1 Samuel 29 — What Do These Hebrews Here?
The Philistines gather all their armies to Aphek, Israel by the fountain in Jezreel. As the lords pass on by hundreds and by thousands, David and his men march in the rereward with Achish. The princes of the Philistines ask, What do these Hebrews here? Achish defends him: Saul's servant, with me these days or these years, and I have found no fault in him. The princes are wroth: send him back to his place; let him not go down with us to battle, lest he turn adversary — for how should he reconcile himself to his master but with the heads of these men? Is not this David, of whom they sang, Saul slew his thousands and David his ten thousands? Achish calls David and, swearing by the LORD, tells him he has been upright, but the lords favour him not: return, and go in peace. David protests — what have I done, that I may not fight the enemies of my lord the king? — and Achish calls him good as an angel of God, but the princes have spoken. So David and his men rise early and return into the land of the Philistines; and the Philistines go up to Jezreel.
“Is not this David, of whom they sang one to another in dances, saying, Saul slew his thousands, and David his ten thousands?”
— 1 Samuel 29:5
- v.1-2 Aphek and Jezreel; David in the rereward with Achish
- v.3-5 What do these Hebrews here? — the lords remember the song
- v.6-10 Achish: thou hast been upright; nevertheless the lords favour thee not — return, and go in peace
- v.11 David returns to the land of the Philistines; the Philistines go up to Jezreel
What do these Hebrews here? — the name outsiders used for Israelites (4:6; 14:11), with a note of contempt. Achish's defence is warm and, in the narrator's ears, ironic: I have found no fault in him — words Pilate will use of Jesus (Luke 23:4), though the two scenes are otherwise unlike. Achish has in fact been lied to for sixteen months (27:10-12); his confidence is the measure of the deception. These days, or these years is an idiom for a long time.
The reader knows what Achish does not, and feels the strain of the scene: the Philistine king is David's only friend in the room, and the Philistine lords, who suspect the worst, are the ones who will do David good. God's providence is not particular about whose suspicion it uses. The men who distrust David send him home before the battle; the man who trusts him would have marched him onto Gilboa against his own people.
The lords' reasoning is sound: lest in the battle he be an adversary to us — the Hebrew word behind adversary is the one that gives the name Satan, though here it means simply an opponent — for wherewith should he reconcile himself unto his master? should it not be with the heads of these men? They assume David's way back to Saul's favour would be Philistine heads, and 1 Chronicles 12:19 preserves the same calculation: He will fall to his master Saul to the jeopardy of our heads. Their fear saves David from a choice no faithful Israelite could make well.
Note the quiet reversal. In chapter 23 Saul's pursuit was turned aside by a Philistine invasion; now a Philistine council turns David aside from fighting Israel. The same enemies serve, unwitting, the same God. Christian readers have generally taken this chapter as one of the clearest cases in Scripture of the LORD delivering a man from a trap of his own making, without a miracle, through the ordinary suspicion of ordinary men.
The women's song (18:7) is sung for the third time, first by the women of Israel, in Saul's hearing and to his jealousy (18:7-8), then by the servants of Achish in Gath (21:11), and now by the lords at Aphek. Saul slew his thousands, and David his ten thousands — the praise that drove him from Israel's court now drives him from the Philistine army. God has used the song three times to move His anointed, and each time the singer thought he was doing something else.
There is a lesson in it for those who have been praised. What is said of you in a good hour follows you into bad ones, and may be the thing enemies quote; David could not unsing the song. Yet here it protects him. The lords remember him as Israel's champion — which is what he is, and what sixteen months of lying to Achish had been designed to make them forget. The truth about David, spoken by his enemies, is what keeps him from betraying it.
Achish swears as the LORD liveth — a Philistine king using Israel's name for God, perhaps in deference to his servant, perhaps the narrator's irony; the text does not say — and gives David a reference any servant would want: upright... good in my sight... I have not found evil in thee. Every word of it rests on a lie David told (27:10). The study does not ask the reader to enjoy this; it asks the reader to see that David's standing with Achish was earned by deceit and that God rescued him from it anyway.
Nevertheless the lords favour thee not. The king's goodwill is overruled by a council, and the arrangement David had worked so carefully falls apart in one morning without anything he did. Return, and go in peace (v. 7) — the words Jonathan used at the parting (20:42) — are spoken here by a Philistine, and they send David not into exile but home. The chapter is full of people saying truer things than they know.
