I Samuel
Lesson 42 - Chapter 27 and 28
David has given up all hope in reconciling with the unstable and thoroughly fallen King Saul;
as a result he took the drastic and morally questionable step of moving his large and growing
army of disaffected Israelites and (no doubt) their families out of Israel after he made a deal
with the Philistine King of Gath. Some years earlier David fled to Moab and had intentions of
allying with the King of Moab and residing there; but a prophet, Gad, told David that he was not
to leave Judah and live outside of Israel to escape Saul (yet here he was doing just that).

Achish welcomed David and his 600 men as defectors, whereas only a couple of years earlier
he had seized David as he fled, alone, from Saul’s wrath. David had to pretend that he was
insane in order to escape to Judah and Moab. But now he has voluntarily returned to Philistia
with a bargaining chip: an army to help the King of Gath achieve his ambitions.

At first David and his men stayed in the royal city of Gath as guests of the King but that wore
thin on both sides so David asked if he could be granted a place out in the countryside to move
his army. Achish was only too glad to comply because no doubt there was friction between
David’s people and his from both a political and a social perspective. After all we do have a
large contingent of Hebrews suddenly moving in with what had been up to now a long-time
sworn enemy; an enemy with a substantially different culture (a pagan Philistine culture) than
that of these Israelites.

It’s important to understand that just as Israel had been a confederation of 12 independent
tribes ever since they entered the Promised Land under Joshua, and that Saul was the first to
have some limited success in uniting these tribes towards nationhood, so it was for the
Philistines. Philistia was not a sovereign nation under a single government leader. At this time
it consisted of 5 independent kings over 5 cities and their outlying territories. They were a
confederation of 5 small kingdoms consisting of the same ethnic people and they were close
allies, but that’s as far as it went. So the King of Gath made this decision on his own to allow
David and his army to settle in his territory. The other 4 Philistine kings probably didn’t benefit
from this arrangement and even thought it dangerous. In fact we’ll see in the next chapter that
they were quite suspicious of David.

Achish assigned David the village and area of Ziklag for his own. For David this was ideal; this
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would have been a racially mixed village comprised of some Hebrews and some Philistines.
Ziklag was at one time an Israelite town belonging to Judah; that the Philistines captured it and
now controlled it by no means meant that the Hebrews were kicked out. Rather those Hebrews
remained who were willing to accept vassal status or even subjugation to Achish (or those who
really had no means to leave and go elsewhere) and they were joined by Philistines who
moved in. This would have been a much more comfortable and familiar accommodation for
David and all of his men and their families than the thoroughly Philistine capital city of Gath.

Further David was deep enough into Philistine territory to discourage Saul from pursuing him,
yet far enough into the Philistine countryside that Achish wouldn’t be entirely aware of David’s
daily activities. But there was disadvantage as well; Ziklag was sufficiently isolated to be
vulnerable to attack from the various tribes of desert marauders including the Amalekites.

Let’s re-read part of chapter 27 to get started.


RE-READ 1
ST
SAMUEL 27: 7 – end


Once David and his men had gained a measure of trust from Achish and established
themselves in their territory of Ziklag (a time listed as 1 year and 4 months), there began a
substantial change in their behavior; they attacked and plundered nearby tribes as a means to
make a living. No doubt they learned much about Philistine military tactics and methods and
this served them well both now in their raiding and later on when David was King and had to
take on the Philistines in battle. Our CJB and others say that David’s army especially picked
on the Geshurites, the Gezerites, and the Amalekites. Actually it was probably just the
Geshurites and the Amalekites. The Hebrew word typically translated as Gezerites is Gizri and
it literally means “separated or cut-off ones”. The Geshurite people were known to have lived
primarily in the Transjordan region, but there is record of a group of them migrating to the Gaza
area. So very probably the intention of this Biblical wording was originally meant to explain that
those who David attacked were some Geshurites who had migrated to the upper Sinai,
towards Shur. They were a band of Geshurites who had gizri (separated themselves) from the
main tribal stomping grounds on the east side of the Jordan River and moved near to Philistine
territory.

