David lied to the priest Ahimelech to get supplies without raising suspicion. He deceived Achish, king of Gath, by pretending to be insane in order to save his own life. He cut off a corner of Saul's robe without killing him, to prove he was innocent of any conspiracy against the king.

While the last incident might be considered an act of faith and righteousness, the first two certainly would not. In the first, his lie indirectly led to the death of Ahimelech and his entire family of priests. In the second, feigning madness may have been ingenious, but it was no demonstration of great faith.

We often set these aside to focus on the last incident, where David declared he would not kill Saul because Saul was "the Lord's anointed." Now here is the problem. Saul had already been rejected by God twice, and God had even sent a harmful spirit to torment him. What is more, God had anointed a new king — David — through the very prophet, Samuel, who had first anointed Saul. In my view, Saul was no longer God's anointed servant to rule over Israel. Saul was in disobedience to God, all the more so because he was pursuing the life of David, God's true anointed king.

Another way to look at David's words and actions may be to see him using the same cunning he used in lying to Ahimelech and feigning madness before Achish. Consider this: if David had killed Saul, it would soon have been evident to Saul's men, who were right outside the cave, that something was amiss. They would have found David trapped in the cave and killed him and his men for treachery. What is more, killing Saul would not have guaranteed that David would be king, for Saul had more than one possible successor; one of his sons would simply have taken his place. It would have made David a lifelong fugitive — with the difference that he would now be guilty of killing the king, even if in self-defense.

So I believe David's reason for not killing Saul may have been based less on a godly motive than on a strategic one. Even so, God certainly preserved his life through all these incidents in order to fulfill His purposes through him.

A parallel might be found in how God preserved Jacob, whose life was full of lies, deceptions, and stratagems. He took Esau's birthright for a bowl of stew and conspired with his mother to take Esau's blessing. While serving his uncle Laban for Rachel and Leah, he did not leave with his wealth of livestock without stratagem and deception.

What I am trying to say is that we should not be too quick to ascribe nobility and godliness to our biblical heroes. While they had moments of great faith, they could be just as flawed as those God did not choose to fulfill His purposes. What I am left with once again is the conclusion Jesus declared to Nicodemus: the light has come into the world, and "people loved the darkness rather than the light" (John 3:19). And I am left with Paul's verdict in Romans: none is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God; all have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one (a paraphrase of Romans 3:10–12).

I am left silent before God, acknowledging that He alone is good. Every hero in the Bible, like every believer who has ever lived, has nothing to boast of except the grace of a sovereign God. And if one or another seems to shine in their own righteousness, it is likely because their whole story has not yet been told. To God alone be all the glory!

AI-Expanded Reflection

The comment offers a provocative reading of David's restraint, and it rightly refuses to whitewash David's lies. The text itself confirms the cost of the first deception: when Abiathar, the sole survivor of Doeg's massacre of the priests, fled to David, David confessed, "I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house" (22:22). Scripture records David's flaws plainly.

Most interpreters, however, understand David's refusal to harm Saul as genuinely principled, pointing to several details in the text. David's conscience "struck him" even for cutting Saul's robe (24:5). He spared Saul a second time in chapter 26 in circumstances where he could have escaped easily, again appealing to the Lord's anointing (26:9–11, 23). He repeatedly left judgment to God: "May the Lord judge between me and you," but David's hand would not be against Saul (24:12). And after Saul's death, David executed the man who claimed to have killed him (2 Samuel 1:14–16). On this reading, David honored Saul's office not because Saul was righteous but because God had placed him there, trusting God to remove him in His time. Readers can weigh both interpretations. What the comment and the text agree on is its conclusion: God's purposes advanced through a flawed man by grace, and "let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

Then Doeg the Edomite, who was standing by the servants of Saul, said, “I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub... Then the king said to Doeg, “You turn around and attack the priests.” And Doeg the Edomite turned around and attacked the priests, and he killed that day eighty-five men who wore the linen ephod. And he struck Nob the city of the priests with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and infants; also oxen, donkeys, and sheep he struck with the edge of the sword (1 Samuel 22:9,18–19).

We know very little about Doeg the Edomite, except what is given to us in 1 Samuel 21–22. But there is a psalm of David, Psalm 52, in which the superscription reveals that it was written on the occasion of Doeg the Edomite's treachery.

For the director of music. A maskil of David. When Doeg the Edomite had gone to Saul and told him: “David has gone to the house of Ahimelek.”

1 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero? Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God? 2 You who practice deceit, your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor. 3 You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth. 4 You love every harmful word, you deceitful tongue!

