1 Samuel 27:8

DAVID'S DECEPTION OF ACHISH IN HIS MILITARY RAIDS

"Now David and his men went up, and made raids on the Geshurites, and the Girzites, and the Amalekites; for these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as Shur, to the land of Egypt. And David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive, but took away the sheep, the oxen, the asses, the camels, and the garments, and came back to Achish. When Achish asked, "Against whom have you made a raid today'? David would say, "Against the Negeb of Judah," or "Against the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites," or "Against the Negeb of the Kenites." And David saved neither man nor woman alive, to bring tidings to Gath, thinking, "Lest they should tell about us, and say, `So David has done.'" And Achish trusted David, thinking, `He has made himself utterly abhorred by his people Israel; therefore he shall be my servant always.'"

"The Geshurites ... the Girzites ... and the Amalekites" (1 Samuel 27:8). These were the peoples that David raided; and who were they? They were all in the category of Israel's enemies, having dwelt in the land of Israel `from of old,' thus being among the nations God had devoted, placed under the ban, and ordered their total extermination during the Conquest. David no doubt used that ancient order of God to Joshua regarding the extermination of those peoples to justify his brutal butchery of whole cities among those peoples; and Matthew Henry thought that we can, "Acquit David of this injustice and cruelty because those peoples had been long ago doomed by heaven for destruction."[9] Maybe so! But David's constant lying to Achish about what he was actually doing is totally without justification. "The butchery and deceit here practiced by David are indicative of the desperate situation in which he found himself."[10]

"David ... came back to Achish" (1 Samuel 27:9). "This does not mean that David lived at Garb; he just went back there to share the spoils with Achish."[11]

"Against whom have you made a raid to day?" (1 Samuel 27:10). It was to the questions of Achish such as this that David returned false answers. He was, in fact, consistently raiding the enemies of Israel, but he informed Achish that he was actually raiding the Israelites, saying, in effect, `I have been raiding southern Judah.'

"The Negeb of Judah ... the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites ... the Negeb of the Kenites" (1 Samuel 27:10). "The word `Negeb' literally means. `the dry country.'"[12] By these assertions, David convinced Achish that he was making all of those raids against Judah and related Israelites. "The first named here was the tribe of Judah itself; the second of these three peoples was one of the prominent clans of Judah (1 Chronicles 2:9,42)";[13] and the Kenites had been associated with Israel since the days of Moses, whose father-in-law Jethro was of the Kenites. Also Jael who destroyed Sisera was a Kenite. If David had actually raided these people, as he said he did, Achish's belief that Israel at that time abhorred David would have been true.

"So David hath done" (1 Samuel 27:11). Keil rejected the rendition of the RSV that connects these words with what David feared the victims might say if he had spared any of them, making the words instead, "A clause appended by the historian himself, to the effect that David continued to act in that manner as long as he dwelt in the land of the Philistines."[14]

There is no way to gloss over David's sin in this. He lied continually about what he was really doing. Achish who believed David, trusted him and aided him was shamefully betrayed and deceived by David. As Willis stated it, "Like Saul and Nabal who returned to David evil for good, so David here returned to Achish evil for good."[15] Matthew Henry supposed that David's conscience must have hurt him because of all this, because of what is written in Psalms 119:29, "Remove from me the way of lying (KJV)." (Henry ascribed this Psalm to David).[16]

The chronology of these final chapters of First Samuel is not stressed in any manner. Between the death of Samuel (1 Samuel 25:1) and that of Saul (1 Samuel 31), a very long period elapsed. Josephus stated that it was twenty-two years; and although modern scholars question this, the old tradition that Saul reigned 40 years has never been disproved. These few chapters regarding those final twenty-two years are, in one way, much like the extremely abbreviated record in Numbers of Israel's forty years in the wilderness. God's purpose here is not to tell us all that happened, but to give us things for our admonition and instruction.