What Does 1 Samuel 20:30 Mean?

(30) **Saul’s anger was kindled.**—As David expected, his absence kindled into a flame the anger of Saul. Probably he had determined at that very feast, surrounded by his own devoted friends and members of his family, to carry out his evil designs against David’s life. Murder was, probably enough, one of the incidents arranged for at that banquet, but the absence of the intended victim marred the plot; besides which, the king, too, with the cunning which the partially insane so often display, saw through the veil of the specious excuse that David too clearly suspected his wicked design, and purposely stayed away; nay, more, that his own son Jonathan, the heir of his kingdom, suspected him, and openly sympathised with his friend David, for whose pointed absence he thus publicly apologised. **Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman.**—These words, spoken in public, in any sense were a bitter insult to the prince. Another and better rendering has, however, been suggested. The word *naăvath, *rendered *perverse, *instead of being a feminine adjective, is probably an abstract noun. The translation would then run, “Thou son of perversity of rebellion,” a common Hebraism for “a man of perverse and refractory nature;” so Clericus, Lange, and Payne Smith. This avoids the extreme improbability that Saul insulted his *own *wife, Jonathan’s mother, which, as has been observed, contradicts the Hebrew family spirit. **The confusion of thy mother’s nakedness.**—This is far from insulting Jonathan’s mother; it is simply an Oriental mode of saying, “she will feel ashamed at having brought such a son into the world.”