1 Samuel 23:19 - Meaning and Application

Here the Ziphites offered to help Saul by betraying David to him (1 Samuel 23:19, 20). David was hiding in the wilderness of Ziph (1 Samuel 23:14, 15), and he trusted the people there more because they belonged to his own tribe. They should have been glad to help a man who brought honor to their tribe and would likely bring even more honor later.

David was no threat to them. He did not plunder the land or trouble it with his men, but was ready to protect it and to do whatever good he could. Yet, to win Saul’s favor, they went to Saul on their own. They told him exactly where David was staying (1 Samuel 23:19), invited him to bring his forces into their country, and promised to hand David over to him (1 Samuel 23:20). Saul had not even asked them to do this, and they offered to betray David without even demanding a reward.

Saul gladly accepted their report and saw this as a chance to keep hunting David in the wilderness, hoping at last to capture him. He thanked them warmly for it, saying, “Blessed be you of the Lord” (1 Samuel 23:21). God was close to his lips, though far from his heart. Saul called himself a miserable man who needed pity, but really his own envy and cruel spirit had made him miserable.

He also tried to suggest that most of his own people cared little for him, while the Ziphites had shown him kindness. Then he told them to watch David more closely, because he heard that David “deals very subtly” (1 Samuel 23:22). Saul was painting David as a crafty man who meant harm, when in fact David’s only aim was to keep himself safe. It is strange that Saul did not go at once with them, but God gave David time to escape.

The Ziphites had set spies over every place where David might be found, so Saul felt sure he could seize him if he was still in the land (1 Samuel 23:23). He now thought David was in his grasp and looked forward to destroying him.

When David heard that the Ziphites had betrayed him, he moved from the hill of Hachilah to the wilderness of Maon (1 Samuel 23:24). At this time he wrote Psalm 54, as the title shows. In that psalm he calls the Ziphites strangers, even though they were Israelites, because they had treated him so cruelly. Yet he still puts his trust in God’s care: “Behold, God is my helper.”

Saul then pressed hard after David (1 Samuel 23:25), until the two parties came so close that only one mountain stood between them (1 Samuel 23:26). David and his men were on one side, fleeing in fear, and Saul and his men were on the other, pursuing in hope. But that mountain became a picture of God’s providence, standing between David and the man who wanted to destroy him, much like the pillar of cloud stood between Israel and Egypt.

David was hidden by that mountain, and Saul was stopped by it. David fled like a bird to his mountain (Psalm 11:1), and found God to be his shelter, like the shadow of a great rock. Saul hoped to surround David and trap him and his men, but the ground did not suit his plan, and it failed. The place was later given a new name to remember that event, Selah-hammahlekoth, which means “the rock of division,” because it divided Saul from David (1 Samuel 23:28).

Then God delivered David from the danger. Just as Saul was about to seize him, news came that the Philistines were invading the land (1 Samuel 23:27). Very likely they threatened Saul’s own estate, which would be taken or damaged by the invaders. Saul had shown so little concern for Keilah’s distress and for David’s rescue of it earlier in the chapter that we have reason to think he would not have stopped chasing David unless his own interests were at risk.

Whatever the reason, Saul had to turn back and fight the Philistines (1 Samuel 23:28). In that way David was saved when he was almost destroyed. Saul lost his prey, and God was honored as David’s wonderful protector. The Philistines did not mean to help David, but God’s overruling providence, which orders all events and their timing, used even that invasion for David’s good. God’s wisdom is never without ways to preserve his people.

As Saul was turned aside, so another Saul was changed at just the right time, when he was breathing threats and murder against the Lord’s people (Acts 9:1). After this escape, David took refuge in the natural strongholds of the wilderness of En-gedi (1 Samuel 23:29). Dr. Lightfoot thinks this was the wilderness of Judah, where David later wrote Psalm 63. That psalm shows as much deep devotion as almost any of his songs, because in every place and in every condition David still kept up his fellowship with God.