Deeper Reflection
FROM ZIKLAG, free from Achish’s scrutiny²⁸ (v.5), David raided the nearby non-Israelite peoples “to acquire food and provisions for his men and their families”²⁹ (v.8). When David raided “the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites” (v.8), he was doing a right thing. Israel did not possess the land of the Geshurites (Josh 13:1-2), which David apparently now did. David picked up from Saul’s fateful campaign against the Amalekites (1 Sam 15), which he continued later (1 Sam 30). Whenever David attacked an area, his practice was “not to leave a man or a woman alive” (vv.9, 11). Unlike the situation in 1 Samuel 15, where total annihilation of the population was for religious purposes, David here killed everyone so that no survivors would be left to report to Achish what had actually happened (v.11).³⁰ David did this to safeguard himself and his people, so that they could remain in Philistia. In this regard, David was wrong. And by lying to Achish that where he raided were various subdistricts of the Negev in Judah (v.10), to his detriment, David made himself to appear as anti-Israel and pro-Philistine (v.12). The text seems to be “sympathetic to David’s difficulty and yet presents him as in the wrong”³¹. We see here a human struggle in a complex reality, where things are not simple and straightforward. Was this a total failure of David? Where is God in the picture?

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²⁸ Robert B. Chisholm Jr., 176 ²⁹ Robert B. Chisholm Jr., 176 ³⁰ Ronald F. Youngblood, 1, 2 Samuel, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3 (Zondervan, 1992), 775 ³¹ Dale Ralph Davis, 281