1 Samuel 23 · a question people ask

The LORD said the men of Keilah would hand David over, and they never did. Was the answer wrong?

In the text

Look at what David asked. He had heard "that Saul seeks to come to Keilah to destroy the city for my sake" (23:10), and he asked two things: "Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard?" (23:11). The LORD answered the second, "He will come down" (23:11), and when David asked the first again, "They will deliver you up" (23:12). Both questions were about Saul coming to Keilah for David while David was there. After the answers, David and his men "departed out of Keilah" (23:13), and "Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah; and he gave up going there" (23:13). Saul didn't come down either: the answers were about Keilah with David in it, and David didn't stay. The Bible speaks of what would have happened in other places too. Jesus said of Capernaum, "if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in you, it would have remained until today" (Matthew 11:23). This chapter doesn't say how the LORD answered through the ephod or how he knew, and this answer doesn't go past it.

The verses

“You, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, you will go down to Hades. For if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in you, it would have remained until today.”
Matthew 11:23 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of 1 Samuel 23

1 Samuel 23: Into whose hand?

Chapter 23 keeps asking whose hand David will fall into. Saul says God has delivered him into his (23:7), the LORD says Keilah's men would deliver him up (23:12), and the Ziphites promise to (23:20). But "God didn’t deliver him into his hand" (23:14), and Saul's own son comes to David and "strengthened his hand in God" (23:16).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions