Daily Text and Bible Reading: Thursday, April 2 [Press play below]

19.1 Saul later spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants about putting David to death.
19.2 Since Saul’s son Jonathan was very fond of David, Jonathan told David: “My father Saul wants to have you put to death. Please be on your guard in the morning, and go to a secret place and remain hidden.
19.3 I will go out and stand next to my father in the field where you will be. I will talk about you to my father, and if I learn anything, I will be sure to tell you.”
19.4 So Jonathan spoke well of David to his father Saul. He said to him: “The king should not sin against his servant David, for he has not sinned against you and what he has done for you has benefited you.
19.5 He risked his life to strike down the Philistine, so that Jehovah brought about a great victory for all Israel. You saw it, and you were overjoyed. So why should you sin against innocent blood in having David put to death for no reason?”
19.6 Saul listened to Jonathan, and Saul swore: “As surely as Jehovah is living, he will not be put to death.”
19.7 Afterward Jonathan called David and told him all these things. So Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he continued to serve him as before.
19.8 In time war broke out again, and David went out and fought against the Philistines and struck them down with a great slaughter, and they fled from before him.
19.9 And a bad spirit from Jehovah came upon Saul when he was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand, while David was playing music on the harp.
19.10 Saul tried to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul, who drove the spear into the wall. David fled and escaped during that night.
19.11 Saul later sent messengers to David’s house to watch it and to kill him in the morning, but David’s wife Michal told him: “If you do not escape tonight, tomorrow you will be a dead man.”
19.12 Immediately Michal let David down through the window, so that he could run away and escape.
19.13 Michal took the teraphim statue and placed it on the bed, and she put a net of goat hair at the place of his head, and she covered it with a garment.
19.14 Saul now sent messengers to take David, but she said: “He is sick.”
19.15 So Saul sent the messengers to see David and told them: “Bring him to me on his bed to have him put to death.”
19.16 When the messengers came in, there was the teraphim statue on the bed and a net of goat hair where his head would have been.
19.17 Saul said to Michal: “Why did you trick me like this and send my enemy away so that he could escape?” Michal replied to Saul: “He said to me, ‘Send me away, or I will kill you!’”
19.18 Now David had run away and escaped, and he came to Samuel at Ramah. He told him all that Saul had done to him. Then he and Samuel went away, and they stayed in Naioth.
19.19 In time it was reported to Saul: “Look! David is in Naioth in Ramah.”
19.20 At once Saul sent messengers to seize David. When they saw the elderly ones of the prophets prophesying and Samuel standing and presiding over them, the spirit of God came to be upon Saul’s messengers, and they began behaving as prophets as well.
19.21 When they told it to Saul, he immediately sent other messengers, and they too began behaving as prophets. So Saul sent messengers again, a third group, and they too began behaving as prophets.
19.22 Finally he also went to Ramah. When he reached the great cistern that is in Secu, he asked: “Where are Samuel and David?” They replied: “There in Naioth in Ramah.”
19.23 While Saul was on his way from there to Naioth in Ramah, the spirit of God came upon him as well, and he walked along behaving as a prophet until he came into Naioth in Ramah.
19.24 He also stripped off his garments, and he too behaved as a prophet before Samuel, and he lay there naked all that day and all that night. That is why they say: “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

