Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Therefore Saul said to David, You shall this day be my son-in-law a second time.
 This has often perplexed worldly scholars, who find great difficulty in adjusting the passage with the previous chapter. And at first sight it sounds exceedingly strange that David should have been already employed to soothe the king when under the affliction of an evil spirit from Jehovah, and Saul should have to make such an inquiry. David had indeed formerly and not long before ministered to his necessities; but his disordered state might well confuse his memory; and a great captain might be excused for never giving a look or thought to a minstrel boy brought in for such an occasion to play on the harp to the king. And my opinion is that, so far from this being a just tumbling-block, so far from its being legitimate to dislocate the fact previously named from the place where it stood, as some learned persons have suggested, there is to my mind no small beauty in the incidents being recorded exactly as they are. Indeed it would be false to take out these latter verses of 1 Samuel 17:1-58, and insert them at the end of 1 Samuel 16:1-23, or even to transpose the end of 1 Samuel 16:1-23 to the end of 1 Samuel 17:1-58 as has been proposed.
