(22) When Doeg the Edomite was there.--The Talmudical tradition evidently pre-supposes that a bitter enmity existed between David and Saul's too faithful friend Doeg. If the Rabbinical belief that the identity between the family servant, or steward, who accompanied the young man Saul on that journey when we first meet with him (see 1 Samuel 9) be accepted, this enmity would be partly accounted for. The Edomite Doeg, brought up with Saul in the family of Kish, no doubt was jealous for his master and his master's house with the passionate jealousy we so often find in old servants. He would share and probably fan his royal master's envy and fear respecting the brilliant young hero who was so rapidly supplanting Saul and Saul's house in the affections of Israel. So when David, flying for his life from Saul, met Doeg at the Sanctuary of Nob, he was seized with grave misgivings as to what would happen; and now, after the terrible vengeance of Saul, seems to reproach himself with having in Doeg's presence exposed the hapless priest Ahimelech to Saul's furious anger.

The Talmud says the servant (1Samuel 16:18) who first searched out and brought David to play to the sick king was Doeg, anxious to relieve his master's sufferings, but curiously adds that even then the praises bestowed on David by Doeg were unreal: "All the praises of David enumerated by Doeg in 1Samuel 16:18 had a malicious object."--Sanhedrin, fol. 93, Colossians 2.

22:20-23 David greatly lamented the calamity. It is great trouble to a good man to find himself any way the cause of evil to others. He must have been much pained, when he considered that his falsehood was one cause of this fatal event. David speaks with assurance of his own safety, and promises that Abiathar should have his protection. With the Son of David, all who are his may be sure they shall be in safeguard, Ps 91:1. In the hurry and distraction David was continually in, he found time for communion with God, and found comfort in it.And David said unto Abiathar, I knew it that day,.... That is, he thought in his mind at that time:

when Doeg the Edomite was there; at Nob; in the tabernacle, at the same time that David was there:

that he would surely tell Saul; that he saw David there, and what passed between him and Ahimelech; he knew he was a spiteful mischievous man; that he was a true Edomite, though a proselyte, and bore hatred and enmity in his mind against an Israelite, and especially an Israelite indeed, as David was:

I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy father's house: or have been the cause of all the evils that befell them, and the death they were put unto, not with design, but by accident; and it grieved him that he should be any ways an accessory thereunto, though without intention.