Jonathan gets a clue

1 Samuel 20:9,30-42 - "Never!" Jonathan said. "If I had the least inkling that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn't I tell you?"

Saul's anger flared up at Jonathan and he said to him, "You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don't I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he must die!"

"Why should he be put to death? What has he done?" Jonathan asked his father. But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David.

Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; on that second day of the month he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father's shameful treatment of David.

In the morning Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. He had a small boy with him, and he said to the boy, "Run and find the arrows I shoot." As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. When the boy came to the place where Jonathan's arrow had fallen, Jonathan called out after him, "Isn't the arrow beyond you?" Then he shouted, "Hurry! Go quickly! Don't stop!" The boy picked up the arrow and returned to his master. (The boy knew nothing of all this; only Jonathan and David knew.) Then Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said, "Go, carry them back to town."

After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most.

Jonathan said to David, "Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the LORD, saying, 'The LORD is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.' " Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town.

I wonder if Jonathan was really that clueless and naive. He thought his father, King Saul, told him everything. Get real, son! For one thing, he probably didn't even have time to tell Jonathan everything -- even if he wanted to. As it turns out, Saul considered Jonathan something of an enemy and tried to spear him just as he had tried to kill David (more than once) earlier.

I wonder if Jonathan hadn't heard about the earlier attempts on David's life. Or if he had, did he dismiss them as exaggerations or some sort of anomaly in order to rationalize his thought that Saul was not really out to kill David?

I wonder why David and Jonathan cooked up the big arrow-shooting facade only to meet face to face immediately afterward. If shouting "Hurry! Go quickly! Don't stop!" were phrases meant to have double meanings -- one for the small boy who seems to have already found the arrow, and one for David, so that no one else in the area would get suspicious -- didn't their meeting undo all that play acting? I wonder if there was anyone else out in the field who could have seen or heard what was going on. Certainly the young boy (I'm imagining about a 6-year-old.) had no idea what was going on behind the scene. If there was no one else, why the charade? If there was someone there, why meet face to face?