And the men of David said unto him, Behold the day of which the LORD said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee. Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily.
The men of David said ... Behold the day. God had never made any promise of delivering Saul into David's hands; but, from the general and repeated promises of the kingdom to him, they concluded that the king's death was to be effected by taking advantage of some such opportunity as the present. David steadily opposed the urgent instigations of his followers to put an end to his and their troubles by the death of their persecutor. A revengeful heart would have followed their advice; but David rather wished to overcome evil with good, and heap coals of fire upon his head: he, however, cut a fragment from the skirt of the royal robe. It is easy to imagine how this dialogue could be carried on, and David's approach to the king's person could have been effected without arousing suspicion. The bustle and noise of Saul's military men and their beasts, the number of cells or divisions in these immense caverns, and some of them far interior, being enveloped in darkness, while every movement could be seen at the cave's mouth; the probability that the garment David cut from might have been a loose or upper cloak lying on the ground, and that Saul might have been asleep-these facts and presumptions will be sufficient to account for the incidents detailed.