1 Samuelchapter 27
12 verses · Samuel, Nathan and Gad, by tradition · 10th century BC · History
And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul shall despair of me, to seek me any more in any coast of Israel: so shall I escape out of his hand.
Introduction
Samuel, Nathan and Gad, by tradition, History, 1 Samuel Overview.
This chapter was kept for a people who had to reckon with their greatest king's years in the pay of the Philistines. It opens inside David's own thoughts, and those thoughts decide the next four chapters. Listen for what is missing from how he makes his choice, set against the chapters before. Listen for what he tells his Philistine master and for what the narrator says he actually did. The chapter records both without comment, and a careful reader should weigh them. It ends with a foreign king's confident mistake.
Context
- Who
- Israelites who had to reckon with their greatest king's years as a Philistine vassal
- What
- An account of David leaving Judah for Gath, receiving Ziklag from Achish, and raiding desert peoples while he reports raids on Judah.
- Where
- Gath, the royal city of Achish, and then Ziklag, a border town in the Negev.
- When
- A year and four months by the text's own count; on the common reckoning about 1013 to 1011 BC.
- Why
- To record honestly the stretch when David lived as a Philistine vassal by deceit, and to set up his place in the Philistine army.
Historical context
The chapter belongs to David, who is here a mercenary captain in the service of a foreign king, and to Achish son of Maoch, king of Gath.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
The time is the last stage of the exile, and the text gives its own measure at verse 7, one year and four months. The site places those months about 1013 to 1011 BC.
The place is Philistine territory. Gath is one of the five Philistine cities, and Ziklag sits well south of it in the dry Negev on the edge of the desert.
The occasion is a decision David makes in verse 1 without consulting anyone, that he will one day die by Saul's hand and had better leave the country.
A first hearer knew that the arrangement was ordinary. Rulers across the region hired displaced war bands as frontier troops, gave them a border town to garrison, and expected raids and tribute in return. Eugene Merrill describes the pattern. Achish gains an experienced force on his southern flank, and David gains a base of his own out of Saul's reach.
A first hearer also knew why the distance mattered. Ziklag put David out of daily observation at Gath, which is what made a policy of his own possible. He raided the desert peoples on the southern approaches and reported raids on Judah instead, leaving no survivors to carry the truth back. The text states this and offers no defence of it.
Significance
The chapter opens with David reasoning from fear rather than asking the LORD anything, and everything in the next four chapters follows from that.
Show the rest of the significance, 2 more paragraphs
For Israel this was the honest record of their greatest king's worst stretch. The Scriptures kept the account of an anointed man living on a Philistine payroll and lying for a living.
Achish's closing conclusion is the hook that carries the story on. He believes David has made himself hated in Israel and will serve him for ever, which is what puts David in the Philistine battle line two chapters later.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
This is the chapter the rabbinic chronology of Saul's reign is worked out on, because of the phrase counting David's time in Philistine country. Rashi refuses to read the word for days as a year here. He gives the minimum sense of two days, and sets out the count that rules the longer reading out (Rashi on I Samuel 27:7:1, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J., CC-BY). His count runs from Eli's forty years and the twenty years the ark stood at Kiriath-jearim, less Samuel's fifty-two years and one year from his conception. He takes David's seven years at Hebron into it as well, and cites Seder Olam (same ref). The conclusion he draws is that Saul reigned four months after Samuel's death (same ref). On David's fear at the head of the chapter he gives the sense as an ambush (Rashi on I Samuel 27:1:1, same edition). He reports Metzudas Dovid there, that David took Saul's request to stay as a trap (same ref). On David's request for a town of his own he supplies the courtesy in it, that he asked not to be a burden to the king (Rashi on I Samuel 27:5:1, same edition). On the raids he reads the verb as a habit rather than a single act, and glosses the direction named as from the entrance of Shur (Rashi on I Samuel 27:8:1 and 27:8:2, same edition). On Achish's question he treats the letter in the Hebrew as interchangeable, so the word means where, with Nechemyoh 13:7 beside it (Rashi on I Samuel 27:10:1, same edition). Radak stands as a citation at I Samuel 27:1:1, 27:2:1, 27:5:1, 27:6:1, 27:7:1, 27:10:1 and 27:12:1. Malbim stands at 27:2:1, 27:3:1, 27:7:1, 27:9:1 and 27:11:1. Metzudat David stands at 27:1:1, 27:2:1, 27:5:1, 27:6:1, 27:11:1 and 27:12:1. The corpus holds no English version of them.
