David comes to Jonathan with a question that sounds naive after what Saul attempted in the last chapter. 1"What have I done? What is my guilt?" Jonathan answers honestly out of his own confidence. His father does nothing great or small without telling him, so 2"It is not so." Jonathan believes what he says. David has already read what Jonathan cannot yet see, and he says it in a sentence that lands harder than an argument: 3"there is but a step between me and death." The gap between what Jonathan trusts about his father and what David has lived through is the subject of the whole chapter.
The plan is practical. David will miss the new moon feast, Jonathan will offer the excuse about a family sacrifice in Bethlehem, and Saul's reaction will tell them everything. Underneath the strategy David asks for something more. He reminds Jonathan of the covenant between them and adds, 8"if there is guilt in me, kill me yourself." He would rather be judged by the one friend he trusts than ambushed by a father who no longer will judge him at all.
Jonathan's answer widens the covenant. 14"show me the steadfast love of the LORD, that I may not die; 15and do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever." He says out loud, to David's face, before either of them has any proof, that David will be king and Jonathan will not. His only request is mercy for his own children on that day. It is one of the purest pictures of loyalty in Scripture, a man giving away in advance, and without bitterness, the throne he was born to inherit.
The feast strips away the last doubt. Saul cannot argue that David has done wrong, so he attacks Jonathan's loyalty as the crime. 30"do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame?" Then the spear flies again, this time at his own son. 33"So Jonathan knew that his father was determined to put David to death." Jonathan now understands with his whole body what David already knew, and he has chosen David anyway, at the price of his father's blessing and his own claim to the crown.
In the field the next morning, the arrow signal works exactly as designed, and then both men abandon its purpose. The system existed so they would not have to be seen together. They use it and then send the boy home so they can fall on their faces, kiss, and weep, 41"David weeping the most." Jonathan goes back to a house that is painful and familiar, and David walks out into nothing certain. What Jonathan leaves him with is the oath sworn in the LORD's name, and it is because God stands as witness that the promise can survive a death and a change of dynasty. Decades later David remembers it when a crippled son of Jonathan named Mephibosheth is brought to his table (2 Samuel 9), and he keeps covenant with a dead friend by showing kindness to a living stranger who carries his blood.
There is a greater covenant this one points toward, sworn between the Father and the Son and sealed with blood on a hill, promising that nothing, not even death, can put more than a step between the Father's love and those he has bound himself to forever.
Prayer
Father, thank you for friends who love us enough to risk what Jonathan risked for David, and thank you more for a covenant that does not depend on any friend's power to keep his word. Make us people who swear loyalty without first calculating the cost. Thank you that you yourself stand between us and everyone we love, forever, sealed at the cross. In Jesus' name, amen.