1 Samuel27chapter 27

1 Samuel 27:1-2

David's own verdict, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul, comes after Saul's spear missed him twice and a cave full of proof that the Lord had already delivered him. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call the resolution wrong in more than one particular, and Blaikie reads the verse as the lapse of faith the chapter is built to expose, a shepherd who once trusted a sling now trusting Philistine borders instead. David crosses with six hundred men to Achish son of Maoch, the same Gath where he once feigned madness at chapter 21.

1 Samuel 27:3-4

David settles at Gath with his household entire, even David with his two wives, and the text notes every man's family made the same crossing, more a clan on the move than a raiding band. Saul hears David has fled to Gath and lets the matter drop; Wesley reads Saul's own parting words to David, Return, my son, as proof the king never meant to hunt him past the border. Gill offers the plainer reading, that Saul kept spies out and simply saw no profit chasing an enemy into another king's country.

1 Samuel 27:5-7

David asks Achish for some town in the country rather than lodging in the royal city, and Henry credits two motives, freedom to keep his own worship apart from Gath's idols and plain unwillingness to burden his host as an uninvited guest. Achish gives him Ziklag, a town Joshua had assigned to Judah that the Philistines had since held, and Henry reads the gift as a king of sense and honor restoring land that was never rightly his to keep. The town becomes the property of Judah's own kings from that day, and David dwells there a full year and four months before Saul's death ends the exile.

1 Samuel 27:8-9

The raids strike the Geshurites, the Gezrites and the Amalekites, and the third name reaches back to the war Exodus 17 swore against Amalek and Deuteronomy 25 commanded blotted out, the same war chapter 15 left unfinished when Saul spared Agag and the best of the flock. Barnes places these tribes on the desert border toward Egypt, old inhabitants of the land rather than late arrivals, and distinguishes them from other clans bearing similar names elsewhere in the record. David leaves neither man nor woman alive and takes the sheep, oxen, asses and camels for spoil, and Adam Clarke calls it a complete extirpation of the people struck.

1 Samuel 27:10-12

Achish asks Whither have ye made a road to day, and David names Judah, the Jerahmeelites and the Kenites, all of them Achish's own allies rather than the tribes actually struck. Wesley calls the answer ambiguous and beneath David's usual candor, and reads his later prayer at Psalm 119:29, remove from me the way of lying, as David's own reflection on this deceit; the narrative itself passes no verdict and simply records that Achish believed him. David spares no one who might carry the true report back to Gath, and Achish concludes that David has made his own people utterly abhor him and so will serve the Philistines forever, a trust the coming chapters will show was entirely misplaced.