07/19/2026 - "Goodness, Selflessness" (1 Samuel 20)

Scripture: 1 Samuel 20 (CEB)

David fled from the camps at Ramah. He came to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father that he wants me dead?”

Jonathan said to him, “No! You are not going to die! Listen: My father doesn’t do anything big or small without telling me first. Why would my father hide this from me? It isn’t true!”

But David solemnly promised in response, “Your father knows full well that you like me. He probably said, ‘Jonathan must not learn about this or he’ll be upset.’ But I promise you—on the Lord’s life and yours!—that I am this close to death!”

“What do you want me to do?” Jonathan said to David. “I’ll do it.”

“Okay, listen,” David answered Jonathan. “Tomorrow is the new moon, and I’m supposed to sit with the king at the feast. Instead, let me go and I’ll hide in the field until nighttime. If your father takes note of my absence, tell him, ‘David begged my permission to run down to his hometown Bethlehem, because there is an annual sacrifice there for his whole family.’ If Saul says ‘Fine,’ then I, your servant, am safe. But if he loses his temper, then you’ll know for certain that he intends to harm me. So be loyal to your servant, because you’ve brought your servant into a sacred covenant with you. If I’m guilty, then kill me yourself; just don’t take me back to your father.”

“Enough!” Jonathan replied. “If I can determine for certain that my father intends to harm you, of course I’ll tell you!”

“Who will tell me if your father responds harshly?” David asked Jonathan.

“Come on,” Jonathan said to David. “Let’s go into the field.” So both of them went out into the field. Then Jonathan told David, “I pledge by the Lord God of Israel that I will question my father by this time tomorrow or on the third day. If he seems favorable toward David, I will definitely send word and make sure you know. But if my father intends to harm you, then may the Lord deal harshly with me, Jonathan, and worse still if I don’t tell you right away so that you can escape safely. May the Lord be with you as he once was with my father. If I remain alive, be loyal to me. But if I die, don’t ever stop being loyal to my household. Once the Lord has eliminated all of David’s enemies from the earth, if Jonathan’s name is also eliminated, then the Lord will seek retribution from David!”

So Jonathan again made a pledge to David because he loved David as much as himself. “Tomorrow is the festival of the new moon,” Jonathan told David. “You will be missed because your seat will be empty. The day after tomorrow, go all the way to the spot where you hid on the day of the incident, and stay close to that mound. On the third day I will shoot an arrow to the side of the mound as if aiming at a target. Then I’ll send the servant boy, saying, ‘Go retrieve the arrow.’ If I yell to the boy, ‘Hey! The arrow is on this side of you. Get it!’ then you can come out because it will be safe for you. There won’t be any trouble—I make a pledge on the Lord’s life. But if I yell to the young man, ‘Hey! The arrow is past you,’ then run for it, because the Lord has sent you away. Either way, the Lord is witness between us forever regarding the promise we made to each other.” So David hid himself in the field.

When the new moon came, the king sat at the feast to eat. He took his customary seat by the wall. Jonathan sat opposite him while Abner sat beside Saul. David’s seat was empty. Saul didn’t say anything that day because he thought, Perhaps David became unclean somehow. That must be it. But on the next day, the second of the new moon, David’s seat was still empty. Saul said to his son Jonathan, “Why hasn’t Jesse’s son come to the table, either yesterday or today?”

Jonathan answered Saul, “David begged my permission to go to Bethlehem. He said, ‘Please let me go because we have a family sacrifice there in town, and my brother has ordered me to be present. Please do me a favor and let me slip away so I can see my family.’ That’s why David hasn’t been at the king’s table.”

At that, Saul got angry at Jonathan. “You son of a stubborn, rebellious woman!” he said. “Do you think I don’t know how you’ve allied yourself with Jesse’s son? Shame on you and on the mother who birthed you! As long as Jesse’s son lives on this earth, neither you nor your dynasty will be secure. Now have him brought to me because he’s a dead man!”

But Jonathan answered his father Saul, “Why should David be executed? What has he done?”

At that, Saul threw his spear at Jonathan to strike him, and Jonathan realized that his father intended to kill David. Jonathan got up from the table in a rage. He didn’t eat anything on the second day of the new moon because he was worried about David and because his father had humiliated him.

