(If you want to read one of my earlier posts on this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8) you might try: Ki Tavo: Milk and Honey. Below is the sixth post in my series on why David is God’s favorite king—whether he acts ethically or not.)
After King Saul’s first few attempts to kill him, David goes to Nob for bread and a sword, then flees alone across the border into Philistine territory. (See my post 1 Samuel: David the Devious.) He arrives in the city of Gat, Goliath’s hometown. Assuming that nobody there will recognize him, he comes to Akhish, the king of Gat. But the king’s courtiers immediately tell their king that this is David, the famous Israelite army commander—in other words, the Philistines’ greatest enemy.
Despite his sudden fear, David thinks fast.
And he changed his good judgment in their eyes, and acted like a madman in their hands; and he scratched marks on the doors of the gate and let saliva run down his beard. And Akhish said to his servants: “Hey! You see a man raving mad! Why do you bring him to me?” (1 Samuel 21:14-15)
David’s act succeeds. Forgetting anything else, the king of Gat just wants his servants to kick the madman out. David returns to Israelite territory, where his brothers and cousins join him, followed by hundreds of men who are impoverished by debt or frustrated by King Saul’s government.
But David and his outlaw band have to keep moving from hideout to hideout, since King Saul keeps trying to hunt them down. Finally David decides to go back to the king of Gat, this time with his 600 fighting men.
Change of alleigance
And David stayed with Akhish in Gat, he and his men; each man and his household, David and his two wives: Achinoam the Jezreelite, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.1 (1 Samuel 27:3)
The king of Gat takes in David and his whole outlaw band as defectors. David politely asks King Akhish to give him a town in the country where he and his people can live. Probably relieved, Akhish gives him the town of Ziklag, near the Israelite town of Beersheba but still within the city-state of Gat.
In exchange for this gift, David becomes a vassal of the king of Gat. Like all vassals, he must regularly send his own “gifts” to the king. And since his men are outlaws, not farmers, he sends Akhish loot from his raids on towns and villages in the Negev Desert.
The God character would normally turn against an Israelite who defected to Israel’s chief enemy, the Philistines. But since David is God’s beloved, God waits to see what he does next.
David and his outlaws spend a year and four months living in Philistine territory and attacking not Beersheba or the nearby Israelite villages in the Negev, but villages belonging to Canaanites, who are the enemies of both the Israelites and the Philistines.
And David struck the land, and he did not leave alive any man or woman. But he took flocks and cattle and donkeys and camels and clothing, and then he returned and came to Akhish. And Akhish would say: “Against whom did you raid today?” And David would say: “Against the Negev region of Judah” or “Against the Negev region of the Yerachmeilites” or “Against the Negev region of the Kenites”. (1 Samuel 27:9-10)
Judah is the southern part of Saul’s kingdom. The Yerachmeilites are considered descendants of a grandson of the tribe of Judah’s eponymous founder. And the Kenites are the Israelites’ allies. If David actually raided any of these peoples, he would become an enemy of his people and his God. Instead he collects his loot from Canaanite tribes, and lies to the king of Gat.
Every time David raids a Canaanite settlement, he kills everyone in it. That way no one is left to expose him as a liar to King Akhish.2
And Akhish trusted David, saying: “He has definitely made himself stink to his own people, to Israel. So he will be mine as a vassal forever!” (1 Samuel 27:12)
The confrontation
And it was in those days that the Philistines gathered their companies into an army, to wage war against Israel … (1 Samuel 28:1)
Up to this point, Philistine kings have been sending their military companies to nibble at the edges of Israel and seize a little more land for themselves. Now the kings of the five Philistine states cooperate to launch an all-out war by forming an army to confront the Israelites in the fertile Jezreel Valley.
Then the Philistine overlords were advancing by hundreds and by thousands, and David and his men were advancing in the rear with Akhish. And the Philistine commanders said: “What are these Hebrews [doing here]?” (1 Samuel 29:2)
King Akhish replies that the Hebrews are under David, Saul’s former servant, who has been with him a long time now without doing anything suspicious. But the commanders sent by the kings of the other four Philistine states are furious, and tell Akhish to send David back to Gat.
“… Then he will not be an adversary to us in the battle! For how else would this one make himself acceptable to his [former] lord?” (1 Samuel 29:4)
Even though King Akhish trusts David, the Philistine commanders reason that David might well be tempted to ingratiate himself with the king of Israel again by betraying Akhish and turning on the Philistines.3
King Akhish regretfully summons David and tells him to go home to Ziklag. David, playing his part to the hilt, replies:
“But what have I done? And what have you found in your servant, from the day I came before you until this day, that I may not come and battle against the enemies of my lord the king?” (1 Samuel 29:8)
But Akhish says David and his men must leave at dawn, and they do. Given his history of bending the rules, dissembling, and manipulating kings, it seems likely that David is relieved he can return safely to Ziklag without either being killed, or killing any Israelites. I can imagine him reasoning that since God anointed him as Israel’s next king, his duty to God is to stay alive until he is given the throne. And the next episode in the story indicates that God agrees.
Trouble in Ziklag
When David and his men arrive at Ziklag, they discover that Amalekites have burned down the town. But at least there are no corpses.
They had taken captive the women who were in it, from young to old. But they had not put anyone to death; they had driven them on and gone on their way. (1 Samuel 30:2)
The raiding Amalekites kept the children alive as well as the women. When David’s outlaws were raiding Amalekite villages during the past year, they took all the livestock and other loot, but killed every single person so there would be no witnesses to report which village David had raided. But the Amalekites have conducted a normal raid, in which women and children were considered part of the booty, because they could be sold—or used—as slaves.
