In 1st Samuel chapter 27, verses 1-4, after David and Saul and their soldiers part ways, David still doesn’t believe that Saul has given up hunting him. As we learned in the previous post, Saul sounded repentant, but now in 1st Samuel 27, verses 1-4, David thinks Saul will change his mind and start hunting David again. So David asks the Philistine king Achish for help.
That tells us how much David believed Saul’s big talk about sorrow and invitation to David to come back to him. King Achish of Gath receives David, his men and their families, and with that, Saul gives up the hunt for David. After what was likely at least a couple years, David is no longer a fugitive.
This episode might sound very familiar. Didn’t David already go to the Philistines once before? Yes he did. Very briefly. In 1st Samuel chapter 21. That was right at the beginning of his fugitive years when David was desperate. At that point, he had just recently fled Saul’s house, and David was totally alone. For some strange reason David went to the same Philistine king Achish of Gath, the town where Goliath was from, Goliath who David killed, and whose sword David was bringing with him. It was a desperate ploy, and David realized quickly that he was being very, very unwise. Achish could accuse David of spying or some other evil plot. So David pretended to be insane, and he left Gath nearly as soon as he arrived.
Now in chapter 27, time has passed. We don’t know how much time. As I mentioned above, maybe a few years. But it was enough time that David’s circumstances are totally different. He is no longer alone. He is leading 600 men, and he has clearly established himself as being at odds with King Saul. Now Achish sees David as a potential ally.
David is no longer a fugitive, and the Philistine king Achish accepts David. Finally David and his men can have peace. But what will life be like for David and his men living among their former enemies, the Philistines? Will they really have peace? Notice in verse 3, that David and his men bring their families with them. Will they adapt to Philistine life and culture? Can they settle down and start a new life? Look at verse 5,
“Then David said to Achish, ‘If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be assigned to me in one of the country towns, that I may live there. Why should your servant live in the royal city with you?’ So on that day Achish gave him Ziklag, and it has belonged to the kings of Judah ever since. David lived in Philistine territory a year and four months.”
It appears that the fugitive Israelites will not be integrating to Philistine life and culture. Which is not surprising, given the many statements in the Mosaic Law that God gave the people of Israel to be separate from the pagan people around them. David makes the argument that the Philistine king wouldn’t want Israelites living in his royal city, so perhaps the king should just give the Israelites a town.
Give them a town? Doesn’t that seem like a big ask? David sure has some boldness to be asking for a whole town. The text doesn’t tell us if Achish is afraid of David, or if he doesn’t trust David, or if Philistines and Israelites couldn’t stand being near each other. Whatever the reason, Achish is willing to give David a whole town. Why would the Philistine king say Yes to such a big request? Maybe Achish thinks it will be a great advantage to have the enemy of his enemy on his side. You know that phrase, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Well the Philistines and Israelites have been at war with each other for a long time. It seems that Achish views David and his men as basically no-longer-Israelites who are now enemies of the Israelites. Achish views them as reinforcements. But he doesn’t want them living in his town. Maybe the Philistine people living in Achish’s royal city didn’t want the Jews living in their town.
But what about the town of Ziklag that the Philistine king gives to David? Were Philistine people living in Ziklag? Maybe the town of Ziklag is a ghost town. We can only speculate. Whatever the situation was, David and his men and their families make it their home. Ziklag becomes a kind of military base for David and his men. Read what happens in verses 8-12 after they move into Ziklag,
David and his men go out on raids, slaughtering people. Men and women. And he clearly didn’t want Achish to know about it. Was David lying about committing murder?
We’ll discuss this in the next post.
Photo by Matt Sclarandis on Unsplash
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