2 Samuel 9:8

A dead dog. At first sight this extreme self-humiliation makes us look on Mephibosheth as a poor creature, whom early misfortune and personal deformity had combined to depress But really this is to impose on an Oriental hyperbole a Western exactness of meaning. When in the East your entertainer assures you that everything he has to his last dirhem is yours, he nevertheless expects you to pay twice the value foreverything you consume; but he makes his exaction pleasant by his extreme courtliness. So Ephron offered his cave at Machpelah to Abraham as a free gift, but he took care to obtain for it an exorbitant price ( Genesis 23:11 , Genesis 23:15 ). Mephibosheth described himself in terms similar to those used by David of himself to Saul ( 1 Samuel 24:14 ); but he meant no more than to express great gratitude, and also to acknowledge the disparity of rank between him and the king.