The Book of Samuel 26 speaks, among other things, of King Saul’s pledge to spare David’s life. Notwithstanding Saul’s sentiments, David’s experience with Saul found the king to be unpredictable. Caution dictated taking the king’s words with, if you will, a grain of salt. As an expedient, David skipped town. Together with his six hundred soldiers and two wives, he crossed Israel’s border into Gath, Philistine. “And David arose, and passed over, he and the six hundred men that were with him, unto Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath.”
”And David said in his heart: I shall now be swept away one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines; and Saul will despair of me, to seek me any more in all the borders of Israel; so shall I escape out of his hand.”
According to Abravanel, David tarried in Gath for nearly two and a half years. Samuel 27 offers a glimpse into David’s activities and forays while there. Soon after arriving in Gath, David prepared for a long stayover. Foremost, he sought to secure housing from his Philistine host for his wives and troops. “And David said unto Achish: If now I have found favor in your eyes, let them give me a place in one of the cities in the country, that I may dwell there; for why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?”
David, essentially, asked Achish for autonomy, an enclave where he could be left alone. For obvious reasons, they didn’t want to be monitored, let alone hampered by King Achish or the Philistines. The king complied. “Then Achish gave him Ziklag that day; wherefore Ziklag belongs unto the kings of Judah unto this day.”
The storyline in Samuel 27 is basic and reads simply enough. David and his men became marauders, ruthless ones at that, for purposes of livelihood. “And David and his men went up, and made a raid upon the Geshurites, and the Gizrites, and the Amalekites; for those were the inhabitants of the land, who were of old, as you go to Shur, even unto the land of Egypt.” To be graphic, those forays were marked by killings and plunder. “And David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive, and took away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and the apparel. And he returned, and came to Achish.”
While the verse identifies David’s victims as Geshurites, Gizrites, and Amalekites, things become murkier when David offers Achish a very different after-action debriefing. “And Achish said: Whither have you made a raid today?” To that David responds, “And David said: Against the South of Judah, and against the South of the Jerahmeelites, and against the South of the Kenites.” Abravanel teaches that Judah and Jerahmeelites were of Jewish stock, Kenites descendants of Jethro.
Abravanel investigates: Why did David alter the story and obfuscate the real identities of those clans that he put to the sword? But there’s an even more weighty issue regarding David’s conduct, a moral one. It is, if in fact David destroyed peoples who were allied with Achish (Geshurites, Gizrites, Amalekites), then we’re talking about an ugly thing; we’re talking about moral turpitude since Achish aided David. Would David repay the Philistine monarch’s kindness with treachery? Abravanel contemplates more criticism of David, if he slayed Achish’s allies – foolhardy adventurism. Why? If a survivor would have informed Achish of David’s escapades, Achish and his men would have severely punished David. And given David’s small enclave, he may have risked annihilation.
Here is Abravanel’s approach. To begin with, it is farfetched and untenable to put forth that David would stoop so low to betray Achish’s trust, not to mention his kindness. Unconscionable. If so, who were David’s real targets and why did he alter his debriefing to Achish?
Abravanel holds that indeed, David had killed out the Geshurites, Gizrites, and Amalekites. But here’s the thing. Those clans were, however, Achish’s sworn enemies. That explains why no surviving stragglers came to Achish to wage complaints. Then why did David misstate the victims? Abravanel asserts that David’s strategy with Achish centered on his desire to lead Achish to believe that not only was David on bad terms with King Saul but that David’s relationship with other Jews was, shall we say, shaky. In this manner, Achish would believe that David, his exiled guest from Israel, would serve Achish’s interests admirably – and reliably. Indeed, David’s gambit worked. “And Achish believed David, saying: He has made his people Israel utterly to abhor him. Therefore, he shall be my servant forever.”