1 Samuel 19:11 - Meaning and Application

Here we see, first, Saul’s further plan to do David harm. David had escaped the javelin and went straight home, as he did. Saul then sent guards to his house to wait there and kill him in the morning as soon as he came out, (1 Samuel 19:11). Josephus says Saul meant to drag David before a court set up to condemn him as a traitor and then put him to death. But the text shows they were given a shorter order, they were to kill him outright.

No wonder David later called his enemies bloodthirsty men in the psalm he wrote at this time, (Psalm 59). That psalm came from the very scene described in (1 Samuel 19:2, 1 Samuel 19:3, 1 Samuel 19:7), when Saul sent men and they watched the house to kill him. David says there that violence was close to their mouths, as if their words themselves carried swords.

Next, we see David’s remarkable rescue from this danger. Michal, Saul’s daughter and David’s wife, became the means of his safety. Saul had given her to David as a trap, but she ended up protecting him. Satan often gets defeated by his own scheme.

We are not told exactly how Michal learned of the danger. Perhaps someone from the court warned her, or perhaps she noticed the soldiers around the house when they went to bed. They were so quiet that they seemed to think no one could hear them, which fits David’s words in (Psalm 59:7). Michal knew her father’s hatred for David, so she quickly understood what was happening and acted to save her husband.

She first warned David that the danger was urgent, saying, “Tomorrow you will be killed,” (1 Samuel 19:11). Josephus paraphrases her meaning this way, if the sun saw him there the next morning, it would never see him again. She then helped him escape. David was skilled at fighting, not at running away, and if it had been lawful, he could likely have forced his way out by sword. But Michal lowered him through a window because the doors were guarded, and he fled and escaped, (1 Samuel 19:12).

At that time David likely wrote Psalm 59, either in his room before leaving or in the place where he hid. That psalm shows how calm his mind was in the middle of fear, and how firmly he trusted God. Even though the plan was to kill him in the morning, he could still say with confidence, “I will sing aloud of your mercy in the morning,” (Psalm 59:16).

Michal then used a deception against Saul and the men he had sent. In the morning, when the doors were opened and David was gone, the messengers searched the house. Michal told them he was sick in bed, (1 Samuel 19:14). To make the lie more convincing, she had placed an image in the bed and covered it so it looked like David asleep, with goats’ hair at the head to resemble his hair, (1 Samuel 19:13).

Michal cannot be defended for telling a lie and covering it with a trick. God’s truth did not need her falsehood. Yet her purpose was to delay Saul long enough for David to get away. She likely knew the messengers would chase him if they found he had fled. The messengers showed some mercy by not troubling a sick man. Those in misery should be treated with pity.

But Saul, when he heard it, ordered David brought to him, sick or well: “Bring him to me in the bed, that I may kill him,” (1 Samuel 19:15). It was cruel and shameful to boast over a sick man and to demand the death of someone who might already be dying naturally. Saul’s thirst for blood and revenge was so great that he did not want David dead unless he himself could be the killer. He had once said, “Let not my hand be against him,” but now his passions had become even more violent.

When Saul sent the messengers again, the deception was uncovered, (1 Samuel 19:16). But by then David was likely safe, so Michal was not much troubled by the discovery. Saul then rebuked her for helping David escape, saying, “Why have you deceived me like this?” (1 Samuel 19:17). It shows Saul’s low and unreasonable spirit that he expected his daughter, simply because she was his daughter, to betray her husband unjustly. She should have cleaved to her husband and left her father’s house, as marriage requires. People who will not be bound by reason or religion often expect others to break those bonds just as easily.

In her reply, Michal did not protect her husband’s honor as carefully as she had protected his life. She said, “He said to me, Let me go, or why should I kill you?” (1 Samuel 19:17). That answer was false, because she herself had urged David to flee. It was also unfair and unkind to suggest that David threatened to kill her if she would not let him go. That could only deepen Saul’s rage against him. David was nothing like the savage, harsh man she described. Still, David suffered at the hands of both friends and enemies, and so did the Son of David.