1 Samuel 23:22

22 Go, please, make certain again! Find out and see {exactly where he is} and who has seen him there! For they have said to me, 'He [is] very cunning.'

1 Samuel 23:22 Meaning and Commentary

1 Samuel 23:22

Go, I pray you, prepare yet
That is, go home, return to their habitations, and get things in a greater readiness for him; inquire more diligently after David, get more intelligence of him, and inform themselves more exactly about him:

and know and see his place where his haunt is;
or "foot" F19 is, where that steps and walks most frequently, not only get knowledge of it by information, but if they could get sight of it with their own eyes, that they might describe it more exactly:

[and] who hath seen him there;
not only seen the place, but him in the place, and that often, that it may be certain it is the place he usually resorts to:

for it is told me [that] he dealeth very subtilly;
sometimes he is seen in one place, and sometimes in another; he is here today, and elsewhere tomorrow; and by such crafty methods it is not easy to know where the place is, and where to be found; this Saul had information of from some, who knew the methods David took to keep it unknown where it was; or "it says to me"; my heart says so to me, as R. Isaiah interprets it; my mind suggests this to me, knowing the man, that he uses such wiles as these: or "he said to me", so Kimchi; when he was with me, and we were intimate, when I used to ask him how he smote the Philistines, so and so, and preserved himself from them; his answer was, "that he dealt very subtilly", he used a good deal of craftiness; and so I imagine he does now.


FOOTNOTES:

F19 (wlgr) "pes ejus", Pagninus, Montanus.

1 Samuel 23:22 In-Context

20 So then, O king, {whenever you want} to come down, come down, and [it will be] for us to deliver him into the hand of the king."
21 And Saul said to them, "May you be blessed by Yahweh, for you have shown me compassion
22 Go, please, make certain again! Find out and see {exactly where he is} and who has seen him there! For they have said to me, 'He [is] very cunning.'
23 Look, find out all of the hiding places where he hides. Then return to me {with dependable information}, and I will go with you. And then if he [is] there in the land, then I will seek him among all the thousands of Judah."
24 Then they got up and went to Ziph before Saul. Now David and his men [were] in the wilderness of Maon in the Arabah, to the south of Jeshimon.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Literally "his place where his foot [is]"
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