in hand compelled Saul to promote him; and his standing with the people increased with his promotion. But as the Spirit of God had departed from Saul, this only filled him more and more with dread of David as his rival. As the hand of the Lord was visibly displayed in David's success, so, on the other hand, Saul's rejection by God was manifested in his increasing fear of David.Craftiness of Saul in the betrothal of his daughters to David. - 1Sa 18:17. As Saul had promised to give his daughter for a wife to the conqueror of Goliath (1Sa 17:25), he felt obliged, by the growing love and attachment of the people to David, to fulfil this promise, and told him that he was ready to do so, with the hope of finding in this some means of destroying David. He therefore offered him his elder daughter Merab with words that sounded friendly and kind: “Only be a brave man to me, and wage the wars of the Lord.” He called the wars with the Philistines “wars of Jehovah,” i.e., wars for the maintenance and defence of the kingdom of God, to conceal his own cunning design, and make David feel all the more sure that the king's heart was only set upon the welfare of the kingdom of God. Whoever waged the wars of the Lord might also hope for the help of the Lord. But Saul had intentions of a very different kind. He thought (“said,” sc., to himself), “My hand shall not be upon him, but let the hand of the Philistines be upon him;” i.e., I will not put him to death; the Philistines may do that. When Saul's reason had returned, he shrank from laying hands upon David again, as he had done before in a fit of madness. He therefore hoped to destroy him through the medium of the Philistines.
Verse 18
But David replied with true humility, without suspecting the craftiness of Saul: “Who am I, and what is my condition in life, my father's family in Israel, that I should become son-in-law to the king?” חיּי מי is a difficult expression, and has been translated in different ways, as the meaning which suggests itself first (viz., “what is my life”) is neither reconcilable with the מי (the interrogative personal pronoun), nor suitable to the context. Gesenius (Thes. p. 471) and Böttcher give the meaning “people” for חיּים, and Ewald (Gramm. §179, b.) the meaning “family.” But neither of these meanings can be established. חיּים seems evidently to signify the condition in life, the relation in which