What the rabbis say
The corpus records thirteen rabbinic locators on this chapter, twelve of them Midrash and one Talmud, each a locator without text. David's thought that he would one day perish at Saul's hand draws the largest cluster of the chapter. It draws Bereshit Rabbah 34:10, Bereshit Rabbah 67:8, Kohelet Rabbah 5:2:1, Midrash Lekach Tov, Genesis 8:21:3 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 61:1. Two passages of Esther Rabbah stand with them, Esther Rabbah 10:3 and Esther Rabbah 10:4. His request for a town draws Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 45:10:1. The count of days and months draws Seder Olam Rabbah 10:2 and Seder Olam Rabbah 13:1, which is the work Rashi cites for the chronology. The raids on the Amalekites and their neighbours draw Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 7:10:10. David leaving no one alive to report draws Esther Rabbah 7:13 and Sifrei Aggadah on Esther, Midrash Abba Guryon 3:16. The rabbis teach in these places, and this site reports them as their teaching rather than as a rule of the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on I Samuel 27:1:1, 27:5:1, 27:7:1, 27:8:1, 27:8:2 and 27:10:1, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J., CC-BY; Seder Olam, Seder Olam on the count of Saul's reign, as Rashi cites it at I Samuel 27:7:1; the corpus carries the locators Seder Olam Rabbah 10:2 and 13:1; Radak, Radak on I Samuel 27:1:1, 27:2:1, 27:5:1, 27:6:1, 27:7:1, 27:10:1 and 27:12:1, cited only, no English version in the corpus; Malbim, Malbim on I Samuel 27:2:1, 27:3:1, 27:7:1, 27:9:1 and 27:11:1, cited only; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on I Samuel 27:1:1, 27:2:1, 27:5:1, 27:6:1, 27:11:1 and 27:12:1, cited only; and Metzudas Dovid on Saul's request as Rashi carries him.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Ziklag: David takes refuge with the king of Gath
1 Samuel 27:1-2
I shall now perish one day: 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 27:1
“I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul - This was a very hasty conclusion: God had so often interposed in behalf of his life, that he was authorized to believe the reverse. God had hitherto confounded all Saul’s stratagems, and it was not at all likely that he would now abandon him: there was now no additional reason why he should withdraw from David his helping hand.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Matthew Henry notes that six hundred fighting men made David worth having, and Achish took him in hoping for their service. Adam Clarke finds every step of the move open to blame. An Achish son of Maacah still rules Gath at 1 Kings 2:39, under Solomon.
1 Samuel 27:2
“David arose, and he passed over - unto Achish - There is not one circumstance in this transaction that is not blameable. David joins the enemies of his God and of his country, acts a most inhuman part against the Geshurites and Amalekites, without even the pretense of a Divine authority; tells a most deliberate falsehood to Achish, his protector, relative to the people against whom he had perpetrated this cruel act; giving him to understand that he had been destroying the Israelites, his enemies.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 27:3-4
even David with his two wives: 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 27:3
“Every man with his household - So it appears that the men who consorted with David had wives and families. David and his company resembled a tribe of the wandering Arabs.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Matthew Henry reads the halt as a sin that left Saul before Saul left it. The king settled for David's banishment when he could no longer reach him. David's prediction at verse 1 comes true.
1 Samuel 27:4
“Sought no more for him - At their meeting Saul's heart was deeply wounded, and he had said, "Return, my son David, Be with me as in time past." Nor have we the least proof, that he would have sought for him again, with any other design.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 27:5-7
some town in the country: 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 27:5
“In a town of his own he might have the more free exercise of his religion, and keep his men better to it, and not have his righteous soul vexed, as it was at Gath, with the idolatries of the Philistines. (2.) As it was presented to Achish it was very modest.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 27:5
“David, with characteristic Oriental subtlety (compare 1Sa 21:2), suggests as a reason for leaving Gath that his presence was burdensome and expensive to the king. His real motive was to be more out of the way of observation and control, so as to act the part of an enemy of Saul, without really lifting up his hand against him and his own countrymen of Israel.”
The phrase kings of Judah points to the time of writing. Albert Barnes dates this remark after the kingdom divided under Jeroboam and before the exile to Babylon. Adam Clarke adds that Ziklag had passed from Judah to Simeon at Joshua 19:5 before the Philistines took it.
