1 Samuel 29: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Philistines gather their armies at Aphek while Israel camps by the spring in Jezreel. David and his men march at the rear with Achish, the Philistine king he has been serving, but the other Philistine commanders object and demand that David be sent back, fearing he will turn on them in the battle. Achish tells David he has found no fault in him but must send him away, and David and his men leave early the next morning for Philistine territory.

Claim by Claim

1. 29:1
   • The Philistines gathered all their armies to Aphek.
   • Israel was camped by the spring in Jezreel.
2. 29:2
   • The Philistine lords passed on by hundreds and by thousands.
   • David and his men passed on at the rear with Achish.
3. 29:3
   • The Philistine commanders asked what these Hebrews were doing there.
   • Achish said to the Philistine commanders that this was David, the servant of Saul king of Israel.
   • Achish said David had been with him these days, or these years.
   • Achish said he had found no fault in David from the day he deserted to him until that day.
4. 29:4
   • The Philistine commanders were angry with Achish.
   • The Philistine commanders told Achish to send the man back.
   • The Philistine commanders said David should return to the place Achish had assigned him.
   • The Philistine commanders said David must not go down with them to battle.
   • The Philistine commanders said David might otherwise become an adversary to them in the battle.
   • The Philistine commanders asked how David could regain his master's favor.
   • The Philistine commanders suggested he would do it with the heads of these men.
5. 29:5
   • The Philistine commanders asked whether this was the David of whom they sang in dances.
   • The song said Saul had slain his thousands.
   • The song said David had slain his ten thousands.
6. 29:6
   • Achish called David.
   • Achish swore by the life of the LORD.
   • Achish said David had been upright.
   • Achish said David's going out and coming in with him in the army was good in his sight.
   • Achish said he had found no evil in David from the day David came to him until that day.
   • Achish said the lords did not favor David.
7. 29:7
   • Achish told David to return and go in peace.
   • Achish told David not to do anything displeasing to the lords of the Philistines.
8. 29:8
   • David asked Achish what he had done.
   • David asked what Achish had found in his servant from the day he came before him until that day.
   • David asked why he might not go and fight against the enemies of his lord the king.
9. 29:9
   • Achish answered David.
   • Achish said he knew David was good in his sight, like an angel of God.
   • Achish said the Philistine commanders had said David should not go up with them to the battle.
10. 29:10
    • Achish told David to rise up early in the morning with his master's servants who had come with him.
    • Achish told them to depart as soon as they had risen early and had light.
11. 29:11
    • David and his men rose up early in the morning to depart.
    • David and his men set out to return to the land of the Philistines.
    • The Philistines went up to Jezreel.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

29:1

The Philistines were a people settled on the coastal plain southwest of Israel, in five cities with their own rulers; they had been Israel's chief military rival for generations. Aphek lay on the coastal plain; Jezreel names both a town and the broad valley cutting across northern Israel, good open ground for chariots and a natural battlefield. The two armies are gathering at opposite ends of the country's main north–south road.

29:2

"Rulers" translates a special Philistine title (Hebrew *seranim*) used only of the five lords who governed the five Philistine cities together. Achish, king of Gath, was one of them, but the others outranked his decision here. David had earlier fled from Saul and taken service under Achish as a mercenary, with the town of Ziklag as his base, which is why an Israelite band is marching in a Philistine army at all.

29:3

"Hebrews" is the word outsiders use for Israelites in these books, and Israelites use of themselves when speaking to outsiders. In Philistine mouths it often carries contempt, and it was also used for landless men who hired out their swords.

29:4

Cutting off the heads of enemy dead served as proof of the kill, to be produced before a king. The commanders are imagining David buying his way back into Saul's favor with Philistine heads, much as he had once brought Saul the head of Goliath, the Philistine champion.

29:5

The women of Israel had sung this after David killed Goliath. In Hebrew poetry the second line raises the number of the first, so the song was a way of saying "David greater than Saul", the very comparison that first turned Saul against him.

29:6

Achish, a Philistine, swears by the LORD, the personal name of Israel's God, written in small capitals wherever the Hebrew uses it. Swearing by another people's god when addressing that people's man was normal diplomatic courtesy, not a change of religion.

29:8

"My lord the king" is deliberately slippery. Achish would hear it as himself; the reader can hear Saul, David's other lord, whose enemies are the Philistines. The Hebrew leaves it open, and does not tell us which David meant.

29:9

"An angel of God" was a stock courtly compliment in this period, roughly "faultless, beyond reproach", the same phrase is used to flatter kings elsewhere in Samuel. It is praise for David's conduct, not a claim about his nature.

29:10

"Your master's servants" is oddly worded, and the master is not named: it may mean the men who followed David from Saul's territory, or simply David's own troops, with Achish counting himself the master. The Greek version of this verse adds a line, and some translators think a phrase has dropped out of the Hebrew.

29:11

The chapter ends with the two groups moving in opposite directions. David goes south to Ziklag, which is where chapter 30 picks up, and the Philistine army goes north to Jezreel, where the battle of chapter 31 is fought.