1 Samuel

1 Samuel 20:8–17

⁸Therefore 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?”

¹⁰Then 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, ¹²and 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? ¹³But 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. ¹⁴And as long as I live, treat me with the LORD’s loving devotion,^b that I may not die, ¹⁵and 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.”

¹⁶So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the LORD hold David’s enemies accountable.” ¹⁷And Jonathan had David reaffirm his vow out of love for him, for Jonathan loved David as he loved himself.

Footnotes

b 20:14 Forms of the Hebrew chesed are translated here and in most cases throughout the Scriptures as loving devotion; the range of meaning includes love, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and mercy, as well as loyalty to a covenant.

Read all of 1 Samuel 20