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In any case David’s methods were utterly ruthless; his army killed everyone they encountered,
men and women, and took all their belongings and their domesticated animals as loot. Very
probably the Geshurites were allies of the Amalekites (or at least on friendly terms) and so
from one perspective David may have felt quite justified in annihilating the Geshurites along
with the mortal enemies of God, Amalek. But on the other hand there is no mention that David
felt that he was fighting a Holy War or that was he was under God’s direction to slaughter
these folks (and I seriously doubt that David was actually so delusional as to think that it was a
pious act to regularly plunder and kill them).

Both Christian and Jewish Bible commentators have strained to find proper justification for
David to engage in such activities; some have gone so far as to make the killing and looting a
divinely directed purpose (even if it was mysterious). I cannot go that route. There is no
attempt by the writer of these passages to characterize David’s attacks as good or evil, but
merely to report them as historical fact. The purpose is specifically to raid and plunder and then
David would report the results to Achish. Without doubt the devious and cunning David is
working both sides of the highway; he is attacking enemies of Israel, which will endear him to
the many clans that form Israelite Judah; and those who he is attacking are apparently also not
friends of the Philistines so the Philistines are OK with it too. By bringing a report of his
activities to Achish, and certainly a portion of the booty as a gift, David is gaining Achish’s trust
and admiration as well as increasing Achish’s treasury.

Verse 10 paints a picture of David’s nearly complete autonomy as he operates his army out of
Ziklag. The king of Gath doesn’t tell David who to raid; rather he asks David who David has
decided to raid. “Who are you raiding today?” asks Achish, and David would tell him, “the
Negev of Judah, or the Negev of the Jeremeelites, or the Negev of the Kenites” or something
along those lines. What is instructive is that it is always the Negev of somebody; Negev has
become a formal place name but in David’s day it more meant “the southern territory”, or
simply “the south”. Today we would identify these areas as those that center around
Beersheba and then further south to areas approaching the Arabian Peninsula. Notice that
these areas are far away from Saul’s area of influence, the north of Canaan, thus giving
Israel’s king no cause to oppose David’s forays.

Verse 11 says that the reason that David killed all the Amalekites and Geshurites was so that
they didn’t report the details of his activities to Achish; thus we are left with no doubt that
David’s purpose for slaughtering these people had little if anything to do with God’s general
command to Israel to destroy Amalek. Killing those people allowed David to operate in secret;
King Achish knew only of the amount of plunder that David decided to tell him about. David
could have amassed much more in the way of weapons and wealth than Achish had any idea
about. Further the Philistines were not barbarians and they may not have approved of David’s
ruthlessness or tactics.
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But verse 12 reveals something that we must not take lightly; that because David operated in
the Negev of Judah (meaning territory that belonged to the tribe of Judah, his own tribe),
Achish figured that David must now be seen as a pariah to his own people. And thus he has
burned all bridges to his past and David is now nothing less than a naturalized Philistine.

Are we to assume that David has completely fooled Achish and has no intent of actually being
loyal to Philistia? Could it be that this whole thing is a ruse and David is actually doing things
distasteful to him, but it is all for a higher purpose? Or is David so far off the reservation that he
truly has let his circumstances dictate that the dark side of his character, his evil inclination,
has taken firm hold? It’s almost as though he’s at least got one foot onto the same road that
Saul eventually chose and it led to a failed kingship and total abandonment by Yehoveh. As I
said earlier, this topic is carefully avoided by commentators because of the can of worms that it
opens. But I think that it is one that demonstrates a great lesson to us. Heroes (including Bible
heroes) are by nature flawed; and yet those major flaws are often what facilitate their heroic
actions.

I can recall my father who served in WWII telling me about General Patton, and that he was
loathed by his men and feared by his enemies. This was because Patton was as arrogant as a
Roman Emperor, as attention seeking as a Diva, as ruthless as Genghis Khan, and as stone
cold as a mortician. But he was also a brilliant tactician and simply loved war. He had no use in
this world if it wasn’t as a warrior. Patton was a typically flawed hero who achieved great
victories largely because he had no problem doing things other men would never think to do or
allow themselves to do.

