“Jonathan answered, “David urgently requested my permission to go to Bethlehem,”
1 Samuel 20:28 (BSB)
Context Reading
26Saul said nothing that day because he thought, “Something has happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean — surely he is unclean.” 27But on the day after the New Moon, the second day, David’s place was still empty, and Saul asked his son Jonathan, “Why hasn’t the son of Jesse come to the meal either yesterday or today?” 28Jonathan answered, “David urgently requested my permission to go to Bethlehem, 29saying, ‘Please let me go, because our clan is holding a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has told me to be there. So now, if I have found favor in your eyes, please let me go and see my brothers.’ That is why he has not come to the king’s table.” 30Then Saul’s anger burned against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you?