1 Samuel 20 - New Catholic Bible (NCB)

Chapter 20

David and Jonathan’s Friendship. ¹ David fled from Naioth in Ramah and he went to Jonathan and said, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father that he is trying to take my life?” ² He answered him, “You will surely not die! Everything that my father does, whether it is important or insignificant, he confides to me. Why would my father hide this from me? It is just not so.” ³ But David swore an oath saying, “Your father knows very well that you like me, so he said to himself, ‘I will not let Jonathan know about it, lest he be grieved by it.’ As the Lord lives and as you live, there is only one step between me and death.”

⁴ So Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do for you, I will do it.” ⁵ David said to Jonathan, “Tomorrow is the new moon celebration,^[a] and I am supposed to dine with the king. Let me go and hide myself in the field until the evening of the day after tomorrow. ⁶ If your father should miss me, tell him, ‘David begged me for permission to hurry to Bethlehem because they are offering an annual sacrifice there for the whole clan.’ ⁷ If he says, ‘That is fine,’ then your servant is safe. But if he becomes very angry, you can be sure that he is plotting harm. ⁸ Deal kindly with your servant, for you have entered into a covenant before the Lord with your servant. If I am guilty, kill me yourself, why should you hand me over to your father?”

⁹ Jonathan answered, “Never! If I knew for sure that my father was planning to harm you, would I not tell you?” ¹⁰ David asked Jonathan, “Who will tell me if your father’s answer is harsh?” ¹¹ Jonathan said, “Come. Let us go out into the field.” So they went out into the field together. ¹² Jonathan said to David, “By the Lord, the God of Israel, by this time on the day after tomorrow, I will have sounded out my father. If he is well disposed toward David, will I not send word to you to let you know? ¹³ Otherwise, may the Lord do this and more to Jonathan. But if my father wishes to harm you, I will send you away so that you can be safe. May the Lord be with you as he has been with my father. ¹⁴ Only will you not treat me with the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I not be killed? ¹⁵ Never cease being kind to my family, even when the Lord has eliminated all of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”

¹⁶ So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David saying, “May the Lord take vengeance on all of David’s enemies.” ¹⁷ Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him more than he loved himself.

¹⁸ Then Jonathan said to him, “Tomorrow is a new moon, and you will be missed because your seat will be empty. ¹⁹ The day after tomorrow, hurry down to the place where you hid yourself when this trouble began, and stay by the stone of Ezel. ²⁰ I will shoot three arrows off to the side of it, as if I were shooting at a target. ²¹ Then I will send a boy out saying, ‘Go and find the arrows.’ If I say to him, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you. Bring them,’ then, as the Lord lives, you are safe, there is no danger. ²² But if I say to the boy, ‘Look, the arrows are ahead of you,’ then go on your way, for the Lord is sending you. ²³ The Lord is a witness between me and you forever in regard to the things about which we have spoken.”

²⁴ David’s Absence. So David hid himself in the field. When the new moon celebration began and the king sat down to eat, ²⁵ the king sat in his usual place by the wall. Jonathan sat facing him, and Abner was sitting by Saul’s side, but David’s place was empty. ²⁶ Saul did not say anything that day, because he thought, “Something must have happened to him so that he is impure, surely he is unclean.”^[b]

²⁷ But the next day, the second day of the month, David’s place was still empty. Saul asked Jonathan, his son, “Why did the son of Jesse not come to eat yesterday nor today?” ²⁸ Jonathan answered Saul, “David begged me for permission to go to Bethlehem. ²⁹ He said to me, ‘Please let me go, for our family is offering a sacrifice in the city. My brother has told me to be there. If I have found favor with you, please, let me leave to go to see my brothers.’This is why he has not come to the king’s table.” ³⁰ Saul became angry at Jonathan and he said to him, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman. I knew that you sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and the shame of your mother’s nakedness. ³¹ For as long as the son of Jesse lives upon the earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be stable. Send for him and bring him to me, for he must die.”^{[c] 32} Jonathan answered Saul, his father, saying, “Why must he die? What has he done?” ³³ Saul cast a javelin at him to kill him. Jonathan thus knew that his father intended to kill David.

³⁴ Jonathan was enraged and he got up from table. He did not eat on the second day of the month because he was angry at his father for the shameful way he had treated David.

³⁵ Jonathan Warns David. The next morning, Jonathan went out into the field at the time he had arranged with David. He had a small boy with him. ³⁶ He said to the boy, “Run, find the arrows that I shoot.” The boy ran off, and he shot an arrow beyond him. ³⁷ When the boy arrived at the place that Jonathan had shot the arrow, Jonathan said, “Is the arrow not ahead of you?” ³⁸ Then Jonathan cried out to the boy, “Hurry, run, do not stop!” The boy picked up Jonathan’s arrows and returned to his master. ³⁹ (The boy did not know anything about this, only Jonathan and David knew what was happening.)

⁴⁰ Jonathan gave his weapons to his boy and said, “Go, carry them into the city.” ⁴¹ After the boy had left, David got up from the south side of the place, and he bowed down three times before him, face to the ground. They kissed one another, and they wept over one another, David more so. ⁴² Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, since we have both sworn in the name of the Lord saying, ‘May the Lord be between me and you, between my descendants and your descendants, forever.’ ” He got up and left, and Jonathan went back into the city.

Footnotes

1. 1 Samuel 20:5 The new moon celebration: a time for the Israelites to gather socially to dedicate themselves anew to the Lord. They preferred to celebrate when the moon was not yet visible, as opposed to pagan worship that focused on the full moon, not on the Creator God.
2. 1 Samuel 20:26 The meal that accompanied the festival of the new moon involved a sacrifice to God and required ritual purification (see Ex 19:10, Lev 15:16, Num 19:11-22). Without such a cleansing, David could not participate.
3. 1 Samuel 20:31 Saul continues to view David, son of Jesse, as the major impediment to the continuation of his dynasty. Jonathan, because of his love of God and David, bypasses any opportunity to prevent David from succeeding Saul (1 Sam 23:16-18).