1 Samuel 18:17 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Behold my elder daughter Merab, her will I give thee to wife. — This was but the fulfilment of a much earlier promise. The king had said he would give his daughter in marriage to the hero who should slay the Philistine giant champion. For one cause or other he had declined, or at least postponed, the carrying out of his pledge; and the dark thought crossed his mind, Could he not endanger the hated life, while seeming to wish to keep the old promise? He speaks of the Philistine war as the Lord’s battles. This was a feeling which inspired every patriotic Israelite. “He was,” when fighting with the idolatrous nations, “warring for the Lord” — so David felt when he spoke of the Philistine giant as having defied the ranks of the living God, and alluded to the battle as the Lord’s (1 Samuel 17:26; 1 Samuel 17:47). The same idea is expressed in the title of that most ancient collection of songs which has not been preserved to us — “Book of the Wars of the Lord” (Numbers 21:14).