1 Samuel 20:1-22 ▼

1 Then David fled from Naioth in Ramah. He came to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my iniquity? How have I sinned against your father, that he wants to take my life?”

2 “Far from it!” Jonathan replied. “You will not die. Indeed, my father does nothing, great or small, without telling me. So why would he hide this matter from me? This cannot be true!”

3 But David again vowed, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said, ‘Jonathan must not know of this, or he will be grieved.’ As surely as the LORD lives and as you yourself live, there is but a step between me and death.”

4 Then Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you desire, I will do for you.”

5 So David told him, “Look, tomorrow is the New Moon, and I am supposed to dine with the king. Instead, let me go and hide in the field until the third evening from now.

6 If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David urgently requested my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because there is an annual sacrifice for his whole clan.’

7 If he says, ‘Good,’ then your servant is safe, but if he is enraged, you will know he has evil intentions.

8 Therefore show kindness to your servant, for you have brought me into a covenant with you before the LORD. If there is iniquity in me, then kill me yourself; why should you bring me to your father?”

9 “Never!” Jonathan replied. “If I ever found out that my father had evil intentions against you, would I not tell you?”

10 Then David asked Jonathan, “Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?”

11 “Come,” he replied, “let us go out to the field.” So the two of them went out into the field,

12 and Jonathan said, “By the LORD, the God of Israel, I will sound out my father by this time tomorrow or the next day. If he is favorable toward you, will I not send for you and tell you?

13 But if my father intends to bring evil on you, then may the LORD punish me, and ever so severely, if I do not tell you and send you on your way in safety. May the LORD be with you, just as He has been with my father.

14 And as long as I live, treat me with the LORD’s loving devotion, that I may not die,

15 and do not ever cut off your loving devotion from my household—not even when the LORD cuts off every one 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 hold David’s enemies accountable.”

17 And Jonathan had David reaffirm his vow out of love for him, for Jonathan loved David as he loved himself.

18 Then Jonathan said to David, “Tomorrow is the New Moon, and you will be missed, because your seat will be empty.

19 When you have stayed three days, hurry down to the place you hid on the day this trouble began, and remain beside the stone Ezel.

20 I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as if I were aiming at a target.

21 Then I will send a boy and say, ‘Go, find the arrows!’ Now, if I expressly say to him, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them,’ then come, because as surely as the LORD lives, it is safe for you, and there is no danger.

22 But if I say to the young man, ‘Look, the arrows are beyond you,’ then you must go, for the LORD has sent you away.