5 Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin: He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. 6 The righteous will see and fear; they will laugh at you, saying, 7 “Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!”

8 But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever. 9 For what you have done I will always praise you in the presence of your faithful people. And I will hope in your name, for your name is good.

This psalm of David suggests that Doeg was both deceitful and evil in his treachery against Ahimelech and the people of Nob (see vv. 1–4). For while he revealed to King Saul that he saw David with Ahimelech and that the priest gave David provisions, Doeg neglected to inform Saul that David had pretended to be on a secret mission on behalf of the king. He did not inform the king that Ahimelech was deceived by David, and that Ahimelech provided support because he thought he was serving the king (cf. 1 Samuel 21:2), which would have confirmed Ahimelech's own testimony (1 Samuel 22:14–15).

The psalm also suggests that he was probably handsomely rewarded and given status by Saul for turning against the priests of Nob (see v. 7).

Saul's personal guards were more righteous than Doeg the Edomite (cf. 1 Samuel 22:17) because they were unwilling to harm the innocent priests of the LORD. Doeg may have even gone beyond what Saul asked, because he also killed the men, women, children, infants, and even the animals in the city of Nob.

Now, David recognized that he was in part responsible for the death of Ahimelech and his family, for he had seen Doeg the Edomite there and knew he would inform Saul (1 Samuel 22:22; cf. 1 Samuel 21:7). Perhaps David thought that Doeg would also reveal David's deception and preserve the lives of the priests. Doeg had no such integrity, and David risked the lives of the priests on a flimsy hope.

Friends, these kinds of accounts disturb me. David, who lied to the priests, was preserved by God (cf. 1 Samuel 23:14). But the priests, who innocently supported David and were honest with King Saul, were killed, along with their whole families and livestock. Surely, we must acknowledge here the sovereign purposes of God and the truth of Paul's words:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! (Romans 11:33).

What are we to learn from this? Let us remain faithful regardless of the circumstances. Let us not judge matters based on things we see and the experiences of this life, which provide no certain basis for a right judgment. But instead let us judge things and people based on the Word of God alone, for on this basis alone will we have to give an account before God (cf. Hebrews 4:12–13).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The massacre at Nob exposes what happens when royal suspicion joins the willingness of a subordinate to carry out an evil order. Saul's own servants refuse to kill the priests, but Doeg acts. The distinction matters: obedience to a ruler does not make an action righteous, and refusal can be the morally faithful response. The narrative does not present authority as a shelter from responsibility. Both the command and its execution remain subject to God's judgment.

Psalm 52 interprets destructive speech as part of the evil. Its images of a razor-like tongue and uprooted life contrast with the flourishing olive tree that trusts God's steadfast love. Words can prepare the way for violence by shaping how a person or group is perceived. A report may contain true observations while becoming deceptive through omission, insinuation, or a false account of motives. The psalm therefore challenges more than obvious factual lies; it confronts speech that serves the destruction of others.

Some details proposed in the original remain uncertain. First Samuel does not explicitly state how much Doeg knew about David's explanation to Ahimelech, whether he received a particular reward, or what David hoped he would report. Psalm 52 speaks of trust in wealth, but it does not document a payment from Saul for this event. Those possibilities should not be confused with what the narrative establishes: Ahimelech protests his innocence, Saul rejects the defense, and Doeg carries out the killing.

David's acknowledgment to Abiathar is a crucial part of the account. He does not use his own preservation as proof that his deception was harmless. He recognizes responsibility and offers refuge to the survivor. The story thus resists a simple division in which the preserved person must have acted rightly and the dead must have deserved their fate. God's continuing purpose for David does not erase David's contribution to the danger faced by others.

The original's disturbance is therefore appropriate. An appeal to providence should not make the victims disappear into an abstract explanation. Earlier prophecy concerning Eli's house forms part of Samuel's larger narrative, but readers should be cautious about claiming to know every purpose involved in each death. Romans 11:33 expresses the limits of human comprehension before God's wisdom; it does not authorize us to call the massacre morally acceptable because God remained sovereign over history.

The practical response includes truthful speech, refusal of wrongful orders, protection of those endangered, and honest acknowledgment of one's own role in harm. Scripture supplies the moral framework, while careful attention to evidence remains necessary for applying it. We should not dismiss observable facts as spiritually irrelevant simply because appearances cannot reveal the whole of providence. Faithfulness requires both God's revealed standard and truthful examination of what happened.

