1 Samuel 30: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

David and his men return to Ziklag and find it burned and their families carried off by an Amalekite raiding party. After the men talk of stoning him, David asks the LORD whether to pursue, is told to go, and tracks the raiders down with the help of an abandoned Egyptian slave. He attacks them, recovers everyone and everything taken, and then rules that the men who stayed with the supplies get an equal share of the plunder. He sends part of the plunder as gifts to the elders of Judah in the towns where he and his men had been.

Claim by Claim

1. 30:1
   • David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day.
   • The Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag.
   • The Amalekites had struck Ziklag.
   • The Amalekites had burned Ziklag with fire.
2. 30:2
   • The Amalekites took captive the women who were in Ziklag, from the small to the great.
   • The Amalekites killed no one.
   • The Amalekites drove the captives away and went on their way.
3. 30:3
   • David and his men came to the city.
   • The city was burned with fire.
   • Their wives, their sons, and their daughters had been taken captive.
4. 30:4
   • David and the people with him lifted up their voice and wept.
   • They wept until they had no strength left to weep.
5. 30:5
   • David's two wives had been taken captive.
   • One wife was Ahinoam the Jezreelitess.
   • The other wife was Abigail, the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.
6. 30:6
   • David was greatly distressed.
   • The people spoke of stoning David.
   • The soul of all the people was bitter.
   • Each man grieved for his sons and for his daughters.
   • David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.
7. 30:7
   • David spoke to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech.
   • David asked Abiathar to bring him the ephod.
   • Abiathar brought the ephod to David.
8. 30:8
   • David inquired of the LORD.
   • David asked whether he should pursue this raiding band.
   • David asked whether he would overtake them.
   • The LORD told David to pursue.
   • The LORD said David would surely overtake them.
   • The LORD said David would surely recover all that was taken.
9. 30:9
   • David went, he and the six hundred men with him.
   • They came to the brook Besor.
   • Those who were left behind stayed there.
10. 30:10
    • David pursued, he and four hundred men.
    • Two hundred men stayed behind.
    • The two hundred were too exhausted to cross the brook Besor.
11. 30:11
    • They found an Egyptian man in the field.
    • They brought him to David.
    • They gave him bread, and he ate.
    • They gave him water to drink.
12. 30:12
    • They gave him a piece of a cake of pressed figs and two clusters of raisins.
    • He ate.
    • His spirit returned to him.
    • He had eaten no bread and drunk no water for three days and three nights.
13. 30:13
    • David asked him to whom he belonged.
    • David asked him where he was from.
    • The man said he was a young Egyptian.
    • The man said he was the servant of an Amalekite man.
    • The man said his master abandoned him because he fell sick three days before.
14. 30:14
    • The man said they had raided the Negev of the Cherethites.
    • The man said they had raided the territory belonging to Judah.
    • The man said they had raided the Negev of Caleb.
    • The man said they had burned Ziklag with fire.
15. 30:15
    • David asked the man whether he would bring him down to this raiding band.
    • The man asked David to swear to him by God.
    • The man asked David to swear he would not kill him.
    • The man asked David to swear he would not hand him over to his master.
    • The man said he would then bring David down to the raiding band.
16. 30:16
    • The man brought David down to the raiding band.
    • The Amalekites were spread out over the whole area of ground.
    • They were eating and drinking and celebrating.
    • They celebrated because of all the great spoil they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah.
17. 30:17
    • David struck them from twilight until the evening of the next day.
    • Not a man of them escaped.
    • Four hundred young men escaped.
    • Those four hundred rode on camels and fled.
18. 30:18
    • David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken.
    • David rescued his two wives.
19. 30:19
    • Nothing of theirs was missing, from the small to the great.
    • No sons or daughters were missing.
    • None of the spoil was missing.
    • Nothing the Amalekites had taken for themselves was missing.
    • David brought all of it back.
20. 30:20
    • David took all the flocks and the herds.
    • They drove them ahead of that other livestock.
    • They said that this was David's spoil.
21. 30:21
    • David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow David.
    • Those men had been made to stay at the brook Besor.
    • They came out to meet David and the people with him.
    • David approached the people.
    • David greeted them and asked after their welfare.
22. 30:22
    • All the wicked and worthless men among those who had gone with David answered.
    • They said that because those men did not go with them, they would give them none of the spoil that had been recovered.
    • They said each man could have only his wife and his children.
    • They said those men should take them and go.
23. 30:23
    • David told them not to do so.
    • David called them his brothers.
    • David said the LORD had given this to them.
    • David said the LORD had preserved them.
    • David said the LORD had delivered into their hand the raiding band that came against them.
24. 30:24
    • David asked who would listen to them in this matter.
    • David said the share of the one who goes down to the battle is like the share of the one who stays by the baggage.
    • David said they shall share alike.
25. 30:25
    • From that day forward David made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel.
    • It has remained so to this day.
26. 30:26
    • David came to Ziklag.
    • David sent some of the spoil to the elders of Judah, his friends.
    • David said it was a gift for them from the spoil of the LORD's enemies.
27. 30:27
    • David sent to those in Bethel.
    • David sent to those in Ramoth of the Negev.
    • David sent to those in Jattir.
28. 30:28
    • David sent to those in Aroer.
    • David sent to those in Siphmoth.
    • David sent to those in Eshtemoa.
29. 30:29
    • David sent to those in Rachal.
    • David sent to those in the cities of the Jerahmeelites.
    • David sent to those in the cities of the Kenites.
30. 30:30
    • David sent to those in Hormah.
    • David sent to those in Chorashan.
    • David sent to those in Athach.
31. 30:31
    • David sent to those in Hebron.
    • David sent to all the places where David and his men had been in the habit of going.

