1 Samuel 18:9

18:6-11 David's troubles not only immediately follow his triumphs, but arise from them; such is the vanity of that which seems greatest in this world. It is a sign that the Spirit of God is departed from men, if, like Saul, they are peevish, envious, suspicious, and ill-natured. Compare David, with his harp in his hand, aiming to serve Saul, and Saul, with his javelin in his hand, aiming to slay David; and observe the sweetness and usefulness of God's persecuted people, and the barbarity of their persecutors. But David's safety must be ascribed to God's providence.

And Saul eyed David from that day and forward. Instead of looking pleasantly, and with a smile, upon him, as a courtier and favourite, he was justly entitled to by his gallant behaviour, he looked at him with a sour, ill natured look; he looked at him with an evil, spiteful, malicious, and envious eye; or he diligently watched and observed all his motions and actions, whether they tended to disloyalty and treason, to dethrone him, and take the kingdom to himself, which he was suspicious of; he laid wait for him, as the Targum, and laid snares too, as the following history shows.

9 . Saul eyed David ] With a suspicious jealousy which soon ripened into a deadly hatred. There is no need to suppose that David’s anointing by Samuel had been reported to him. “The prophet had distinctly told him in the day of his sin, that the Lord had rent the kingdom from him, and had given it to a neighbour that was better than he. And in David he could read the marks of such a man.” Wilberforce’s Heroes of Heb. Hist. p. 245. 1 Samuel 18:9

9 . the evil spirit ] See on 1 Samuel 16:14 . as he sat , &c.] Now he was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand, and David was playing with his hand. These words are a parenthesis picturing the circumstances under which Saul attempted to murder David. On Saul’s spear see at 1 Samuel 18:10 . 1 Samuel 19:9

(9) And Saul eyed David. —From the hour on which the king listened to the people’s lilt in honour of the young hero, in Saul’s distempered mind hate alternated with love. He still in his heart longed for the presence of the only human being who could charm away his ever-increasing melancholia, but he dreaded with a fierce jealousy the growing influence of the winning and gifted man whom he had taken from the sheep-folds; and now through the rest of the records of this book we shall see how the hate gradually obscured the old love. All our memories of Saul seem bound up with his life-long murderous pursuit of David.