them through the valleys and ravines until they came out on to the plain and even to the walls of Ekron and of Gath. Throughout the whole way to Shaaraim the ground was strown with their dead and wounded, to the very gates of the two cities.
Thence they turned back. And when they had come from chasing after the Philistines, they plundered their tents, a rich booty. Laden with their spoil, they returned to their own camp. And the armour of Goliath was stripped from off his body, and with his spear, his javelin and his sword, was afterwards laid up as a trophy in Jerusalem.
When David himself returned from the pursuit of the Philistines he was brought to Abner, and Abner himself took him into the presence of Saul. And Jonathan was with his father the king. David came in and stood before them, the head of the Philistine in his hand. Saul looked from the one face, wan and swarthy and dark and shut by death, to the other, bright with life and aware, and he marvelled.
He asked David whose son he was, and many another question. David told him that he was the son of Jesse of Bethlehem. And there returned into Saul’s mind, as though it were a dream that had faded out after waking, the memory of the hours when he had lain terrified and distraught in the gloom of his tent, and his only solace had been the music of David’s harp-strings.
He said nothing of it, but talked long and earnestly with him, and questioned him. And David answered the king simply and openly, while Jonathan who had been absent from his father during his sickness, stood near at hand, his eyes fixed on David’s face, as he mutely drank in every word he uttered. His heart welled over with wonder at his simplicity and fearlessness, and his soul went out to David. He loved him—as do all men who love—at first sight. And he continued to love him, friend with friend, until the last hour of his life.
So great was the love of Jonathan for David that he made a covenant of brotherhood with him, a covenant that in Israel knitted two friends together in mind and spirit closer even than if they had been sons of the same mother.
‘Whatsoever thy soul desireth, that will I indeed do for thee,’ he said. And in token of it he stripped himself of the cloak which he wore, a cloak befitting the son of a king, and he gave it to David, and his armour also, even to his sword and his bow. And he girdled him with his girdle.
From that day forward Saul took David into his service and made him his armour-bearer, and David returned no more to the house of his father.
When the king, with his captains and his army, laden with the spoil they had taken from the Philistines, returned in triumph from their camp above the valley of Elah and marched to Gibeah, a vast concourse of people gathered together to watch them pass.
And the women and maidens of Israel, clad in their brightest colours, scarlet and blue and purple, came out singing and dancing from all the towns and villages on their way to meet and greet King Saul, and to give him welcome.
To the clash of timbrel and of cymbal and the music of divers instruments they came dancing in two companies, scattering garlands before the king, singing his praises; and as the one company chanted their song of victory, so the other answered them again, shrill and wild and sweet; and the refrain of their song was:
‘Saul hath slain his thousands, but David hath slain his tens of thousands.’
And Saul’s heart sank within him. The words displeased him, and he thought, ‘To David they have given ten times the praise that they have given to me. What more is wanting to his glory than the kingdom itself?’