{"id":"01KFXVBP9XP4X7AGPT7TQC1JTY","cid":"bafkreidotax7cvdndzsm6kumhfedrxm6aeocgebv3rdssksp3q55exd7si","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":751,"extracted_at":"2026-01-26T19:09:17.320Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KFXVA454RTKCJEQJMP0QKNKY","start_line":736,"text":"   515\tdevoted, of which we have any account in the pages of Hebrew history. Such friendships were not unknown in other histories. The story of Damon and Pythias, with its record of the heroic devotion of Damon, who, when Pythias, condemned to death, asks leave to return home and arrange his affairs, takes his place, expressing his readiness to die for his friend if Pythias should not return, is matched by other heroisms of friendship in other classic pages than those of Greece. But none of them is more beautiful in its mutual loyalty and love than the story of David and Jonathan. Three times they met to pledge to one another an undying friendship, and three times circumstances which they could not resist nor control tore them apart. But their hearts were one until the end; and when it came, the cry that the death of Jonathan wrung from the lips of David was one so poignant, so passionate, and so pathetic that to-day one cannot read it without tears.\n   516\t\n   517\tThe first of the three meetings was in\n\n<!-- [Page 112](arke:01KFXV1NGCJ525DTTD208WXQF9) -->\n   518\t98\n   519\t\n   520\tthe camp of King Saul, by the Valley of Elah, when David returned with the head of the Philistine, Goliath of Gath. Beside his father when the King challenged the stripling David with the question, “Whose son art thou, thou young man?” stood Jonathan, the heir to the throne. It reveals a very beautiful and very noble nature that at that moment there woke in his heart no other feeling than that of keen and enthusiastic admiration and affection. And David answered the King, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.” That was all that he said. But the way he said it, the simple, manly modesty of this young hero for God and his country, conquered the heart of Jonathan as in a moment. “And when David had made an end of speaking unto Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” And then followed the first sealing of the friendship, after the fashion of those days, by the pledges which Jonathan gave David to bind it—\n\n<!-- [Page 113](arke:01KFXV1NGXK1RXMY94WAJNBKP5) -->\n   521\t99\n   522\t\n   523\this royal mantle, his sword, his girdle, and his famous bow. It was as though he had said: “You are worthier to wear these tokens of a king’s son than I. Take them, and never forget that the two who first and last have possessed them are brothers.”\n   524\t\n   525\tIt was not always easy to keep that sacred bond in mind. David, hunted by his friend’s father, was tempted more than once to forget what was due to his king, even when the King was crazed and maddened by jealousy. And Jonathan must have often seen that if he could forget what he owed to his vow of friendship to David, it would be easy, by betraying him into the hands of his father, for a time at any rate, to bring again peace to Israel and honor to himself. But neither of them was shaken from his steadfastness. The time came when David, a fugitive from the face of Saul, was hiding by the stone of Ezel. Crouched under the huge rock, the solitary thing in the vast plain, he waited for the signal agreed upon\n","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFXVAZGZZ40G7M2CQSRME0BT","peer_label":"David and Jonathan","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFXT0KM64XT6K8W52TDEE0YS","peer_label":"More Classics","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-01-26T19:09:17.615Z","ts":"2026-01-26T19:09:17.615Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}