And David was in dire straits, because the people [i.e. his men] said to stone him—because all the people’s souls were bitter, each one over his sons and over his daughters. But David strengthened himself through God, his God. (1 Samuel30:6)
Two leading 21st-century commentators disagreed on how David “strengthened himself through God”. Rabbi Steinsaltz explained: “He cleaved to God, trusted in Him, and was not dispirited.”4
Robert Alter’s explanation was more practical: “He finds encouragement in the face of mortal despair—specifically, as the next verse explains, by calling for the oracle. In this fashion, he staves off the assault his men are contemplating by dramatically showing that they still have means of redress against the Amalekites, and that he has a special channel of communication with God.”5
And David said to the priest Evyatar son of Achimelekh: “Please bring the eifod up to me.” And Evyatar brought up the eifod, and David inquired of God, saying: “Should I chase after this raiding band? Would I overtake them?” And it said to him: Chase, because you will certainly overtake, and certainly rescue. (1 Samuel 30:7-8)
eifod (אֵפוֹד) = a priest’s ritual tabard. The chest-piece of the high priest’s eifod is studded with gems representing the twelve tribes, and contains a pocket with the urim and tumim, used for divining.
Only prophets can hear God speak, but the high priest can ask God yes-or-no questions using the eifod. Evyatar, son of the high priest Achimelekh, was the only survivor of Saul’s massacre of the priests at Nov, and he escaped with his father’s eifod.6
David asks two questions and the eifod answers three. The commentary has different ways of explaining this, but I think the easiest solution is that David asks an unreported third question, “Would I rescue our wives and children?”, and the eifod indicates “yes”. (Information gets left out, as well as added, when a scribe writes down an oral story.)
When David consults God through the priest’s eifod, he is not just asking for an accurate prediction of the future; he is asking God to influence events in his favor. When the eifod answers yes,it means that God will shift the circumstances, without going so far as to make any miracles, so that David will succeed. The three “yes” answers mean that God supports David’s decision to return to Ziklag.
David leads his men south, then leaves the 200 most exhausted behind at a wadi so the remaining 400 can pursue the raiders more swiftly. They surprise the Amalekites, who are sprawled on the ground feasting and drinking, surrounded by their loot from Ziklag and several other towns. David and his men kill all the Amalekites except for 400 young men who escape on camels.
And David rescued everything that Amalek had taken, and he rescued his own two wives, and nothing of theirs was lacking, from small to great and sons and daughters, or from the booty [from Ziklag] to everything else that [the Amalekites] had taken for themselves. David recovered everything. And David took all the flocks and the herds … (1 Samuel 30:18-20)
Some of the men who helped David kill Amalekites say that the 200 men who stayed behind should get their wives and children back, but none of the loot. David, however, declares that everyone must get an equal share, saying:
“You must not do thus, my brothers, with what God gave us! And [God] guarded us, and gave the raiding band that came against us into our hand.” (1 Samuel 30:23)
David gives God the credit for their success in raiding the Amalekite raiders. After all, the Amalekites far outnumbered David’s troop of 400. And God promised through the eifod that David would rescue their wives and children. Perhaps God arranged for the Amalekites to be too drunk to defend themselves.
Then David, anticipating that someday he really will become king of the Israelites, sends a portion of the Amalekite loot to the elders of a number of towns and villages in Judah, with the message:
“Here is a blessing for you from the plunder of God’s enemies.” (1 Samuel 30:26)
David is careful to keep honoring God—and he also takes initiative and buys the goodwill of some of the people he plans to reign over.
The first book of Samuel ends with the battle in the Jezreel Yalley, where both King Saul and his son Jonathan die. The second book of Samuel opens with an Amalekite resident alien in the Jezreel bringing the news to David, along with the king’s crown and bracelet. The Amalekite claims he obeyed Saul’s order to give him the death blow, and David executes him for his sacrilege. (See my post 1 Samuel: Sacred Kings.) David mourns for King Saul as well as for his devoted ally Jonathan.
Then he asks God, through his priest’s eifod:
“Should I go up into one of the towns of Judah?” (2 Samuel 2:1)
The answer is yes. David and his whole outlaw band move into Hebron, where the men of Judah make him their king.
What if you could use a divining device like the eifod—perhaps a lottery or a Ouija board or a Magic 8 Ball—to find out what God wanted you to do? What if you knew that a “yes” meant that God would help you make it happen?
For David, this knowledge makes him work at impressing God by frequently asking for God’s advice through the eifod. But he also uses his eifod consultations to impress his followers with his piety. Knowing God wants him to be the next king of Israel, David takes his own steps toward this end, including maintaining a loyal core of 600 fighting men, and sending gifts to various towns in Judah so they will think of him favorably when the time comes.
If your divining device indicated that God wanted you to have a certain job, you, too, would probably take additional actions to get it. On the other hand, if you believed that divining devices operate by chance, and that there is no anthropomorphic God character meddling in the lives of individuals, you would still work hard at getting the job you want.
The real difference is that if you knew God was on your side, you would not question your right to the job or your ability to handle it—even if it were as outrageous a promotion as David’s promotion from outlaw to king.
- Technically, David is still married to Saul’s daughter Mikhal, but we find out later that Saul has treated her as if she were divorced and given her to another man. Meanwhile, David has taken two more wives: first Achinoam, whom he met while the outlaws were in the Jezreel Valley, and then Abigail, the widow of Nabal. See my post 1 Samuel: David the Devious.
- 1 Samuel 27:11.
- Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, Introductions to Tanakh, I Samuel, as quoted in www.sefaria.org.
- Ibid.
- Robert Alter, Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2013, p. 415.
- 1 Samuel 22:18-23:4.
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