Crying Out to the Lord

¹ The Ziphites came to Saul at Gibeah. “David is hiding on Hachilah’s hill, which faces Jeshimon,” they said. ² So Saul got up and went down to the Ziph wilderness to look for David there. He had three thousand handpicked soldiers from Israel with him. ³ Saul camped on Hachilah’s hill opposite Jeshimon beside the road, but David stayed in the wilderness. When David learned that Saul had come after him into the wilderness, ⁴ he sent spies and discovered that Saul had definitely arrived. ⁵ So David got up and went to the place where Saul camped, and saw the place where Saul and Abner, Ner’s son and Saul’s general, were sleeping. Saul was sleeping inside the camp with the troops camped all around him. ⁶ David asked Ahimelech the Hittite and Joab’s brother Abishai, Zeruiah’s son, “Who will go down into the camp with me to Saul?” “I’ll go down with you,” Abishai answered. ⁷ So David and Abishai approached the troops at night and found Saul lying there, asleep in the camp, with his spear stuck in the ground by his head. Abner and the army were sleeping all around him. ⁸ Abishai said to David, “God has handed your enemy over to you today! Let me pin him to the ground with my spear. One stroke is all I need! I won’t need a second.” ⁹ But David said to Abishai, “Don’t kill him! No one can lift a hand against the LORD’s anointed and go unpunished. ¹⁰ As surely as the LORD lives,” David continued, “it will be the LORD who will strike him down, or his day will come and he will die, or he’ll fall in battle and be destroyed. ¹¹ The LORD forbid that I lift my hand against the LORD’s anointed! But go ahead and take the spear by Saul’s head and the water jug and let’s go!” ¹² So David took the spear and the water jug that were by Saul’s head, and he and Abishai left. No one saw them, no one knew they were there, and no one woke up. All of them remained asleep because a deep sleep from the LORD had come over them.