This is enough to dispose of xix. 11-24:  the twentieth chapter is impossible in the connection, at least in its present form, and in chapter xxi. verses 8-10 and 11-16 must be left out.  In the section which deals with the freebooter life of David, chaps. xxiii-xxvii., considerable pieces have been added; xxvii. 7-12 of course is one; but also the encounters of David with his pursuers.  There are two versions:  the one, xxvi. 1-25, is placed before chapter xxvii. on account of verse 19; the other, xxiii. 14-xxiv. 22, is placed before chapter xxv. to avoid too near a contact.  There is a good deal of verbal coincidence between the two, and we are entitled to regard the shorter and more pointed version (chapter xxvi.) as the basis.  But the sequence (xxvi. 25, xxvii. 1) shows beyond a doubt that chapter xxvi. does not belong to the original tradition.  The process of inserting the additions naturally was not completed without all sorts of editorial changes in the older materials, e.g., xvi. 14.

Though proceeding from the same root, these offshoots are by no means of the same nature, nor do they all belong to the same stage of the process.  Some of them are popular legends and unconscious fictions.  Of this nature is the story of Michal, who takes the part of her husband against her father, lets him down in the evening with a rope through the window, detains the spies for a time by saying that David is sick, and then shows them the household god which she has arranged on the bed and covered with the counterpane (xix. 11-17).  The scenes in which Saul and David meet are of a somewhat different colour, yet we notice that the conviction that the latter is the king of the future does not interfere with the recognition of the former as the king de facto and the anointed of Jehovah; Saul too appears not wicked, but blinded.  The secondary version (xxiii. 14 seq.) contains (not to speak of the distinctly later insertion between verse 15 and 19), in addition to the touching features of the story, a good-natured jest, telling how the two played hide-and-seek round a hill, which took its name from the circumstance.  These stories present certain marks which serve to fix their date in the history of the religion:  one is, that the image in David’s house is spoken of quite simply; another, the expression in xxvi. 19, “If Jehovah have stirred thee up against me, let Him accept an offering, but if it be men, cursed be they before Jehovah, because they have driven me out this day from the fellowship in the land of Jehovah, and obliged me to serve other gods.”  It is perhaps not by mere chance that this speech is wanting in the parallel version, and that there is added in place of it a formal act of recognition which Saul pays at the end to his destined successor.  As for the story of Goliath, it is also quite artless, but its religious colouring is much more marked.  The speech with which David goes to meet the giant is characteristic on this side (xvii. 4 seq.):