Psalm 52 ultimately locates hope in a goodness stronger than the apparent success of the violent. Trust does not require immediate vindication or a complete explanation of suffering. It enables people to resist evil without adopting its methods, to grieve without surrendering hope, and to praise the God whose justice is not exhausted by what can presently be seen.

Saul was told David had gone to Keilah, and said that God had delivered him into his hands, since David had shut himself in by entering a town with gates and bars (a reference to 1 Samuel 23:7).

I find it striking that even though Saul knows the kingdom has been taken from him and that God's Spirit has departed, he still believes God is with him and for him. He continues to invoke the LORD's name while disobeying Him — even after having an innocent priest, his family, and the people of Nob killed. And here he believes God is handing David over to him.

Something is badly wrong, and I recognize it from the closing chapters of Judges, where everyone did what was right in his own eyes. They had a distorted sense of what pleased God and believed they were worshiping Him while engaged in idolatry. In both cases I sense sincerity. Micah genuinely believed God was pleased that he had hired a Levite to help him worship his idols. Saul genuinely believed God had given David over to him.

Friends, we have many sincere people in the church, and many sincere leaders. Some of them are sincerely wrong. I am reminded of Jesus's words: not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of the Father — many will say on that day that they prophesied, drove out demons, and performed miracles in His name (a paraphrase of Matthew 7:21–22).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The observation about sincerity is the useful one, and it cuts against a common assumption that genuine conviction is self-validating. Saul is not a cynic. He keeps building altars, keeps consulting prophets, and at the end seeks a word from God so desperately that when God does not answer he goes to a medium — which is the final measure of how badly the instrument had drifted.

Worth noting what the narrative gives the reader that Saul does not have. In the same chapter, David asks two direct questions and gets two direct answers, including the information that the men of Keilah will hand him over. Saul's confidence rests on an inference from circumstances; David's action rests on an answer he asked for. The chapter places the two side by side without comment, and the difference is not sincerity but whether either man had actually asked.

In this section, David is on the run from Saul, seeking help from Ahimelech, the priest of Nob, who gives him consecrated bread and Goliath's sword. Doeg the Edomite happens to witness all of this, and later reports it to Saul. Saul summons Ahimelech and his whole family, and orders his guards to kill them — but they refuse. Doeg, however, is more than willing, killing eighty-five priests along with all the other men, women, children, infants, and animals of Nob. Abiathar, one of Ahimelech's sons, escapes and flees to David, who tells him he knew, the moment he saw Doeg that day, that this would happen — taking personal responsibility for the death of Abiathar's entire family (a paraphrase of 1 Samuel 22:22). I can only imagine David's guilt and anger upon learning this.

As David continues fleeing Saul, he finally gets a chance to confront him directly in 1 Samuel 24. Unbeknownst to Saul, David and his men are hiding in the very cave Saul enters to relieve himself. David's men tell him this is the day the LORD promised, delivering his enemy into his hands to do with as he wishes (a paraphrase of 1 Samuel 24:4). David has a real chance to kill Saul — but instead simply cuts off a corner of his robe, and even feels remorse for that small act. Why? David had already killed thousands in his military campaigns, celebrated in song for it — but Saul was different, not an ordinary man, but one God Himself had anointed. He tells his men the LORD forbid he should ever raise a hand against his master, the LORD's anointed (a paraphrase of 1 Samuel 24:6), then leaves the cave to convince Saul he means no harm, telling him the LORD will avenge whatever wrongs Saul has done against him, but his own hand will never touch him (a paraphrase of 1 Samuel 24:12).

David had the perfect opportunity to kill a man who'd already tried to kill him repeatedly, hunted him like an animal, massacred an entire town, and driven his family into exile — yet he insists it's the LORD alone who will avenge him. David's faith here is genuinely remarkable, which is exactly why God would later testify of him as a man after His own heart, one who would do everything God wanted (a paraphrase of Acts 13:22).

AI-Expanded Reflection

David's restraint toward Saul takes on even more weight once you notice what he's simultaneously carrying from the Nob massacre — a man who had already accepted personal responsibility for an entire priestly family's slaughter, at least partly caused by his own decision to seek help there, still refuses to take vengeance into his own hands against the very person ultimately responsible for it. That combination — genuine grief and guilt over real, devastating loss, held together with continued restraint toward the person who caused it — is a considerably harder discipline than restraint alone; David isn't simply choosing not to act on abstract principle, he's choosing not to act while carrying fresh, personal, devastating grief that would have made almost anyone else's vengeance feel entirely justified.