1 Samuel 17:55

And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine,.... Set out to meet him, and engage with him, as he might from the side of the mountain, where he was encamped: he said unto Abner, the

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.

Whose son is this youth? Quest. How could David be unknown to Saul, with whom he had lived? . Answ. That might well be, for divers reasons, because David was not constantly with him, nor, as it seems, used by him, but upon extraordinary occasions, and desperate fits of melancholy; from which possibly he had been free for a good while, by God’ s special providence and care for his people Israel, that so he might be capable of governing and protecting them against the Philistines, who watched all opportunities against them, and at last broke forth into an open war. Thus David had been for some considerable time dismissed from Saul’ s court, and was returned home; and therefore it is not strange, if Saul had for the present forgotten David; for kings, because of the encumbrance of public business, and the multitude of persons who come to them on several occasions, may easily forget some persons; yea, such as have frequently been with them, especially their servants, whom they do not use to observe with so much attention and care as they do others. Add to this, that the distemper of Saul’ s mind might make him forgetful; and that David might now be much changed, both in his countenance and in his habit, from what he had before; and it is apparent, that the change of habits makes so great a difference, that it oft keeps us from the knowledge of those persons whom in other habits we very well know. Some give this answer, That this was the first time that Saul had seen David; and that David’ s exploit here recorded was performed before that which is recorded , though it be placed after it; but that is confuted by comparing . I cannot tell; which is not strange, because Abner’ s conversation and employment was generally in the camp, when David was at the court; and when Abner was there, he took little notice of a person so much inferior to him as David was.

1 Samuel 17:55 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.Ver. 55. Whose son is this?] Saul being of a weak brain by reason of his frantic fits, and withal full of business, had, belike, forgotten David, who might be now much altered in his visage and habit, and never haply otherwise taken notice of by Saul than as princes use to do of musicians or servants.

(55) Whose son is this youth?—A grave difficulty, at first sight, indisputably exists here. It is briefly this. In the preceding chapter (1 Samuel 17:18-23), David, the son of Jesse, is chosen to play before the mentally sick king; his playing relieved the sufferer, who became attached to the young musician, and in consequence appointed him to a position about his person that certainly would have involved a lengthened, if not a continuous, residence at the court. In this and the following verses we read how this same David, at the time of his great exploit, was apparently unknown to the king and to Abner, the captain of the host. The LXX., fully conscious of the difficulty, determined to solve it by boldly, if not wisely, cutting the knot. They literally expunged from their version all the later passages which they could not easily bring into harmony with the earlier. The Greek Version, then, simply omits these four last verses of 1 Samuel 17, together with the first five verses of 1 Samuel 18, and the whole of the section 1 Samuel 17:12-31. Various ingenious explanations have been suggested by scholars. (a) The mental state of Saul when David played before him was such that the king failed to recognise him on the present occasion, and Abner probably had never seen him before. (b) Some length of time had elapsed since his last visit to the court, and as he was then in very early manhood, he had, so to speak, grown, in a comparatively speaking short space of time, out of Saul’s memory. (c) The purpose of Saul’s inquiry was not to find out who David was—that he knew well already—but to ascertain the position and general circumstances of the young hero’s father, as, according to the promise (in 1 Samuel 17:25), in the event of his success (which evidently the king confidently looked for), the father of the champion and his family would receive extraordinary honours. The real solution of the difficulty probably lies in the fact that, as has been before stated, this and the other historical books of the Old Testament were made up by the inspired compiler from well-authenticated traditions current in Israel, and most probably preserved in the archives of the great prophetic schools. (See Notes on 1 Samuel 17:1; 1 Samuel 17:15.) There were, no doubt, many of these traditions connected with the principal events of David’s early career. Two here were selected which, to a certain extent, covered the same ground. The first—preserved, no doubt, in some prophetic school where music and poetry were especially cultivated—narrates the influence which David acquired over Saul through his great gift of music. The power of music and poetry in Saul’s mental disease was evidently the great point of interest to the original writer of 1 Samuel 16:14-23. Now, in the narrative contained in these ten verses no note of time occurs. The events related evidently were spread over a considerable, possibly over a very long, period.

55–58. Saul’s inquiry concerning David’s parentage 55. he said unto Abner] This section is not found in the Septuagint (B). On the difficulty of reconciling it with ch. 16 see Note VI. P. 241.

Whose son ... - See the marginal reference note.

55. Whose son is this youth — But did not Saul remember David, whose services on the harp had been of so much advantage to him in his madness?1 Samuel 16:20-23.