doeg Summary and Overview

fearful, an Edomite, the chief overseer of Saul's flocks (1 Sam. 21:7). At the command of Saul he slew the high priest Ahimelech (q.v.) at Nob, together with all the priests to the number of eighty-five persons. (Compare Ps. 52, title.)

(fearful), an Idumean, chief of Saul's herdmen. (B.C. 1062.) He was at Nob when Ahimelech gave David the sword of Goliath, and not only gave information to Saul, but when others declined the office, himself executed the king's order to destroy the priests of Nob, with their families, to the number of 85 persons, together with all their property. #1Sa 21:7; 22:9,18,22; Ps 52|

DO'EG (fearful). See Ahimelech.

An Idumean, chief of Saul's herdsmen. At Nob (1 Samuel 21:7) "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 Psalm 52:3-4 with 1 Samuel 22:13). "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" (Psalm 52:1) who "trusted in the abundance of his riches" (Psalm 52:7) 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 (1 Samuel 22:7): "Hear now, ye Benjamites, will the son of Jesse (as I can) give every one of you fields and vineyards?" (compare 1 Samuel 8:14.) 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" (Psalm 52:1) 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."