Therefore deal kindly with your servant; for you have brought your servant into a covenant of Yahweh with you: but if there be in me iniquity, kill me yourself; for why should you bring me to your father?
 But the Lord takes care not long after, as we learn in the next chapter (1 Samuel 17:1-58), that a far more urgent need, not merely personal but connected with the whole people, and in opposition to the power that the enemy put forward at this very time, should bring David publicly and permanently on Israel's behalf into the king's court.
