deed do we
ever meet with these Amalekites but as very cruel and bloody people,
and particularly seeking to injure and utterly to destroy the nation of
Israel. See Exodus 17:8-16; Numbers 14:45; Deuteronomy 25:17-19; Judges
6:3, 6; 1 Samuel 15:33; Psalms 83:7; and, above all, the most barbarous
of all cruelties, that of Haman the Agagite, or one of the posterity of
Agag, the old king of the Amalekites, Esther 3:1-15.

[16] Spanheim takes notice here that the Greeks had such singers of
hymns; and that usually children or youths were picked out for that
service; as also, that those called singers to the harp, did the same
that David did here, i.e. join their own vocal and instrumental music
together.

[17] Josephus says thrice in this chapter, and twice afterwards, ch. 11.
sect. 2, and B. VII. ch. 1. sect. 4, i.e. five times in all, that Saul
required not a bare hundred of the foreskins of the Philistines, but
six hundred of their heads. The Septuagint have 100 foreskins, but the
Syriac and Arabic 200. Now that these were not foreskins, with our other
copies, but heads, with Josephus's copy, seems somewhat probable, from
1 Samuel 29:4, where all copies say that it was with the heads of such
Philistines that David might reconcile himself to his master, Saul.

[18] Since the modern Jews have lost the signification of the Hebrew
word here used, cebr; and since the LXX., as well as Josephus, reader it
the liver of the goat, and since this rendering, and Josephus's account,
are here so much more clear and probable than those of others, it is
almost unaccountable that our commentators should so much as hesitate
about its true interpretation.

[19] These violent and wild agitations of Saul seem to me to have been
no other than demoniacal; and that the same demon which used to seize
him, since he was forsaken of God, and which the divine hymns and
psalms which were sung to the harp by David used to expel, was now in
a judicial way brought upon him, not only in order to disappoint his
intentions against innocent David, but to expose him to the laughter and
contempt of all that saw him, or heard of those agitations; such violent
and wild agitations being never observed in true prophets, when they
were under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. Our other copies, which
say the Spirit of God came him, seem not so here copy, which mentions
nothing of God at all. Nor does Josephus seem to ascribe this impulse
and ecstasy of Saul to