David can be legitimately called a type, a shadow, of a Messiah. The true Messiah would even
come from David’s hereditary linage. But that in no way means that David WAS an early
version of Messiah; nor does it mean that David’s character is to be compared with Yeshua’s.
If we can learn anything from this it is that David was a mere man even though he was hand
picked by Yehoveh to be the first King over a united and sovereign Israel. He could be tempted
and fail; he could be moral and idealistic and yet commit terrible injustices out of pragmatism.
When faced with personal peril he could be unbelievably courageous (as in the Goliath
incident), and he could become fearful and take any path to survival no matter who else was
harmed in the process (as in the priests of Nob massacre). And here we find David
unapologetically throwing in with Israel’s arch enemy, the Philistines, for protection and
friendship. In fact there is every indication that unless God intervened yet again, David could
have remained in the service of Achish as a Philistine all of his days. There is no hint of a plan
by David to eventually return to his own people in Judah.
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David had a heart for God, for this there can no debate; but he also had a desire for life and to
live as a leader of men. We’ll find out later that he also had a desire for beautiful women, no
matter what their legal marital status. He had a bit of a crusader mentality and so would put his
own life on the line to right what he saw as moral wrongs. He valued life on the one hand, but
on the other hand he could take life without remorse if he felt it was justifiable in his own eyes.
He was amazingly deep and introspective as demonstrated by his many Psalms; he was also
impulsive and rash as demonstrated by his determination to kill Nabal for merely being
insulted, and to keep his own activities private by killing countless men and women so that
Achish couldn’t question them. And yet, God loved him and used him mightily and (outside of
God’s own Son, Yeshua) may be the most revered Bible hero by Christians and Jews, and the
most beloved of the divine Father.

This ought to give each of us who loves the Lord the greatest hope. Even when we fail,
miserably, provided we maintain unwavering loyalty to God, He will continue to claim us. Even
through those stages of our lives that we’re too embarrassed to reveal to those closest to us,
and after some of our darkest moments, God can still use us for His Kingdom if we will stick to
Him and not close off the possibility (on our own accord) due to our shame and guilt and belief
that there is no way that we are anything but shattered and useless vessels.

Folks, for unfathomable reasons God decided to love mankind and to use imperfect beings to
achieve His perfect and holy purposes. Despite the rocky road, and doubling back, and false
starts, and failed attempts that are inherent to all the endeavors of humankind the Creator
made a choice. It is common among Christians to say, “Well, God uses men because they are
all He has to use”. Not true. Yehoveh has legions of Angels to do His bidding. They are more
obedient and more powerful that we are. They are created more holy and even allowed into
God’s presence. Yehoveh didn’t choose David because David was more perfect or more able
than other men; He chose David because He foreknew that despite his failures and stumbling
David would always choose Yehoveh.

We all have a little David in us, but we also all have a little Saul in us. So who among us will
become David; who will become Saul? Which we become is the result of our free wills not
some unchangeable cosmic destiny that we were born under. Saul was not brought into this
world condemned to become the Anti-King, and David was not born with assurance of
becoming the anointed King. Saul and David each knew the God of Israel, and each also put
their foot onto the wrong path more than once; one corrected his way, sincerely sought
forgiveness and went on to become God’s friend. The other embraced the wrong path, shook
his fist at God and became God’s enemy.
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Let’s move on to chapter 28.

READ 1
ST
SAMUEL CHAPTER 28 all


The political situation is that a major confrontation is brewing between Israel and the
Philistines. Verse 1 begins, “in those days”; this is a standard Hebrew phrase that is meant to
give us a time reference and to initiate a new subject. Therefore what this chapter describes
sequentially happened after the events of chapter 27, yet not long after so there is a definite
connection between the two stories.

The reasons for this coming war aren’t given because they’re not relative to the purpose of
the story. Achish says to David that it’s a foregone conclusion that David will fight on the side
of the Philistines against his fellow Hebrews. Right?

David was caught in a vise. Up to now his removal from his own people Israel and his binding
himself to Israel’s enemy, Philistia, proved advantageous and highly profitable. But he had
chosen to participate in a dangerous game and it was only a matter of time before he would
have to take a public stance: would he fight for his own people or against them? Even more,
who are his people, now? With whom is he identified?