20.1 Then David ran away from Naioth in Ramah. However, he came to Jonathan and said: “What have I done? What is my offense, and how have I sinned against your father for him to seek my life?”
20.2 At this Jonathan said to him: “It is unthinkable! You will not die. Look! My father will not do anything, great or small, without disclosing it to me. Why should my father hide this matter from me? This will not happen.”
20.3 But David swore further and said: “Your father surely knows that I have found favor in your eyes and would say, ‘Do not let Jonathan know this or he will be upset.’ But as surely as Jehovah is living and as surely as you are living, there is only a step between me and death!”
20.4 Then Jonathan said to David: “Whatever you say, I will do for you.”
20.5 David said to Jonathan: “Tomorrow is the new moon, and I am certainly expected to sit with the king to eat; you must send me away, and I will hide in the field until the evening on the third day.
20.6 If your father misses me at all, then say, ‘David begged me for permission to go quickly to his city Bethlehem, because there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family.’
20.7 If his response is, ‘That is fine,’ it means peace to your servant. But if he becomes angry, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me.
20.8 Show loyal love to your servant, for you have brought your servant into Jehovah’s covenant with you. But if I am guilty, put me to death yourself. Why turn me over to your father?”
20.9 To this Jonathan said: “It is unthinkable to suggest that about you! If I learn that my father is determined to harm you, would I not tell you?”
20.10 Then David said to Jonathan: “Who will tell me whether your father gives you a harsh answer?”
20.11 Jonathan said to David: “Come, let us go out into the field.” So both of them went out into the field.
20.12 And Jonathan said to David: “Let Jehovah the God of Israel be a witness that I will sound out my father about this time tomorrow or by the third day. If he is favorably disposed toward David, will I not then send you word and disclose it to you?
20.13 But if my father intends to harm you, may Jehovah do that and more to Jonathan if I do not disclose it to you and send you away in peace. May Jehovah be with you, just as he was with my father.
20.14 And will you not show me the loyal love of Jehovah while I am alive and even when I die?
20.15 Never withdraw your loyal love from my household, even when Jehovah wipes out all the enemies of David from the face of the earth.”
20.16 So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “Jehovah will require it and call David’s enemies to account.”
20.17 So Jonathan had David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved himself.
20.18 Jonathan then said to him: “Tomorrow is the new moon, and you will be missed, for your seat will be vacant.
20.19 By the third day, you will be missed even more, and you must go to the place where you hid the other day and stay near the stone here.
20.20 I will then shoot three arrows to one side of it, as though I were shooting at a target.
20.21 When I send the attendant, I will say, ‘Go, find the arrows.’ If I say to the attendant, ‘Look! The arrows are on this side of you, get them,’ then you may come back, for as surely as Jehovah is living, it means everything is peaceful for you and there is no danger.
20.22 But if I should say to the boy, ‘Look! The arrows are beyond you,’ then go, for Jehovah has sent you away.
20.23 As for the promise that we have made, you and I, may Jehovah be between us forever.”
20.24 So David hid in the field. When the new moon came, the king took his seat at the meal to eat.
20.25 The king was sitting in his usual seat by the wall. Jonathan was facing him, and Abner was sitting at Saul’s side, but David’s place was vacant.
20.26 Saul did not say anything that day, for he said to himself: ‘Something has happened so that he is not clean. Yes, he must be unclean.’
20.27 And the day after the new moon, on the second day, David’s place continued vacant. Saul then said to Jonathan his son: “Why has the son of Jesse not come to the meal either yesterday or today?”
20.28 Jonathan answered Saul: “David begged me for permission to go to Bethlehem.
20.29 He said, ‘Please permit me to go, because we have a family sacrifice in the city, and my own brother summoned me. So if I have found favor in your eyes, please let me slip away to see my brothers.’ That is why he has not come to the king’s table.”
20.30 Then Saul became enraged with Jonathan, and he said to him: “You son of a rebellious woman, do you think I do not know that you are choosing to side with the son of Jesse, to your own shame and to the shame of your mother?
20.31 As long as the son of Jesse is alive on the earth, you and your kingship will not be firmly established. So now send someone to bring him to me, for he must die.”
20.32 However, Jonathan said to Saul his father: “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?”
20.33 At that Saul hurled the spear at him to strike him, so Jonathan knew that his father was determined to put David to death.
20.34 Jonathan immediately rose up from the table in the heat of anger, and he did not eat any food on the second day after the new moon, for he was upset over David and his own father had humiliated him.
20.35 In the morning Jonathan went out to the field for the appointment with David, and a young attendant was with him.
20.36 And he said to his attendant: “Please run and find the arrows that I shoot.” The attendant ran, and Jonathan shot the arrow beyond him.
20.37 When the attendant reached the place where Jonathan had shot the arrow, Jonathan called out to the attendant: “Is not the arrow beyond you?”
20.38 Jonathan called out to the attendant: “Hurry! Go quickly! Do not delay!” And Jonathan’s attendant picked up the arrows and came back to his master.
20.39 The attendant did not understand anything about the matter; only Jonathan and David knew what was meant.
20.40 Then Jonathan gave his weapons to his attendant and told him: “Go, take them to the city.”
20.41 When the attendant left, David rose up from a place nearby that was to the south. Then he fell with his face to the ground and bowed three times, and they kissed each other and wept for each other, but David wept the most.
20.42 Jonathan said to David: “Go in peace, since we have both sworn in the name of Jehovah, saying, ‘May Jehovah be between you and me and between your offspring and my offspring forever.’” Then David rose up and left, and Jonathan went back to the city.

21.1 David later came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech began to tremble when he met David, and he said to him: “Why are you by yourself and no one is with you?”
21.2 David replied to Ahimelech the priest: “The king instructed me to do something, but he said, ‘Do not let anyone know anything about the mission on which I am sending you and about the instructions I have given you.’ I made an appointment with my young men to meet at a certain place.
21.3 Now if there are five loaves of bread at your disposal, just give them to me, or whatever is available.”
21.4 But the priest answered David: “There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is holy bread—provided that the young men have kept away from women.”
21.5 David answered the priest: “Women have certainly been kept away from us as on previous occasions when I went out on a campaign. If the bodies of the young men are holy even when the mission is ordinary, how much more so today should they be holy!”
21.6 So the priest gave him the holy bread, because there was no bread there except the showbread, which had been removed from Jehovah’s presence to be replaced by fresh bread on the day it was taken away.
21.7 Now one of Saul’s servants was there on that day, detained before Jehovah. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds.
21.8 David then said to Ahimelech: “Is there a spear or a sword here at your disposal? I did not take my own sword or my weapons with me, because the king’s mission was urgent.”
21.9 To this the priest said: “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah, is here, wrapped up in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want to take it for yourself, take it, because it is the only one here.” David said: “There is none like it. Give it to me.”
21.10 That day David rose up and continued his flight from Saul, and he eventually came to King Achish of Gath.
21.11 The servants of Achish said to him: “Is this not David, the king of the land? Is he not the one they sang about when they danced, saying, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, And David his tens of thousands’?”
21.12 David took these words to heart, and he became very much afraid of King Achish of Gath.
21.13 So he disguised his sanity in their presence and acted insane while among them. He was making marks on the doors of the gate and letting his saliva run down his beard.
21.14 Finally Achish said to his servants: “You see that this man is crazy! Why bring him to me?
21.15 Do I have a shortage of crazy men that I need to have this one acting crazy before me? Should this man enter my house?”