What have I done?... that I may not go fight against the enemies of my lord the king? David protests his dismissal — and the sentence is the chapter's most carefully double-edged. The enemies of my lord the king can mean Achish's enemies, Israel; or, if my lord the king is Saul, it can mean the Philistines themselves. Achish hears the first. The study does not claim to know which David meant, or whether he meant both; the narrator, who told us David's heart before (27:1), is silent here.
What is uncomfortable, and must be said, is that the protest is at best misleading and at worst a plea to march against Israel. The text does not resolve it, and the honest reading leaves it unresolved: a man who had lied his way into a Philistine king's trust now had to act the part to the end. God's deliverance in this chapter is not a reward for David's candour. It is grace to a man in a corner, which is the only kind of grace there is.
As an angel of God — the highest compliment a Philistine could pay, and nothing like what was said of the drooling madman at Gath's gate (21:13-15). The narrator sets the two scenes at the beginning and end of the exile: driven out of Gath as a lunatic, sent home from Aphek as an angel, and in neither case known for what he is. Achish uses over David the words the wise woman of Tekoa will use of David himself (2 Samuel 14:17, 20): discerning good and bad.
Verse 10's thy master's servants is a small slip of Achish's tongue — or of the narrator's pen — that tells the truth: these six hundred are Saul's men, Israel's men, not Gath's. Rise up early... and depart. The deliverance is complete, courteous, and total. David will never fight for a Philistine again; the next chapter finds him fighting Amalek, the enemy Saul failed to destroy, on the very days Saul is destroyed.
Two armies go two ways. David and his men rose up early... to return into the land of the Philistines — south, toward Ziklag, where the Amalekites have already been (30:1). The Philistines went up to Jezreel — north, to Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan will die (31:1). The narrator says nothing of what David thought as he turned his back on the battle; he lets the geography carry it. The anointed king is kept off the field on which the old king falls, and his hands are clean of it.
Readers have seen in this chapter the pattern of Romans 8:28 before it was written: God working good through the hostility of Philistine lords, the credulity of Achish, and a song sung long ago. It is the reading most Christians take, and the study takes it too, while noting that the text itself names no divine act — the LORD is mentioned only in Achish's oath. Providence in Scripture often works exactly so, unnamed, and recognised afterwards.
Some of your deliverances will come through people who distrust you. When the door you worked sixteen months to open is slammed by a council that thinks the worst of you, do not argue too hard — look first at where the door was leading. David was a morning's march from fighting Jonathan. Be honest about your own protests, too: what have I done? sounded loyal to Achish and would have sounded otherwise to Saul, and the text does not let you hear it one way only. If you have talked your way into a place where you cannot be straight with anyone, pray for Philistine lords. And when the LORD gets you out without a miracle — a cancelled order, a changed mind, an old song remembered — call it what most Christians have called it, and go home early in the morning.
The church has read this chapter chiefly as providence: the unnamed hand that turned the anointed king back from the wrong battle by the wrong people's suspicion, as Romans 8:28 would later put into words. Achish's I have found no fault in him, true of David only because he had been deceived, finds its answer in Pilate's same words over the One in whom there was no fault to find. And the song the Philistines could not forget — David his ten thousands — is for Christian readers a shadow of the testimony that followed Jesus even from His enemies, this man receiveth sinners, and that could not be unsung. David kept from fighting Israel points, in the church's reading, to the Shepherd who came not to destroy men's lives but to save them, and whose hands stayed clean of His own people's blood even as they shed His.
The chapter steps back a little in time: the Philistines muster at Aphek on the coastal plain before marching north to Shunem (28:4) and Jezreel (v. 11). The narrator has told Endor first so that the two kings' nights stand side by side, and now returns to David. In the rereward with Achish — the rear guard, the place of a trusted contingent and also the place from which an army can be struck from behind. The lords see the second possibility at once.
The lords of the Philistines are the rulers of the five cities (6:16-18); Achish of Gath is one of five, and is outvoted. Verse 3 calls them princes, the same men. David marches toward a battle in which Jonathan will die, in the army that will kill him, without a recorded word to God. The study does not know what he meant to do; the chapter is built so that he never has to decide. Providence here is five Philistine lords refusing to trust him.