1 Samuel 18:28

18:12-30 For a long time David was kept in continual apprehension of falling by the hand of Saul, yet he persevered in meek and respectful behaviour towards his persecutor. How uncommon is such prudence and discretion, especially under insults and provocations! Let us inquire if we imitate this part of the exemplary character before us. Are we behaving wisely in all our ways? Is there no sinful omission, no rashness of spirit, nothing wrong in our conduct? Opposition and perverseness in others, will not excuse wrong tempers in us, but should increase our care, and attention to the duties of our station. Consider Him that endured contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds, Heb 12:3. If David magnified the honour of being son-in-law to king Saul, how should we magnify the honour of being sons to the King of kings!

And Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David,.... This he perceived by the favour he gave him among men, by overruling all the steps Saul took to do him hurt, for his good, and in giving him success in all that he engaged in; the Targum is,"that the Word of the Lord was for the help of David:" and that Michal, Saul's daughter, loved him; and therefore could entertain no hope of making use of her as an instrument of his ruin, but, on the contrary, would, out of her great affection to her husband, betray the designs of her father against him, and do all she could to preserve him.

1 Samuel 18:28-29 . Saul knew that the Lord was with David — He was convinced of it, by the success which he constantly had in all his undertakings. And Saul was yet the more afraid of David — Having thus advanced him; and seeing no hope of bringing his designs to pass against him. And Saul became David’s enemy continually — He was every day more resolved to destroy him. Such strange blindness did his anger and hatred, and such like passions, bring upon him, that he set himself against him, who he saw and knew, had God for his friend! In what a lost condition must Saul’s mind have now been!

Verses 28, 29. - The failure of his evil purpose, and the knowledge that Michal loved her husband, and would protect him against his intrigues, and that the marriage had brought rank and influence to David, made Saul hate him all the more bitterly, because he could not now openly put to death one so closely connected with him. 1 Samuel 18:28

(28) Saul saw . . . that the Lord was with David. —The success of the last savage enterprise, and the return of David with his ghastly spoils, filled the unhappy king with dismay. His daughter’s love, too, for the rising soldier contributed to his trouble. Saul felt that all that David undertook prospered—that surely another and a higher Power was helping him. So his fear grew, we read in 1Samuel 18:29 , and the paroxysms of jealous hatred deepened into a lifelong enmity.

The knowledge of the fact that David had carried out all his enterprises with success had already filled the melancholy king with fear. But when the failure of this new plan for devoting David to certain death had forced the conviction upon him that Jehovah was with David, and that he was miraculously protected by Him; and when, in addition to this, there was the love of his daughter Michal to David; his fear of David grew into a lifelong enmity. Thus his evil spirit urged him ever forward to greater and greater hardness of heart.