1 Samuel 19 Bible study: Without a cause

The chapter opens with an order to Saul's own son and servants: "Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants, that they should kill David" (19:1). The next words are, "But Jonathan, Saul’s son, greatly delighted in David" (19:1) (tap delighted). Jonathan warns David, "Saul my father seeks to kill you" (19:2), and says he will speak to his father himself (19:3). "Jonathan spoke good of David to Saul his father" (19:4). His words are about what David had done: "he has not sinned against you, and because his works have been very good toward you" (19:4); "he put his life in his hand and struck the Philistine, and the LORD worked a great victory for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced" (19:5). Then he asks, "Why then will you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without a cause?" (19:5) (tap innocent and without a cause). In Hebrew victory is teshu'ah, the word the WEB renders rescued when Saul said at Jabesh Gilead, "today the LORD has rescued Israel" (11:13), and rejoiced is the verb of "Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly" (11:15).

1 Samuel 19:5→leads toJohn 15:25

Jonathan reminded his father that David's "works have been very good toward you" (19:4), and "You saw it and rejoiced" (19:5), and asked, "Why then will you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without a cause?" (19:5). Jesus said of those who hated him, "now they have seen and also hated both me and my Father" (John 15:24), and "this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’" (John 15:25). The Psalms have those words: "Those who hate me without a cause" (Psalm 69:4; see also Psalm 35:19). In Hebrew without a cause there is chinnam, the word of 19:5; John gives Jesus' words in Greek. No New Testament passage cites 1 Samuel 19, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some see in Saul's pursuit of David, who had done him only good, the same thing Jesus names: being hated without a cause. Others read each in its own setting: Jonathan pleads with one king for one man (19:4-6), and Jesus speaks of the world's hatred of him and of his Father (John 15:18, 15:23).

מָלַטmalatsay ma-LAT

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "slip away", "escape", and for the form in 19:11, "deliver". Strong's: "properly, to be smooth, i.e. (by implication) to escape (as if by slipperiness)". The chapter uses it five times, and these are its first uses in 1 Samuel. "David fled and escaped that night" (19:10). Michal: "If you don’t save your life tonight" (19:11), where save is this verb. "He went away, fled, and escaped" (19:12). Saul to Michal: "let my enemy go, so that he has escaped" (19:17). "Now David fled and escaped, and came to Samuel at Ramah" (19:18). The slipped away of 19:10 is another verb. The word stays with David: "escaped to Adullam’s cave" (22:1), and "I should escape into the land of the Philistines" (27:1). Its first use in the Hebrew Bible is at Sodom, in the word to Lot: "Escape for your life!" (Genesis 19:17).