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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Doeg
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An Idumean, chief of Saul's herdsmen. At Nob () "detained before the Lord" by some act of purification or vow, which as a proselyte he was performing, when Ahimelech gave David Goliath's sword and the shewbread. With officious eagerness and talebearing exaggeration (marked in the title of Psalm 52 by the tautology "came and told and said") he gave information which he knew well his master Saul would keenly listen to. Doeg told substantially the fact; it was Saul who put on it the "lying" construction of treason on the part of the priests (compare -4 with ).
"The Edomite" in the title reminds us that herein Doeg represented Edom's and the world's undying enmity to Israel and the godly. He was but the accomplice and ready tool; Saul, the "mighty man" () who "trusted in the abundance of his riches" () as means of destroying David, was the real" boaster in mischief," for this was the very appeal that Saul made, and that induced Doeg to inform (): "Hear now, ye Benjamites, will the son of Jesse (as I can) give every one of you fields and vineyards?" (compare .)
On Doeg's information, and by Doeg's own sacrilegious hand, at Saul's command, when the king's "footmen" declined in reverential awe to kill Jehovah's priests, eighty-five of them fell, and Saul "boasted" () of it as a sample of the fate of all who should help David. The undesigned coincidences here noted, between the psalm and independent history, confirm the authenticity of both. The cruel sycophancy of Doeg was so well known to David that he said unto Abiathar, the only survivor of the slaughter, "I knew it that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul;" therefore with characteristic sensitiveness of conscience David adds, "I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy father's house."