In the morning, Jonathan went out to the field for the meeting with David, and a young servant boy went with him. He said to the boy, “Go quickly and retrieve the arrow that I shoot.” So the boy ran off, and he shot an arrow beyond him. When the boy got to the spot where Jonathan shot the arrow, Jonathan yelled to him, “Isn’t the arrow past you?” Jonathan yelled again to the boy, “Quick! Hurry up! Don’t just stand there!” So Jonathan’s servant boy gathered up the arrow and came back to his master. The boy had no idea what had happened; only Jonathan and David knew. 40 Jonathan handed his weapons to the boy and told him, “Get going. Take these back to town.”

As soon as the boy was gone, David came out from behind the mound and fell down, face on the ground, bowing low three times. The friends kissed each other, and cried with each other, but David cried hardest. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace because the two of us made a solemn pledge in the Lord’s name when we said, ‘The Lord is witness between us and between our descendants forever.’” Then David got up and left, but Jonathan went back to town.

~

Jonathan is one of the most underrated people in the Old Testament. As the eldest son of Saul and best friend to David, he often plays second fiddle to both of them depending on where we are in the story of the united kingdom of Israel.

The two become friends after David kills Goliath with just a sling and a stone. Jonathan seems to be with his father, Saul, when David is brought before him as the savior of Israel. Saul decides not to let David return home, because Saul’s the king and he can do that, and David moves into the palace. He’s placed in charge of the army and becomes a popular commander and strategist.

And Jonthan’s life, as it says in 1 Samuel 18:1, “became bound up with David’s life, and Jonathan loved David as much as himself.”

Which ended up being pretty inconvenient for Jonathan. Because as Saul loses God’s favor and his power begins to wane, he starts going mad and vacillates between affection and hatred for David. And as we saw in our passage today, Saul eventually descends to the point of doing everything he can to kill David.

Because David has God’s favor and is going to become the next king. The crown will never pass to Jonathan, the rightful heir to the throne.

At the beginning of our story today we don’t know if Jonathan knows that. But he’s at least heard that Saul hurled his spear at David when he was playing his lyre. But then he also married Jonathan’s sister Michal to David after that. But then he told Jonathan and his attendants to kill David, and Jonathan was going to do no such thing. Figuring his father was just in one of his moods, he told David to hide and talked his father out of killing him. He even got Saul to swear that David wouldn’t be killed.

So Jonathan definitely knows that there’s been tension (to put it lightly) between his father and his best friend. Even if he doesn’t know why.

And you have to feel for him. His father’s descending into madness, and he’s probably working overtime trying to compensate for it. 

He hasn’t seen his best friend in a while, and he doesn’t know why. Because Saul immediately went back on his promise to Jonathan when he hurled his spear at David again, and tried to have him assassinated in the middle of the night. Michal, David’s new wife, saved his life that time. David got away to stay with Samuel in Ramah, and Saul made sure that Jonathan heard about none of this.

And there’s still the threat of the Philistines, an ongoing conflict that simmers in the background through a lot of this story.

Jonathan is swimming in a sea of stress and violence. 

And then, out of the blue, David shows back up.

All we’re told is that David fled from Naioth at Ramah and went to Jonathan. But with Saul still trying to kill him, he probably had to sneak back into the palace compound in order to find Jonathan. Or he sent a messenger to tell Jonathan to meet him in one of their hiding spots outside of town.

Either way the two reunite with David terrified of Saul finding out where he is and killing him, and Jonathan none the wiser and just thrilled to have his friend back.

So when David tells Jonathan that Saul’s still trying to kill him, Jonathan is genuinely taken off-guard because that means Saul’s broken his promise to him. He can’t trust his father to be honest with him anymore. And that’s a horrible realization to come to, especially since it means the main way he could keep David safe is now gone.

No wonder he takes a minute to believe it.

But at this moment, Jonathan is not the one at risk. David is. So Jonathan pushes all of that to the side in order to focus on keeping him safe.

