Doeg

Doeg (meaning fearful or careful) was an Edomite, the chief overseer of Saul's flocks, who was detained at the sanctuary at Nob when David arrived fleeing from Saul and received from the priest Ahimelech both the consecrated showbread and the sword of Goliath (1 Sam. 21:7). When Saul interrogated his servants about who had aided David, Doeg volunteered his eyewitness account, triggering a chain of events that ended in catastrophe.

Saul ordered the execution of the priests of Nob—a command the Israelite soldiers refused to carry out—but Doeg complied, slaughtering eighty-five priests and then destroying the entire city of Nob: men, women, children, infants, and animals (1 Sam. 22:18–19). Abiathar alone escaped to join David. Psalm 52's superscription connects the psalm to Doeg, addressing him as a "mighty man" who boasts in evil and loves destruction. He became in later Jewish tradition the archetype of the malicious informer and the brutal enforcer of tyrannical power.