1 Samuel 27 — I Shall Now Perish One Day by the Hand of Saul
David says in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better than to escape into the land of the Philistines. He crosses with his six hundred men and their households to Achish son of Maoch, king of Gath — the city that once threw him out as a madman. Saul hears, and seeks him no more. David asks for a town in the country rather than the royal city, and Achish gives him Ziklag, which pertains to the kings of Judah unto this day. He dwells among the Philistines a full year and four months. From Ziklag he raids the Geshurites, Gezrites and Amalekites — ancient peoples of the south toward Shur and Egypt — leaving neither man nor woman alive and taking sheep, oxen, asses, camels and apparel. When Achish asks where he has raided, David says, Against the south of Judah, of the Jerahmeelites, of the Kenites; and he spares no one who could carry a different story to Gath. Achish believes him: he hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant for ever.
“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.”
— 1 Samuel 27:1
- v.1-4 Despair in the heart; to Achish of Gath with six hundred; Saul seeks him no more
- v.5-7 Ziklag given — unto the kings of Judah unto this day; a full year and four months
- v.8-12 Raids on the south; the report to Achish; He shall be my servant for ever
Achish the son of Maoch — a father's name not given in 21:10, which some take to mark a different Achish, though most assume the same king; the matter is open. What is certain is that David goes back to the city that drove him out as a madman (21:13-15), but now with six hundred men, their households, and two wives (v. 3) — not a fugitive begging asylum but a captain offering a company. A king at war with Saul could use Saul's best soldier, and that is how Achish reads him (v. 12).
The move has a long shadow. Gath was Goliath's city (17:4); David's men now live among his kin. No psalm heading places a psalm in Ziklag, and the narrator records no prayer of David from the day he crosses the border until the day Ziklag burns (30:6). Readers have noticed the silence. The Philistine period is the book's picture of what a believer's life looks like when it is ordered by there is nothing better for me — not ruin, exactly, but a long compromise.
David asks for a place in some town in the country (v. 5) — out from under the king's eye in the royal city — and receives Ziklag, a Negev town assigned to Judah and then to Simeon in Joshua (15:31; 19:5), evidently held by the Philistines at this time. The narrator adds a note from a later day: wherefore Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto this day — a sentence written when there were kings of Judah, which readers take as a sign of when this part of the book reached its present form. A gift from a Philistine stays in David's house.
Verse 7's a full year and four months is the only firm span the narrator gives for these years. In that time David will build the loyalty of the Negev towns (30:26-31), gather the men who come to him at Ziklag (1 Chronicles 12:1-7, 20), and be out of Saul's reach when Saul falls. God is not mentioned in the arrangement, and still the arrangement serves Him. The study does not claim David planned it; it notes that the LORD used a plan made in despair.
From Ziklag David raids the Geshurites, and the Gezrites, and the Amalekites — not Israelites but old desert peoples of the far south, as thou goest to Shur, even unto the land of Egypt. The Amalekites are the nation Saul was told to destroy and did not (15:3, 9); David is doing, from a Philistine town, what cost Saul the kingdom. The Geshurites here are a southern people (Joshua 13:2), not the Aramean Geshur of 2 Samuel 3:3; Gezrites is a spelling found only here and is variously read.
Verse 9 does not soften it: left neither man nor woman alive, and took the livestock and apparel. This is border war of the ancient kind, against peoples who raided Judah in turn (30:1, 14) and whom Israel had been commanded to drive out. The study neither sanitises it nor pretends the narrator calls it holy; the text gives no oracle for these raids as it did for Keilah (23:2). What the raids plainly are is David living by the sword while reporting to Achish, and the next verses turn on the reporting.
Achish asks the natural question, and David answers with a lie: against the south of Judah, and against the south of the Jerahmeelites, and against the south of the Kenites — his own tribe's territory and its friendly neighbours (the Kenites were spared by Saul for their old kindness, 15:6). He wants Achish to believe he has become Israel's enemy. The KJV road means a raid, an inroad. The sentence is built to be heard one way in Gath and another in Judah, and it is a deception.