1 Samuel 27:6
“Achish gave him Ziklag - Ziklag was at first given to the tribe of Judah, but afterwards it was ceded to that of Simeon, Jos 15:31; Jos 19:5. The Philistines had, however, made themselves masters of it, and held it to the time here mentioned; it then fell into the tribe of Judah again, and continued to be the property of the kings of Judah.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 27:6
“It was given to the tribe of Judah before, Josh. xv, 31, but the Philistines kept the possession of it 'till this time. And being given by them to David, it now belonged not to the tribe of Judah; but to the king of Judah, David and his heirs forever. To this day - This, and some such clauses seem to have been added, after the main substance of the several books was written.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The Hebrew reads days and four months, and days can stand for a full year, the sense the Berean text follows. Matthew Henry allows a shorter reading of four months alone. Ziklag is where word of Saul's death reaches David at 2 Samuel 1:1.
Raids reported crooked, and an enemy who trusts him
1 Samuel 27:8-9
the Geshurites, and the Gezrites, and the Amalekites: 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 27:8
“The Geshurites bordered upon the Philistines, and lived in the mountainous district which terminates the desert on the northeast (marginal reference). They were a different tribe, or, at least, a different branch of it, from the Geshurites who lived on the northeast border of Bashan, and were Arameans 2Sa 15:8. The Gezrites, or Gerzites, may be connected with those who gave their name to Mount Gerizim.”
The flocks, herds and camels fed David's men. Matthew Henry acquits David of cruelty toward the Amalekites and their neighbors, peoples long doomed. Adam Clarke calls the raids inhuman and without any word from God.
1 Samuel 27:9
“David smote the land - Here was a complete extirpation of all these people, not one being left alive, lest he should carry tidings of the disasters of his country! The spoil which David took consisted of sheep, oxen, asses, camels, and apparel.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 27:9
“We may acquit him of injustice and cruelty in this action because those people whom he cut off were such as heaven had long since doomed to destruction, and he that did it was one whom heaven had ordained to dominion; so that the thing was very fit to be done, and he was very fit to do it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 27:10-12
Whither have ye made a road to day?: 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.
1 Samuel 27:10
“Whither have ye made a road today? - He had probably been in the habit of making predatory excursions. This seems to be implied in the question of Achish.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 27:10
“David - These and the following words are ambiguous, and contrary to that simplicity which became David, both as a prince, and as an eminent professor of the true religion. The fidelity of Achish to him, and the confidence he put in him, aggravates his sin in thus deceiving him, which David seems penitently to reflect on, when he prays, Remove from me the way of lying.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Albert Barnes reads the verse as bringing people to Gath as captives, who would have been part of the spoil. David left none alive to keep the report from reaching Achish. Barnes infers that the people David raided were allies of the Philistines, and the truth would have cost him his place in Philistine territory.
1 Samuel 27:11
“Tidings - The word is not in the original. The sense rather is “to bring them to Gath,” as captives and slaves. The prisoners taken would naturally have been part of the spoil, but David dared not to bring them to Gath lest his deceit should be discovered. Obviously these tribes were allies of the Philistines.”
Achish trusted David and at 28:2 made him his bodyguard. Adam Clarke rejects the defense of David's deceit offered by Delaney. He argues that the lie left Achish at ease in Gath while David raided the peoples allied to the Philistines.
1 Samuel 27:12
“He hath made his people - utterly to abhor him - This deception, which Dr. Delaney says “did harm to nobody, and to the account of which he is at an utter loss what degree of guilt to charge,” imposed upon Achish, had the most direct tendency to make him imagine himself secure, while in the utmost danger; and to have a faithful friend and able ally in David, while he was the veriest enemy he could possibly have. Shame on him who becomes the apologist of such conduct!”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: Narrative, the account of a voluntary exile among the Philistines, with a summary of a raiding policy and the report given about it, as Blaikie classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul | Verse 1 is a speech David makes to himself, and the chapter's whole course follows from it. The store's exposition note on verses 1 to 2 sets the verdict against the evidence. Saul's spear had missed him twice, and a cave and a camp had both proved that the LORD would deliver him. Blaikie reads the verse as the lapse of faith the chapter exists to show.W. G. Blaikie, The First Book of Samuel in the Expositor's Bible, cited in the store's exposition note on verses 1 to 2. | 1 Samuel 27:1, 1 Samuel 26:24 |
| The question and the standing answer | At verse 10 Achish asks where the raid went, and David names the Negev of Judah, of the Jerahmeelites and of the Kenites. Verse 11 says this was his custom the whole time he lived in Philistine territory, so the exchange stood as a routine rather than as one occasion. John Wesley calls the answer ambiguous and beneath David's usual candour, and the narrative passes no verdict of its own.John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765, on 1 Samuel 27:10. | 1 Samuel 27:10, 1 Samuel 27:11 |
| Three tribes struck, three districts named | Verse 8 names the tribes actually raided, the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites. Verse 10 names the three districts David reported instead, all of them the territory of Achish's own allies. The two lists stand two verses apart and are the chapter's method in miniature, one truth about the south and one story about it.Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832 to 1869, on 1 Samuel 27:8. | 1 Samuel 27:8, 1 Samuel 27:10 |
| The spoil, itemised and carried home | Verse 9 lists what David took back to Achish after each raid: flocks and herds, donkeys, camels and clothing. Adam Clarke, cited in the store's exposition note on verses 8 to 9, calls the treatment of the people struck a complete extirpation. The list of goods is what made the report to Achish credible, since a raider returning from Judah would bring the same kinds of thing.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on 1 Samuel 27:9. | 1 Samuel 27:9, 1 Samuel 27:11 |
The historical value
12 more paragraphs on the patterns
The chapter carries the clearest statement of a date in this part of the book. Verse 7 gives a year and four months in Philistine territory, which fixes the length of the last stage of the exile. Verse 6 records that Ziklag passed to the kings of Judah and remained theirs, a note the narrator writes from long after the event. Adam Clarke, quoted in the store's pool on 30:25, treats the phrase unto this day in these chapters as an indication that the book was composed well after the facts it records.
