1 Samuel 19:1-17

1Now Saul told his son Jonathan and all his courtiers to kill David. But Saul’s son Jonathan delighted much in David.

2So Jonathan informed David saying, “My father Saul is seeking to kill you. So now, please be on guard in the morning, and stay in a secret place and hide yourself.

3I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you will be, and I will speak with my father about you. If I notice anything, I will tell you.”

4So Jonathan spoke well of David to his father Saul and said to him, “May the king not sin against his servant David, since he has not sinned against you, and since his deeds have been very beneficial for you;

5For he put his life in his hand and killed the Philistine, and Adonai won a great victory for all Israel—you saw it and rejoiced. So why would you sin against innocent blood by killing David without a cause?”

6Saul listened to the voice of Jonathan, and Saul swore, “As Adonai lives, he will not be put to death.”

7So Jonathan called David, and Jonathan told him all these things. Jonathan brought David to Saul and in his presence as before.

8Once again war broke out, and David marched out and fought the Philistines, and inflicted a great slaughter on them and they fled before him.

9Yet once again an evil spirit from Adonai came upon Saul as he was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand, as David was playing music with his hand.

10Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he slipped away from Saul’s face, so that he drove the spear into the wall. That night David fled and got away.

11Then Saul sent agents to David’s house to watch him, in order to kill him in the morning. But David’s wife Michal warned him saying, “If you don’t escape for your life tonight, tomorrow you will be dead!”

12So Michal lowered David down through the window, and thus he went, fled and escaped.

13Then Michal took a household idol, laid it in the bed, put a quilt of goats’ hair at the head and covered it with a cloth.

14When Saul sent messengers to arrest David, she said, “He’s sick.”

15So Saul sent the agents back to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me in the bed so I may put him to death.”

16When the messengers came in, behold, the household idol was in the bed with the quilt of goats’ hair at its head.

17Saul then said to Michal, “Why have you deceived me like this and let my enemy get away, so that he escaped?” Michal answered Saul, “He said to me, ‘Let me go or I’ll kill you!’”