Bible Synapse
Did Saul know David before the fight with Goliath, or meet him only afterwards?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
David came to Saul, who “loved him greatly; and he became his armourbearer”; David played the harp when the evil spirit troubled Saul.
And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly; and he became his armourbearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me; for he hath found favour in my sight. And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.
David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem.
But David went and returned from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Beth–lehem.
As David went out, Saul asked Abner “whose son is this youth?”; afterwards he asked David, “Whose son art thou, thou young man?”
And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine, he said unto Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is. And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him, and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand. And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Beth–lehemite.
When David “had made an end of speaking unto Saul”, Jonathan loved him, and Saul would not let him go home any more.
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house.
The objection
In 1 Samuel 16, David enters Saul’s service as his harpist and armour-bearer, and Saul loves him greatly. Yet in chapter 17, as David goes out to fight Goliath, Saul asks his commander Abner whose son the young man is, and Abner cannot tell him. Critics say the king cannot both know David and not know him, and suggest that two different stories of how David came to court have been joined.
The answer
Saul did not ask ‘Who is this?’ but ‘Whose son is this?’, and the difference matters. The king had promised that the man who killed Goliath would be made rich, would marry the king’s daughter, and that his father’s house would be made free in Israel (1 Samuel 17:25). With David about to fight, and then victorious, Saul needed to know about his family, which was now to be honoured and rewarded. Keil and Delitzsch add that Saul wanted to know what kind of man had fathered so brave a son, perhaps to bind the family to his court. David’s short reply was followed by a longer conversation: the next chapter begins “when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul”, and from that day Saul kept David with him for good (18:1–2).
Nor was David’s earlier service such that Saul and Abner must have known his family well. Chapter 17 itself says that David went back and forth between Saul and his father’s sheep at Bethlehem (17:15). He was a musician called in when the king was troubled, not a fixture at court, and one armour-bearer among several; Keil and Delitzsch point out that even Joab had ten (2 Samuel 18:15). The writer of chapter 17 also knows chapter 16. He calls Jesse ‘that Ephrathite’, the man already mentioned (17:12), and he explains David’s comings and goings (17:15), so he did not think the two chapters contradicted each other.
Other answers Christians give
A troubled mind, a changed boy
Some suggest that Saul’s troubled mind had dulled his memory, or that David had grown and changed since he first played for Saul. Keil and Delitzsch thought it unlikely that Saul could have forgotten whose son David was; Apologetics Press gives the second as one possibility among others.
Told out of order
Bishop Warburton, as Adam Clarke reports, thought that 16:14–23 is told ahead of its time, and that David became Saul’s musician only after the Goliath episode. The text has no time markers that require this, but it would remove the difficulty.
Still open
The Greek Septuagint in Codex Vaticanus lacks 17:12–31 and 17:55–18:5. Some scholars think the Greek translators shortened the story to avoid the difficulty; others think the Hebrew combines two accounts. Keil and Delitzsch argued that the omissions carry little weight, since that translation often adds and omits freely. The Hebrew text, which the KJV, WEB and BSB follow, contains both sections.
From the classic commentators
It was not the name of David's father alone that he wanted to discover, but what kind of man the father of a youth who possessed the courage to accomplish so marvellous a heroic deed really wasKeil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 1 Samuel 17
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 1 Samuel 17, at Bible Hub
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on 1 Samuel 16 (1810–1826), at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: 1 Samuel 17 (1746–1763), at Bible Hub