Fields & Festivals - 1st Samuel 20:24-42
The festival is upcoming and David and Jonathan have made their plan to find out if David is safe in Saul’s presence because presumably they both want things to go back to the way they were and David wants to go home. David is going to wait in a field while Jonathan goes to the festival and sees how Saul reacts to David not being there and maybe have a conversation with him about it. On the first night of the festival, David’s seat is empty and Saul doesn’t say anything about it because he thinks, “something hath befallen him, he is not clean, surely he is not clean.” This refers to the ritual purity that one has to undergo before participating in a religious festival. I also wonder how anyone knows this who is recording this because it seems like someone would have had to ask Saul his thoughts on the matter and to me, it seems like this might have been difficult information to come by, maybe someone was guessing, it doesn’t really matter ultimately, I just thought it was interesting. ...