Sarah
David had really been put through the wringer by Saul during this time.
Saul had tried again and again to kill him, but somehow David escaped every single time.
One day, David thought to himself:
“This just isn’t going to work. That old Saul isn’t going to give up anytime soon. What if one day I slip up and he finally gets me? Then I’m really done for.”
The more David thought about it, the more he felt that he couldn’t keep playing hide-and-seek with Saul in the land of Israel.
So he started thinking:
“Maybe I should just go over to the land of the Philistines. That way, I can finally get away from Saul and survive this mess.”
So David packed up and left with the six hundred men who followed him.
This time, they went to Achish, king of Gath.
And remember—this is the same Achish that David had once tricked by pretending to be insane.
Well, David was back again.
And this time, he wasn’t alone.
He brought six hundred men with him, along with their families.
David’s two wives were there as well:
Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail, the former wife of Nabal from Carmel, who had later become David’s wife.
Then word reached Saul:
“What? David has gone over to the Philistines!”
Saul probably thought:
“Well, there we go. He’s run far enough away. He’s not going to be much of a threat to me now. I don’t need to chase him anymore.”
And from that point on, Saul stopped pursuing David.
When David arrived in Gath, he went to Achish and said:
“If I have found favor in your eyes, please give me a place where I can live. I don’t need to stay here in the royal city with you. I’ve got a whole bunch of people with me. It wouldn’t make sense for all of us to stay here.”
Achish thought that sounded reasonable.
So he gave David Ziklag.
From that time on, Ziklag belonged to the kings of Judah.
David lived in the land of the Philistines for one year and four months.
And during that time, David certainly wasn’t sitting around doing nothing.
He and his men went out and attacked various groups living in the area—the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites.
These were people who had lived in that region for generations, stretching from the area of Shur all the way toward Egypt.
David attacked them very decisively.
He left no survivors, because he was afraid that someone might escape and return to Gath and tell Achish exactly what David had been doing.
Then David took their sheep, cattle, donkeys, camels, and clothing, and brought everything back with him.
When David returned, Achish asked him:
“So, where did you go raiding today? Whose land did you attack this time?”
David knew that telling Achish the truth could cause him serious trouble.
So he answered:
“We went against the southern part of Judah, the southern part of the Jerahmeelites, and the southern part of the Kenites.”
When Achish heard this, he started thinking:
“Oh! So David is fighting against his own people now.”
But that wasn’t what was really happening.
David was actually attacking those other groups in the region.
He simply didn’t tell Achish the truth.
And David kept doing things this way while he lived among the Philistines.
After a while, Achish really believed David.
Achish thought to himself:
“David has made his own Israelite people hate him. They must really be against him now.”
“That means David has nowhere to go back to.”
“He’ll have to stay with me and serve me for the rest of his life.”
Achish was feeling pretty good about himself.
He thought he had David all figured out.
But there was something Achish didn’t understand—
David’s heart had never truly left Israel.
He was only hiding temporarily in the land of the Philistines.
But now there was a problem.
To escape from Saul, David had gone into the territory of Israel’s enemies. And in order to gain Achish’s trust, David had to hide what he was really doing.
And once David took this road, things were about to get a whole lot more complicated.
The next chapter would bring an even bigger problem.