Saul also sent messengers unto David's house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning: and Michal David's wife told him, saying, If thou save not thy life to night, to morrow thou shalt be slain.
Saul also sent messengers unto David's house. The fear of causing a commotion in the town (namely, Gibeah, which was then the capital), or favouring his escape in the darkness, seemed to have influenced the king in ordering them to patrol until the morning. They betrayed their presence and hostile intentions of seizing David as he went out, by loud cries and execrations against the young champion, who had been so recently the idol of public admiration, more like savage dogs than officers of a court, as is most graphically recorded in Psalms 59:1-17, which, as the title in the Hebrew, Septuagint, and Vulgate indicates, was written on that occasion (see Psalms 59:3; Psalms 59:6-7; Psalms 59:12). This infatuation of the king's messengers was overruled by Providence to favour David's escape; because his wife, secretly apprised by Jonathan, who was privy to the design, or spying persons in court livery watching the gate, perceived their purpose to be the clandestine seizure of David's person, and she contrived to let him down through a window (see the note at Joshua 2:15; also Psalms 18:29).