Words Worth Explaining

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

30:1

Ziklag was a town in the far south that the Philistine king Achish had given David to live in while David was in exile from Saul; David and his men had just come back from a three-day march after the Philistines refused to let them join their army. The Amalekites were a roaming people of the southern deserts, long-standing raiders of Israel's southern settlements. "The dry southern country" translates the Negev, the arid region south of Judah's farmland, where people lived by herding and small-scale farming and raiding parties could move quickly.

30:2

"Either great or small" means old and young, not important and unimportant. The raiders left the captives alive because living people were worth money: prisoners could be sold as slaves, while corpses were worth nothing. Taking no lives at all in a raid was unusual restraint, and it is the only reason there is anyone left for David to rescue.

30:4

Long ago people cried out loud when something terrible happened. Nobody hid their tears. Crying together was the normal thing to do.

30:5

Both marriages happened earlier in David's outlaw years. The Carmel here is a village in the hill country south of Hebron, not the coastal Mount Carmel in the north.

30:6

Stoning was the way a community, rather than an individual, put someone to death: everyone threw stones, so no single person was the killer. The men talking about it means they were close to executing David as the leader who had left the town undefended.

30:7

The ephod was a priestly garment. The kind meant here seems to have held the Urim and Thummim, sacred objects the priest used to put a question to God and get an answer of the yes-or-no kind. Abiathar was the sole survivor of the priests of Nob whom Saul had massacred, and he had fled to David with the ephod.

30:8

When you see LORD spelled in capital letters, it stands for God's personal name in Hebrew. David is asking that question through Abiathar and the ephod.

30:9

The brook Besor was a wadi, a streambed in the dry south that runs with water after rain and is empty much of the year. Crossing it meant getting down one steep bank and up the other, which is why exhausted men could not manage it.

30:11

A man alone in open country with no food or water was almost certainly left there to die. The next verses confirm it: he was a slave who fell sick and became not worth carrying.

30:12

Figs pressed into a solid cake and clusters of dried raisins were standard traveling food in this region: compact, long-lasting, and very high in sugar, which is why they revive a starving man quickly.

30:13

David's first question is not "who is your family" but "whose property are you": he assumes from the man's condition that he is someone's slave, and the answer confirms it.

30:14

The Cherethites were a people settled along the southern coast, closely associated with the Philistines and probably of the same origin overseas; David later drew part of his bodyguard from them. "The southern country of Caleb" is the district around Hebron held by the clan descended from Caleb. The Egyptian is naming three separate raiding grounds, so the raid swept across territory belonging to several different peoples.

30:15

An oath sworn "by God" called on God to punish the swearer if he broke his word. It was the strongest guarantee available, and a slave with no legal standing had nothing else to bargain with.

30:16

"Upon all the earth" here means all over the ground, not across the world; the Amalekites were sprawled out over the whole area of their camp. They were feasting because a raid this successful was a windfall, and they had no idea anyone was coming after them.

30:17

The Hebrew word rendered "twilight" can mean either dawn or dusk, so it is unclear whether the fight ran from evening through the following day or from before sunrise until the next evening. Either way it lasted far longer than a single skirmish. Camels could outrun men on foot across open desert, which is how the four hundred got away.

30:20

The Hebrew of this verse is obscure and translators differ over who drove what and who spoke. The general sense is that the recaptured livestock, plus animals the Amalekites had plundered elsewhere, were herded home and counted as David's own share of the spoil, the portion a commander took by right.

30:21

"Saluted them" in 1611 English simply means greeted them and asked after their welfare. There is no military gesture involved, and the point is that David greets the men who stayed behind as friends rather than as failures.

30:22

"Men of Belial" in the King James is not a proper name for a devil; belial is a Hebrew word meaning worthlessness or good-for-nothing, so the phrase means lawless, useless men. Their proposal is that the plunder belongs only to the fighters, and that the men left behind get back their own families and nothing else.

30:24

Staying "with the supplies" means guarding the baggage, the packs, food and gear an army left at a base camp while it fought. It was a real assignment, not idleness, and the argument is over whether it earns a share.

30:25

A "statute and a law" here means a fixed customary rule for how plunder was divided, treated afterwards as settled precedent. "To this day" is the narrator speaking to readers of his own time, long after David.

30:26

Elders were the senior heads of families who governed a town and settled its disputes; there was no other local authority. Judah was David's own tribe, and these were the districts he had lived among as a fugitive.

30:27

The list that follows names towns and settlements across the southern edge of Judah, the country David and his men had ranged through while on the run from Saul. Several of these places are otherwise unknown, and some of the names differ between ancient copies of the text.

30:29

The Jerahmeelites and the Kenites were clans living on Judah's southern margins rather than being counted as part of Judah proper. The Kenites were associated with Moses' wife's family and had long-standing friendly ties to Israel; David had earlier claimed to the Philistines that he was raiding these very groups, when in fact he had been protecting them.

30:31

Hebron was the chief town of the southern hill country and the burial place of Israel's ancestors; David would shortly be made king there. "Where David and his men were wont to haunt" in the King James simply means the places they used to move about in, "haunt" in 1611 meant to frequent, with no suggestion of ghosts.