David responds to Achish such that Achish takes it to mean that David has given unquestioned
loyalty to him. He is so taken by David’s response that in verse 2 Achish makes David
his somer le’rosh (“a keeper of my head”); that is his personal bodyguard. But if one looks
closely at what David said to Achish the words were rather ambiguous. There was no promise
of loyalty and really no commitment to fight alongside Achish. Rather all David said was that
the king was well aware of what David’s fighting capabilities were. If we stopped right here
we’d think that David would do many things to enrich himself and aid the Philistines in the
process if necessary, but there is little chance he’d actually fight against his own brethren on
Achish’s behalf. Thus that’s why he was being so cleaver and vague in his response; but
we’d be wrong.
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To set the stage for what happens next the writer or editor of this portion of 1
st
Samuel reminds
us that the greatest Prophet, Samuel, had died. In fact he had died before David defected to
Philistia. Further after his death King Sha’ul had, for some unspoken reason, expelled all the
diviners and necromancers from Israel (was it some temporary pang of religious fervor upon
Samuel’s death that prompted this?)

Necromancers were those who conjured up the spirits of the dead and communicated with
them. There were other diviners who openly made contact with demonic spirits. No matter, the
Torah Law forbids such a thing on any level.

CJB
Leviticus 19:31 "'Do not turn to spirit-mediums or sorcerers; don't seek them out, to
be defiled by them; I am ADONAI your God. (Lev 19:31 CJB)

CJB
Leviticus 20:6 "'The person who turns to spirit-mediums and sorcerers to go
fornicating after them- I will set myself against him and cut him off from his
people. (Lev 20:6 CJB)

Verse 4 sets the scene: The Philistines have advanced for war and set up a battle camp at
Shunem, which was located on a mountainside opposite of Gilboa where King Saul set up his
opposing battle camp. Gilboa was located on the north-eastern edge of the Jezreel Valley. No
doubt the two sides could see one another (that was customary in those days); by foot the two
camps were no more than 2 hours apart. So we see that the coming battle would take place
where countless battles had been fought for centuries, and would be fought for millennia: the
Valley of Jezreel, the same place where the Battle of Armageddon will be waged. This was
well north of Judah and the Negev where David operated. And this makes sense because
Saul’s tribal coalition consisted entirely, now, of the northern Israelite tribes and this is where
the Philistines would have desired to operate more freely since their ally David had Judah
under control.

When Saul took a long look at the Philistine army arrayed before him he went into a panic.
Already the utter darkness of despair had gathered around Saul. He was condemned; he knew
it, he felt it, and his tormented conscience convulsed in the knowledge of it. What was going to
happen when the sun rose tomorrow and the two armies raced at one another with deadly
intention? His overwhelming fear can only be understood in that it was finally sinking in that he
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was on his own: the Lord God had abandoned him completely and permanently (after all, if not
for this reason then what?) He had fought the Philistines on a number of occasions and usually
came out with victory but this time he was filled with foreboding and terror. It was understood in
that era that the first thing that any army did before firing the first arrow in anger was to consult
their gods for direction. No doubt the Philistines had consulted with Dagan and were confident
of victory. But what of Saul? Samuel made it clear that God had withdrawn from Saul and no
amount of groveling or insistence would reverse the situation. Saul had no gods of his own to
consult.

Knowing that he desperately needed some kind of direction and wisdom from the spiritual
sphere to have any chance against the Philistines, he proceeded as though by using the
standard Torah protocols in a mechanical fashion that the Lord would have little choice but to
communicate with him and give him what he sought. Verse 6 explains that he used every
means known to him to consult God but received no response. Thus we get a brief list of the
Biblically approved ways that God communicated with men: by dreams, by Urim, and by
Prophets. Dreams were a means that the Lord often talked to laypeople, common Israelites.
The use of the Urim was limited to the High Priest and the passage saying only “Urim” is just
short hand for not only the Urim and Thummim stones but also for choosing lots. Prophets
spoke God’s wisdom to the Kings. So not through his own dreams and not through the High
Priest did God speak to Saul; and of course since Samuel was dead, Saul had no prophet to
bring the Lord’s oracle to him. To whom could he turn for answers?

