Why did David spare Saul’s life?

In the cave at En Gedi

Saul has been hunting David for years. Told that David is in the wilderness of En Gedi, he takes three thousand chosen men to “the rocks of the wild goats” (1 Samuel 24:2). En Gedi is an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, a spring and waterfalls under cliffs full of caves, where ibex still climb. Its stream is called Nahal David, after this story. David and his six hundred men (23:13) are hiding deep inside one of those caves.

Saul steps into that very cave, alone, to relieve himself (24:3). In the dark, David’s men whisper that this is the day God promised, the enemy delivered into his hand (24:4). David creeps forward and cuts off the corner of the king’s robe. Saul never notices. Then “David’s heart struck him” (24:5).

Why a corner of a robe

Why should a scrap of cloth trouble him? A robe’s corner could stand for the man who wore it and his rank, and the story has used that image before. When Saul once grabbed Samuel’s robe and it tore, Samuel told him that Yahweh had torn the kingdom from him that day (15:27–28). Cutting the king’s hem looks like cutting away his kingship, and David regrets doing even that much in secret. Saul reads the sign once he sees it: “I know that you will surely be king” (24:20).

“Yahweh’s anointed”

Yahweh forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, Yahweh’s anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, since he is Yahweh’s anointed.

David says it twice in one breath. Samuel had poured oil on Saul’s head and made him king in God’s name (10:1). The Hebrew word for anointed is mashiach, the word behind Messiah; in Greek it became christos (what “Christ” means). Whatever Saul had become, to kill him would be to strike the man God had chosen. David had been anointed too (16:13), and readers have long noticed that the logic cuts both ways: a man who kills one anointed king teaches others how to treat the next.

Outside, David holds up the cloth: “May Yahweh judge between me and you, and may Yahweh avenge me of you; but my hand will not be on you” (24:12). Saul weeps, calls David more righteous than himself and asks him to swear not to wipe out his family (24:16–21).

He did it twice

Two chapters later the scene returns. Saul is again after David with three thousand men, this time in the wilderness of Ziph (26:2). At night David and his nephew Abishai slip into the camp, where the king sleeps with his spear stuck in the ground by his head. Abishai asks for one thrust; he won’t need a second (26:8). David refuses.

As Yahweh lives, Yahweh will strike him; or his day shall come to die, or he shall go down into battle and perish.

He takes the spear and the water jar instead and shouts the proof across the valley. Saul answers, “I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly” (26:21).

What came of it

David’s words come true. Saul dies in battle on Mount Gilboa. When a young Amalekite arrives boasting that he finished the king off, David has him executed: “Why were you not afraid to stretch out your hand to destroy Yahweh’s anointed?” (2 Samuel 1:14). Years later he gives Jonathan’s lame son, Mephibosheth, a place at his table (2 Samuel 9:7).

Jewish and Christian tradition see here a man who left vengeance to God. Many historians add a political reading: these chapters answer the charge that David took Saul’s throne by blood. Twice he could have killed the king, the story insists, and twice he refused. Saul’s own story is in who King Saul was.