1 Samuel 19:16
And when the messengers were come in, behold, there was an image in the bed, with a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster. And when the messengers were come in, behold, there was an image in the bed, with a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster.
When the messengers came in they found an image laid out in David's bed with a pillow of goats' hair for its bolster at its head, a deception arranged to make it appear that David himself was lying there while he escaped. The deception was the work of Michal, daughter of Saul and wife of David, who loved David and warned him of her father's purpose to kill him and urged him to escape for his life, letting him down from the window and placing the effigy in the bed, after which David fled to Samuel at Naioth. The verse belongs to the account of Saul's jealousy of David and his efforts to kill him, acting with malice against David as his successor. When his men found nothing but the effigy, Saul was very angry with his daughter and enraged with disappointment, determined that his hated subject should not escape.
In its larger setting the verse belongs to the long history of Saul's wicked career recorded in 1 Samuel 14-31, showing his rashness, weakness, failure, rejection, and ever-downward course, and how one who was once the humble servant of God became eminent in wickedness, in contrast to David's choosing and checkered but ever-rising career. Saul was filled with the same spirit that actuates Satan and, like the first great apostate, was moved by unholy ambition and murderous rage, showing how terrible was the fall of the first chosen king of Israel since the holy anointing oil was poured upon his head by the prophet of God. Saul's malice toward David his successor stands in contrast to Eli's kindness toward Samuel his successor. The narrative throws light on the habits and customs of the people and the influence of surrounding nations upon them, and shows God's providence shaping and molding national events while still remembering the promised Seed, with lessons of unselfish friendship in Jonathan and mercy and magnanimity in David toward Saul his enemy, that it is safe to leave one's cause in God's hand, and of David's sincere mourning for Saul.