“Why have you devised something like this against God’s people?” she said. “When you say this, you condemn yourself because you haven’t brought back the one you banished!
“Now this is what you will say to my servant David: ‘This is what the Lord of Armies says: I took you from the pasture where you followed sheep so that you could be the leader of my people Israel.
Elijah answered, “I haven’t troubled Israel. You and your father’s family have done it by disobeying the Lord’s commands and following the various Baal gods.
The prophet told him, “This is what the Lord says: You let the man go. He was claimed by God and should have been killed. For that reason your life will be taken in place of his life and your people in place of his people.”
You are that tree, Your Majesty. You grew and became strong and mighty until you reached the sky. Your power reaches the most distant part of the world.
“You did a foolish thing,” Samuel told Saul. “You didn’t follow the command of the Lord your God. ⌞If you had,⌟ the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel permanently.
Samuel took the flask of olive oil and anointed David in the presence of his brothers. The Lord’s Spirit came over David and stayed with him from that day on. Then Samuel left for Ramah.
Saul thought, “I’ll give her to David. She will trap him, and the Philistines will get him.” So he said to David a second time, “You will now be my son-in-law.”
David lived in fortified camps in the desert, and he lived in fortified camps in the mountains of the desert of Ziph. Saul was always searching for him, but God didn’t let him capture David.
When Saul was told that David went to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered him into my hands. He has trapped himself by going into a city which has ⌞a gate with⌟ a double door ⌞held shut by⌟ a bar.”