And I shall be next unto thee. — To us — who read a few pages on in the record of these times how this same generous, loving friend found a grave on Mount Gilboa instead of a home with David, whom he admired with so ungrudging an admiration — these words of Jonathan possess a pathetic interest of their own. That brave, romantic career was nearly run when he met David for the last time in the woods of Ziph. As far as we can judge, if Jonathan had lived he would have certainly ceded any rights he had to the throne of his father Saul in favour of David, unlike that other comparatively unknown son of Saul, Ishbosheth, who set up as a rival claimant to the son of Jesse. But his generosity was not to be exposed to any such severe test, and David was spared the presence of such a rival as the gallant and gifted Jonathan would assuredly have been to him.
And that also Saul my father knoweth. — It is very likely by this time that the circumstance of Samuel’s mysterious anointing of the son of Jesse years before at Bethlehem had become known to Saul. Now that David had been openly proclaimed a public enemy, and that the king had repeatedly and openly sought his life, there was no reason for any concealment. No doubt, by this time very many in Israel looked on him as the anointed successor of Saul. The covenant alluded to in the next verse was, of course, the old covenant of eternal friendship which they had made when they parted outside Gibeah at the New Moon feast, as we find related at length in 1 Samuel 20.
After this meeting David never looked on Jonathan’s face in life again.
“Oh, heart of fire! misjudged by wilful man,
Thou flower of Jesse’s race!
What woe was thine when thou and Jonathan
Last greeted face to face!
He doomed to die, thou on us to impress
The portent of a blood-stained holiness.”
Lyra Apostolica.