The tribes of verse 8 are placed. Albert Barnes, cited in the store's exposition note on verses 8 to 9, puts the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites on the desert border toward Egypt. He takes them as old inhabitants rather than late arrivals. The parenthesis in verse 8 says the same thing, that these peoples had inhabited the land from ancient times as far as Shur and Egypt.
Gath itself is one of the five Philistine cities, and the estate carries the identification of ancient Gath with Tell es-Safi in the dossier's archaeology section for this book.
The debated concept
Why Saul stopped hunting David is read two ways. The store's exposition note on verses 3 to 4 sets them out. John Wesley reads Saul's own parting words at 26:21, come back David my son, as proof that the king never meant to pursue him past the border. John Gill gives the plainer reading, that Saul kept spies out and saw no profit in chasing an enemy into another king's country. The text says only that Saul searched for him no longer.
What to make of David's answer to Achish is the chapter's main question, and the older writers divide. John Wesley, cited in the store's note on verses 10 to 12, calls the answer ambiguous and beneath David's usual candour. He reads the later prayer at Psalm 119:29, remove from me the way of lying, as David's own reflection on it. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the whole resolution of verse 1 as wrong in more than one particular, which makes the deception a consequence of the first error. Matthew Henry credits David with sound motives at verse 5, freedom to keep his own worship apart from Gath's idols and unwillingness to burden his host. The narrative itself records the answer and states only that Achish believed it.
The treatment of the people struck is the third question, and it is the same question the estate carries for the war on Amalek. Adam Clarke calls verse 9 a complete extirpation of the people struck. Verse 11 gives David's own stated reason, that a survivor would carry the true report to Gath. The site argues the command against Amalek and the wider Canaanite question on its own page and takes no verdict here.
The divine connection
The chapter records no word from the LORD, and that silence is itself the point. David inquires of the LORD at 23:2, 23:4 and 23:9, and again at 30:7 and 30:8 with the ephod in Abiathar's hands. Between those two runs this chapter, where a decision is taken in verse 1 by a man talking to himself. The store's exposition note on 30:7 to 8 sets the two habits side by side, David's enquiry against Saul's at En-dor, and this chapter is the one stretch where David asks nobody.
The raids at verse 8 reach back to a standing command. Amalek is the enemy Exodus 17:14 and 16 swore war against from generation to generation, and Deuteronomy 25:17 to 19 commanded blotted out. The store's exposition note on verses 8 to 9 records that chapter 15 left that war unfinished when Saul spared Agag and the best of the flocks. What Saul left undone, David is here doing in the same desert, without any word instructing him to.
How the rest of Scripture reads this chapter
The New Testament does not cite 1 Samuel 27. Within the Old Testament, Ziklag is picked up at 1 Chronicles 12:1 to 22. That passage lists the men who came over to David at Ziklag while he was still kept away from Saul, including Benjamites of Saul's own tribe. The town also stands in the settlement lists at Joshua 15:31 and 19:5, which is the ground for Matthew Henry's reading that Achish was restoring land Judah had been assigned.
Keep studying
Studies1
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871, on 1 Samuel 27:1; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765, on 1 Samuel 27:10; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 1 Samuel 27:5 and W. G. Blaikie, The First Book of Samuel in the Expositor's Bible, cited in the store's exposition note on verses 1 to 2.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and W. G. Blaikie, The First Book of Samuel (Expositor's Bible).