Even if it would be more beneficial for him to back down and separate himself from David. If Saul managed to kill David, then Jonathan’s throne would be secure, which his father confirms during their confrontation in our passage today.

He wouldn’t have to even be a part of it; he’d just have to not warn David and let his father do the rest.

But that’s not the kind of friend Jonathan is. Instead he pushes back and asks his father what crime David has committed deserving of death. And for his troubles, Saul hurls a spear at him as well.

If Jonathan didn’t entirely believe David earlier, he has to now. 

And if he’s processed anything that his father has said to him, he’s also just been told that Saul knows what he’s been up to, and confronted with the fact that David is the biggest rival to his future as king.

And to his life. Because history has shown that in order for usurping kings to secure their positions, the previous royal family all has to die.

If this is starting to sound more like Game of Thrones to you than a Bible story, I wouldn’t blame you. The actions of Saul and David and their machinations throughout 1 and 2nd Samuel would rival the machinations of the Lannisters or the Targaryens.

But Jonathan would absolutely fail at playing the Game of Thrones. His father is the king of Israel; as the eldest son he should be the next king.

All he’d have to do is tell his father where David is, and let fate do the rest.

But Jonathan doesn’t do that. He knows that David has done nothing wrong, that Saul just wants to kill him in rage, jealousy, and probably more than a bit of madness.

And so Jonathan chooses to keep making himself a target by continuing to help David. Even knowing that it could cost him his life, either at his father’s hands, or at David’s if David decides to kill him to secure the throne. 

Because Jonathan knows that the right thing to do is to help David escape and keep him safe. And he loves David so much that he’s willing to risk his life to do it.

Jonathan is an example of one of the most selfless people in Scripture. He willingly gives up his security and future as king to save the life of his best friend, doing what he knows is right even though the cost for him is high.

Even though the demands of a kingdom, an ailing father, and the threat of war are simmering, Jonathan pushes all of that aside when David is in crisis and steps up to help him through.

And right now it feels like we’re all living with this constant anxiety humming in the background, between wars, immigrants being shot in their neighborhoods, people losing access to healthcare and food, and this wildfire smoke in the air isn’t helping one bit.

We can feel so overwhelmed that we can be tempted to hide away in our own little bubble, because we’re all living through chronic crises that’re interrelated and slamming into us one after the other. 

Add that to the background of the normal day-to-day stresses of life, and no wonder our shoulders feel a little tighter and our jaws are a little more clenched.

But even in the midst of these continuing crises, we have friends, neighbors, people in our community for whom these chronic crises are acute.

Who aren’t anxious because of the news they read on their phones or watch in the mornings, but because they are the headlines scrolling across the screen.

Or, they have their own acute crises bubbling up disconnected from the blanket of anxiety over our country.

Because people still get sick or injured and have to go into the hospital, accidents still happen, and people still pass away in their sleep.

And we have to be like Jonathan, who was able to set aside the threat of war, the stress of managing a kingdom, and the lesser threat to his own safety to focus on making sure David was safe and okay.

Because these chronic crises are exactly that, chronic, meaning they aren’t going to disappear anytime soon.

So we have to get comfortable with pushing aside the simmering anxiety and showing up for others when they need it. Because there is something grounding in being able to show up and help where you can, where you have influence and the ability to care for someone and make a real difference.

Maybe that involves keeping the news off just for the day you’re showing up to take care of a friend after they’ve had surgery so you can be present and focus on caring for them.

Or maybe that involves learning how these larger crises are showing up in our community and focusing on those smaller pieces of the larger problem. We can see that hundreds of thousands of people are losing access to SNAP benefits across the country, but who are the people in Lake County that have lost access? 

That’s a lot less overwhelming, and we have a lot more influence and ability here in order to help them.

We can’t turn away from the larger pain of the world, and we can’t step away from our responsibilities. But we can make sure that we stand up for goodness when and where we can, even if it means setting aside our own stress and pausing our lives temporarily in order to make sure somebody comes through their crisis in one piece.

Even when it’s inconvenient, and even if it means we get treated poorly because of it by people who want us more divided than united. 

Because that’s what we do as Christians, as friends, as people living in community. We show up, and we take care of our neighbors, even when it’s hard.