Go Home - 1st Samuel 29

The Philistines are preparing to battle the Israelites, and chapter 29 is kind of snapshot of what the Philistines are doing while Saul was busy consulting the witch. Apparently there are 5 kings of the Philistines and one of them is Achish, the king in charge where David is living and the one he’s been paying tribute to when he raids and destroys all the surrounding cities. The other 4 kings have gathered with their men when Achish shows up with David is his 600 soldiers bringing up the rear. This makes the other 4 princes very uncomfortable and they tell Achish that David can’t fight with them. This makes sense from their perspective because it’s very likely that, in their mind, that this substantial number of defected enemy soldiers could just as easily turned on them in the heat of battle and killed their Philistine soldiers. We have native fighters with us a lot of the times, the Iraqi army and the Afghan national army most recently, but there were instances of those “allies” betraying us sometimes, and they weren’t that invested in American success in their country and it’s likely that this might have gone the same way.

Even if David’s men didn’t actively betray the Philistines, it’s possible, probably even, that they wouldn’t have fought that hard for the Philistines to win the battle. In fact TB says, “David certainly intended to fight for Achish and against Sula’s forces. Now what David would have done had he come face to face with Saul is open for debate… It’s hard to say how David would have reacted once the battle against his own brethren began. It is also doubtful that all of David’s men would have joined hm. Certainly some unknown number of David’s troops could not have brought themselves to spill the blood of their extended family members for the sake of Philistine’s ambitions. It was one thing to raid Judean villages for profit and sustenance by taking animals and food and other valuable goods; it was quite another to fight against their hereditary nation on behalf of an enemy.”

In another instance of God saving David from himself, even though Achish trusts David completely to fight alongside him, the other princes insist that he take his men back to Ziglak, the city that they were staying in. Achish realizes that they won’t budge so he very apologetically tells David he can’t fight with them and to go back to the city. It’s interesting to me that Achish was so kind and apologetic to David, while Saul, his own king and father-in-law, was so awful to him. It’s also interesting to me that Achish trusts David so much even though David is lying to him about where he goes and who he steals from. One of the things Achish says to David is “I know that thou art good in my sight, as an angel to God.” Achish wouldn’t have worshipped the God of the Israelites, he would have had his own god, but here he invokes the name of “Yehoveh” which TB says would have been a great sign of respect to David, saying that his God would have been pleased with him, even though it wasn’t considered the God of Philistia, nor the God of Achish himself.

David relents and heads home, because ultimately this was going to be a lose/lose scenario for David, maybe not from living out his days in luxury in Philistia, but for being the king of Israel. He would either kill his own countrymen that he would have needed loyalty from when he became king, or he would have betrayed his current comrades in arms which would have caused all types of problems. So God severed the way of David committing this act so that he could be arranged in the path that God wanted. David didn’t want to be king od Israel, he wanted to live his life the way he was and it was going to take the hand of God blocking and hedging up the way constantly in order to guide David right to that throne. It’s reassuring to watch God do this to David, looking at my own circumstances to think that I didn’t end up with the life that I wanted, but so much of God’s intervention in my life, even though it’s not what I wanted, is so that I could be guided into whatever role he has planned for me. It’s comforting to watch Him do it to David and being like “ok I can see why he did that” because I have the hindsight to look over David’s life and circumstances. The problem for me is that I don’t know where it’s all going yet, so it feel chaotic, but I guess that’s part of the point right, to trust that God is guiding the way and that it will be better than anything I could ever had created for myself.