1 Samuel 26:17

DAVID'S EARNEST APPEAL TO SAUL

"Saul recognized David's voice, and said, "Is this your voice, my son David"? And David said, "It is my voice, my lord, O king." And he said, "Why does my lord pursue after his servant? For what have I done? What guilt is on my hands? Now therefore let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If it is the Lord who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering; but if it is men, may they be cursed before the Lord, for they have driven me out this day that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord, saying, `Go serve other gods.' Now therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth away from the presence of the Lord; for the king of Israel has come out to seek my life, like one who hunts a partridge in the mountains."

"It is my voice my lord O king" (1 Samuel 26:17). There is a dramatic difference in David's reply to Saul here as contrasted with that other occasion at Engedi. There David addressed Saul as "My father" (1 Samuel 24:11), and Saul here sought the same kind of response from David, but David no longer used that terminology. Saul had given his wife Michal to Palti, and there were no grounds whatever, either for Saul's words, "My son," or for David's responding with, "My father." It was this, perhaps, that enabled David instantly to see that Saul's words were those of a confirmed hypocrite. There are many irreconcilable differences in these two accounts in which Saul's life was spared by David.

"They have driven me out ... that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord." (1 Samuel 26:19) Every Jew felt that the presence of God pertained especially to the land of Israel, and no Hebrew wanted to die away from it, but, "It is unnecessary to infer that David believed that God was operative only in the land of Israel. Such a view is ruled out by 1 Samuel 30:7,8."[13] "Here David pleaded with Saul for some opportunity that would prevent his having to leave his own people and the land of Israel."[14] The failure of Saul to provide any answer that David could trust was at once followed by David's leaving the land of Israel for that of the Philistines. This, of course, was a far different result from that which followed the first sparing of Saul's life by David.

"Like one who hunts a partridge in the mountains" (1 Samuel 26:19). The older versions use the word "flea" instead of "partridge" here, and critics love to cite this as one of the similarities with the event at Engedi, but, as H. P. Smith wrote, "This reading gives a sense more in accord with the context."[15]