paraphrase he says you son of a perverse rebellious woman do i not know that you are choosing the son of jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness okay you have children in the car uh continue later yeah uh i mean essentially it seems that What Saul has just, he just cussed Jonathan out, essentially, and called him a son of a whore who is not just a whore, but is also a pain in the butt.

Yeah, that would be a pretty preachy 13 way to read it. Yeah, I mean, it's worse than that, but that's what it is. and then says that what he's done in his choosing of David over him is that that shame is greater than his mother being a rebellious whore. Yeah. As I've thought about this verse these last two weeks, there are very few exchanges in the Bible that are really as, I don't know what's the word I want to use.

I mean, they're not just angry and heated exchanges, but uh i mean this is this is pretty pretty twisted language i mean i mean i mean father can use for his son and maybe i'm reading this wrong but like this this like to the shame of your mother's nakedness when he just referred to his mother in that way does seem like you say that like whoredom would be ashamed of what you're doing yeah yeah so yeah it's pretty hard to to push this language too far yeah and bear in mind you know this is this is a dad talking to his son so at this point uh i think saul has completely lost uh every every if he had any reservation whatsoever he's completely lost now because not to put ourselves in saul's shoes but

to try and think from his perspective you know he could kind of understand david betraying him he could kind of understand other people betraying him but for saul his son has now betrayed him notice he says you are choosing the son of jesse implicit in that is that you are choosing the son of jesse over against me so rather than being faithful to your own father you are being faithful to david instead and you are doing this to your shame and the shame of your mother's nakedness and then he goes on to explain verse 31 for as long as the son of jesse lives on the earth neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now he's saying like this,

and the reason I hate David so much is because of you. Like, I'm trying to look out for your future. Yeah, this is like a Heisenberg breaking bad. I'm just doing this for my family, right? I'm just doing this for you. If you don't want to kill David, it's for you. It's not for me. I'm already king.

I'm not doing this for me. It's what's going to happen to you. I know you don't have the guts to kill this guy, so I've got to ensure your position on the throne by taking this guy out. Yeah. And then he has this play on words because he calls him a son of Jesse again. But then he ends it up by saying, therefore, now send and bring him to me that he must surely die.

But the Hebrew there is, for he is a son of death. So in the Hebrew phraseology, that is often the way they say someone deserves to die. David himself will use this particular language later when he's mad about the parable that the prophet tells him about the man who took the one ewe lamb from the poor man. So this man is a son of death. So here he says this son of Jesse is a son of death. So Jonathan's going to reply. He answers his dad. He says, why should it be put to death?

What has he done? And Saul replies nonverbally. he threw his spear at uh jonathan so he uh he's decided that throwing his spear at david is not enough now he's going to put david's friend to death as well i love this next line i want you to think about this line like the most understated thing ever so jonathan knew that his father was determined to put david to death well i would say i would say that he does know that yeah there are these lines sometimes you come across in the bible you're like yeah well that's pretty much understatement of the year yeah like at this point jonathan's like you know what i think david was

right yeah yeah i think david maybe david was on to something maybe maybe my dad really does want to kill him the spear i think was the exclamation point yeah on the threat so jonathan understandably is angry he gets up from the table in fierce anger didn't eat his food on the second day of the new moon because he was grieved over david because his father had dishonored him so i mean it's a It's a highly emotional scene all the way around. You've got father and son at each other. You can tell just by the language that this was not a conversation that took place in a typical volume of a conversation. This was probably something that everybody in the whole house heard because I'm sure that it was shouted when Saul blew up at Jonathan.

Yeah, and apart from, you know, Jesus, Jonathan really comes across as one of the more solid guys in the entire Scriptures. All this goes down, and what is he grieved about? He's grieved that his father had said bad things about David. You're like, dude, he just said horrible things about you and through his spirit you, and you're like, I can't believe the kind of stuff you're saying about my friend. Yeah. I mean, Jonathan is just the best kind of friend you can have, right? yeah i mean if uh if anybody was wanted to highlight real honorable people in the scriptures

you know people that are actually worthy of emulation it's pretty short list yeah jonathan would definitely be on that list yeah yeah over the course of of studying first samuel he's just grown in uh in my estimation because yeah i mean of course he's of course he's still a sinner uh we just don't know we just don't know in what way he's a sinner we just have zero evidence of it right yeah but from uh uh from the the biblical narrative man he comes across as quite the saint yeah he just uh he's a great friend and he's you know up until this point he found it hard to hard to question his father he really believed that that saul was telling the truth so anyway wrap wrap things up here with the rest of the chapter we have our third scene coming

up here this is going to be the the sort of goodbye between jonathan david so in the next morning jonathan went out to the field for his appointment with david he took a took this kid with him and he uh he shot the arrow or arrows like he had told david that he was was going to do so as the lad was running he shot an arrow past him and when that kid got to the plates where the arrow was jonathan called out the arrow is beyond you or is not the arrow beyond you which of course was the signal that he had already decided he would give to david so jonathan called after the lad hurry be quick don't stay and jonathan's lad he got the arrow he came back to to jonathan it says that the kid really didn't know what was going on so he was

He's unaware of this whole conspiracy that's taking place. Only Jonathan and David knew about it. And then, I think this is significant. Verse 40 says, Jonathan gave his weapons to the lad and said to him, go and bring them to the city. The reason I think that is significant is because what has Jonathan just been told by his father? He's been told that David is his greatest threat. And here, he gives his weapons away. So he's going to walk up to David completely unarmed, which means that he has an implicit trust in the love and friendship that he has with David.

He's not hiding a knife thinking, well, if I'm completely wrong about David, at least I'll have one weapon. No, he hands it over to the servant and tells him, go back into the city. verse 41 when when the kid was gone david got up from uh well we're not sure how to translate this the hebrew and the greek traditions have two different uh two different ways to translate this the hebrew has david rose from the south side whatever that means and the the septuagint the greek has david rose from the a mound or a stone heap which kind of makes more sense in this context that david was hiding behind these these rocks but whatever however you translate it david got up and uh goes to jonathan he falls on his face to the ground he bows three times so he's

showing jonathan uh great honor says they they kissed each other they wept together but david more so a highly emotional scene here as well it's kind of the contrast with the the other emotional scene that we saw between david and i mean between jonathan and saul now we have two friends basically closer than brothers who are they know they know that from this point on nothing will be the same and that any chance that their friendship had of continuing with you know an ongoing presence in each other's life is going to be over now sometimes the the scriptures say something you almost think is unnecessary but uh but also like it hits harder like for some reason when you read this and if you just read and they kissed one another and went with one another and

there was a period there that hits pretty hard but when it says wept with one another david weeping more uh yeah you're like man this is this is rough yeah it is really rough and i think that i think for david because uh i think david knows this is sort of a double loss for jonathan i mean david is he's losing the the sort of friendship that he has with jonathan this the friendship that he has with jonathan will not be the same after this so this is certainly a loss that he's suffering jonathan is losing losing everything at this point so i mean like he jonathan david knows that jonathan's relationship with his father is now never going to be the same uh and that that their relationship now is going to be forever changed and so this is they i feel

like david is is weeping also for for the how expensive this this has all been for jonathan yeah yeah he's so i mean he's sort of a i'm not exactly but i'm just thinking of john the baptist you know john the baptist had to decrease that the messiah would increase and if there's an old testament character that decreases man it's jonathan you know he he's always humbling himself He's always taking second place. He's always supporting David, pledging him his love, his friendship, his devotion, making these covenants with him, because he knows that David is really the Lord's chosen. He's the Lord's anointed, even though, you know, by rights, the throne belonged to Jonathan.

But it's not to be, and Jonathan knows that. So he is, in that way, he's pointing us toward the same thing that John the Baptist did. Yeah. Okay, wrap up here. last verse, Jonathan says to David, go in safety, go in peace, in as much as we have sworn to each other in the name of the Lord, saying the Lord will be between me and you and between my descendants and your descendants forever. Then he rose and departed while Jonathan went into the city. And that's the end of the chapter. So we'll see Jonathan and David together one more time in

chapter 23. But at this point, we're going to have Jonathan, I mean, we're going to have David basically on the run. Yeah, this is sort of the beginning of, you're going to get a lot of psalms out of the next part of David's life. Yeah, we're going to have, in fact, a couple of references to Psalm 34 and 56 and some other ones coming up in this next chapter.

Yeah, awesome. Well, guys, thanks for hanging out. We did, in fact, get through this long chapter, so congratulations to us. Congratulations to you for being able to maintain with us. Chad, I'll see you next week for chapter 21. All right. We'll see you then.