1 Samuel 19:11-17

11 Then Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him and kill him in the morning. But David’s wife Michal warned him, “If you do not run for your life tonight, tomorrow you will be dead!”

12 So Michal lowered David from the window, and he ran away and escaped.

13 Then Michal took a household idol ^[a] and laid it in the bed, placed some goat hair on its head, and covered it with a garment.

14 When Saul sent the messengers to seize David, Michal said, “He is ill.”

15 But Saul sent the messengers back to see David and told them, “Bring him up to me in his bed so I can kill him.”

16 And when the messengers entered, there was the idol in the bed with the goat hair on its head.

17 And Saul said to Michal, “Why did you deceive me like this? You sent my enemy away, and he has escaped!” Michal replied, “He said to me, ‘Help me get away, or I will kill you!’”

1 Samuel 19:11-17 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO FIRST SAMUEL 19

This chapter relates the dangers David was exposed unto through Saul's enmity at him, and his deliverance from them, as by the notice Jonathan gave him of his father's designs against him, and by his kind interposition on his behalf, 1Sa 19:1-7; by David's slipping out of Saul's presence, when he was about to cast a javelin at him, 1Sa 19:8-10; by Michal's letting him down through a window, when Saul sent messengers to kill him, and by deceiving them with an image laid in his bed in the room of him, 1Sa 19:11-17, and again by Samuel's protection of him at Naioth, whither David fled, and where Saul sent messengers after him, and at length came himself; and instead of laying hands on David, both he and the messengers were set a prophesying, 1Sa 19:18-24.

Footnotes

• [a] Or a household god; Hebrew teraphim; also in verse 16