Then answered Doeg the Edomite. — This Doeg has already been mentioned in the preceding chapter. His presence in this council meeting under the tamarisk of Gibeah, among the famous Benjamito chieftains, and the previous notice which speaks of him as the officer superintending the royal herds, indicates that he was a personage of no small importance at the Court of Saul. He occupies too a considerable position in the Psalmodic literature. (See, for instance, Psalms 52)
Here he is spoken of as a wicked and unscrupulous character. Jewish tradition tells us this Doeg was skilled in all the learning of his time. Doeg the Edomite, and Ahitophel (whose counsel was as the oracle of God) are represented in the Talmud as the most learned men of their time. “The Holy One, blessed be He! said to wicked Doeg, what hast thou to do to declare my statutes (Psalms 52)? When thou comest to the chapter on murderers and on spreading evil reports, what dost thou make of them?” — Sanhedrin, fol. 106, Colossians 2.
It is strange that this renowned man, whom evidently David looked upon as the evil genius of Saul at the period when he wrote the sad, bitter words of Psalms 52, and spoke of the tongue of this Doeg as being like a sharp razor, and dwelt with singular persistence on the wickedness, falsehood, and calumny of this relentless enemy, should have gone down among the noteworthy Talmudical traditions as “the greatest Rabbinist (i.e., the most deeply learned in the Mosaic Law, and in its interpretation) of his time.
Which was set over the servants of Saul. — This statement would be a puzzling one were it the correct rendering. It would be unlikely in the highest degree that Saul would set a foreigner — however able and devoted — over his faithful Benjamite chieftains. The accurate translation is “who stood with the servants of Saul.” In 1 Samuel 22:6 we read, in the description of the council meeting under the tamarisk of Gibeah, all his servants (that is, his chief dignitaries) stood by (around) him (Saul), and with these, his peers, stood Doeg the Edomite, the hero of the terrible scene which followed.
(9) Then answered Doeg. — “Far better,” quaintly writes Seb Schmid, “did Saul’s other servants who kept silence.” The Edomite’s witness had the more effect on Saul because he related no hearsay evidence, but what he had absolutely seen.