The study will not excuse it. Honesty requires saying that David lies to the man who has given him a city and his trust, and that verse 11 makes the lie the reason for the killing: lest they should tell on us. Survivors would have carried the truth to Gath. Deception has a cost in blood here, as it did at Nob (22:22). Scripture records David's cunning as it records his faith, in the same flat voice; the reader is not asked to admire it, only to see it.
David saved neither man nor woman alive, to bring tidings to Gath — the verse states the motive without flinching. The killing of all is explained not by a command of God but by a need for secrecy. Readers who want David always right will find this chapter hard, and should. The man after God's own heart (13:14) is shown doing a thing the Law never asked of him, to protect a story he had told a Philistine king. The narrator's refusal to comment is itself a kind of comment.
And yet the same chapters show the LORD keeping David from the worst outcome of his own plan — the Philistine lords will send him home before Gilboa (29:4), and God will restore everything the Amalekites take from Ziklag (30:18-19). Grace in 1 Samuel is not approval. It is the LORD holding on to a man whose hands are not clean, as He held Jacob and Peter, and bringing him to a throne he did not deserve by the road he had taken.
Achish is completely deceived: he hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant for ever. Every clause is wrong. Israel does not abhor David — Judah's elders will be receiving his gifts (30:26) — and David will be the servant of no Philistine. The king of Gath has adopted the view of David that Nabal held (25:10) and that Saul held: a runaway who has broken with his people. All three were wrong, and only one of them paid nothing for it.
The irony the reader is meant to feel is that the lie has worked too well. In 28:1-2 Achish will call David to march with him against Israel, and David will answer with another sentence built to be heard two ways. A man who makes himself trusted by deception is then bound by the trust. Chapter 29 is God's way out of a trap David built himself; the study holds that the deliverance was mercy, not reward.
Watch what you say in your heart after a long trial, especially the day after a victory. I shall now perish was spoken by a man who had just been told by a king that he would prevail; weariness lies, and it lies most fluently when you stop asking. Before you cross a border — a job, a compromise, a quieter life among people who do not share your God — bring the ephod out and ask. Then take the warning of Ziklag: a double life must be fed with more lies, and the lies will cost someone. If you are already there, note that the narrator records no prayer from David for sixteen months and that God kept him anyway. Grace is not approval. Turn back before the town burns; and if it has burned, chapter 30 is still open to you.
A chapter with no prayer, no oracle, and a lie at its centre has little to foreshadow directly, and the church has read it mostly by contrast. The anointed king who said there is nothing better for me and fled to the enemy's city stands over against the One who, told that Herod would kill Him, said I must walk to day, and to morrow and set His face toward Jerusalem. Yet the LORD's keeping of David through Ziklag — unasked, undeserved, unbroken — is for Christian readers a picture of the grace that will not leave thee, nor forsake thee, and of the Shepherd who goes after the sheep that went down into Philistia. The Amalekite war David wages from exile points, in the church's reading, to a King who finishes what the first king left undone.
David said in his heart — the narrator lets us hear a thought no one else heard, and it is despair: I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. It comes straight after Saul's blessing (26:25), after two deliverances that could not have been plainer, and after Jonathan's the hand of Saul my father shall not find thee (23:17). David does not enquire of the LORD in this chapter; the ephod is silent because it is not asked. The decision is made in his heart, and the text marks the difference.
The study should not be harsher than the narrator, who records no rebuke, nor softer. Years of being hunted every day (23:14) wear down the faith of the faithful; Elijah would run from Jezebel the day after Carmel (1 Kings 19:3). The plan is also, humanly, shrewd — Saul sought no more again for him (v. 4). But it leads to a Philistine lord, a double life, and the near-fighting of Israel (28:1-2; 29). What begins in the heart as nothing better for me ends in Ziklag burning (30:1).