Sha’ul took his usual route; he tried to go around God’s laws and commands that he might
obtain God’s wisdom in an alternative way. Since you can’t force a dream upon yourself or
anyone else, and since the High Priest apparently tried in vein in Saul’s presence but the Urim
and Thummim would produce no answer, the only remaining choice was to get a Prophet to
give Saul God’s wisdom. And since Samuel, his prophet, was dead the only way to
accomplish that was to have a necromancer call up Samuel from the grave.

As I was contemplating this I thought to myself, isn’t that the way of humans in all ages and
eras? Even Christians at times tend to think that we can ignore God’s laws and commands
and instead ask the Lord to bless our way. We get ourselves into a dire situation as a result,
and then we hope (expect?) that the Lord will give us a different and better answer to our
problem using unconventional (even un-Biblical) means. Or because He’s merciful and He
loves us, he’ll suspend His eternal laws and commands just this once and give us a solution
that we prefer better. Like Saul we try to find the loophole and go around the Lord’s ways and
principles and patterns, sincerely believing that perhaps another way will lead us to Him. It
sounds so irrational when said out loud, but so logical when you try it.

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Saul decided to suspend the law he had, as king, invoked: that all diviners and necromancers
were to be expelled from Israel and if any remained and practiced their black arts they were to
be executed. He invoked such a law rightly; communicating with spirits of the dead was one of
the most heinous crimes against Yehoveh. But the moment he felt threatened, and his soul felt
hollow from the absence of God, the King saw no conflict in trying to obtain the services of a
spiritualist for himself.

We can look at this and chuckle a little at this ancient superstitious mind; but such beliefs live
on today in abundance. You can go to the local Yellow Pages and find Fortune Tellers by the
dozens. Politicians, the famous and the wealthy especially seek private Spiritual Advisors. I’ve
seen TV Pastors invoke Nostradamus and the Mayan Calendar to back up their predictions, all
the while calling on Jesus. How about the use of Tarot Cards, séances, Ouija boards, and Voo
Doo? Some may think they’re as harmless as playing Monopoly; but others are dead serious
in their attempt to contact spirits and ghosts for information. Every single one of these (no
matter whether sought out by a Jew, Christian, or agnostic) is nothing more than an attempt to
get around God in order to acquire a higher wisdom in a very similar manner that King Saul
was trying.

King Saul tells his closest advisors to go and find him a female necromancer. The Hebrew term
is Ba’alath Ob; it literally means, “Ghost wife”. A little more than 5 miles northeast
from Shunem, the Philistine encampment, was a place called En Dor where a well known
Ba’alath Ob lived. She had apparently agreed to quit her practice instead of leaving the area.
Let’s be clear: in general the diviners and necromancers spoken of in the historical books of
the Bible were Hebrews unless an alternate nationality was given for them.

So very hypocritically, Saul disguised himself and went to the woman and said that he wanted
to know the future by means of her bringing up the dead person that he named. The ancients
believed that the dead had information on the future and this was invariably the reason for
attempting to consult the dead. “Bringing up” meant exactly that; the dead were thought to live
underground in an underworld, therefore if you wanted to communicate with them they had to
come “up” to the world above the ground. Even more the ghost had to be “brought up”, often
against their will. Saul came at night to this woman because these rituals occurred after dark.

But the woman was leery and so she said that this wasn’t something she ought to do since the
king had ordered it stopped. In fact she thought it may have been a test, an attempt to entrap
her that would surely lead to her death. But Sha’ul swore to the woman in Yehoveh’s name
that this was not the case and that no harm would come to her. Isn’t it bizarre that here was
Saul consorting in the act of Black Magic to consult dead spirits (a capital offense in the Torah
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Law), but then swearing in the name of the God of Israel as proof of his sincerity to hold the
Ba’alath Ob harmless! Saul wanted the divine to come to him by means of the anti-divine! Oh
how I wish this was a rare occurrence among God’s people but sadly it is all too common.

We’ll continue next week to exam the King of Israel’s attempt to contact God by means of
witchcraft.
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