Was David intending to turn traitor to Achish? If not, then he was about to be a traitor to his own people, Israel, and hardly qualified to be their king. If he was intending to turn traitor to Achish, that seems like a morally rotten thing for him to do, certainly not worthy of the scriptural portrayal of him as a godly man. Is there any resolution of this?

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

I think it does show David's moral degeneracy when not under the means of grace. I believe he did intend to betray Achish (and God graciously got him out of that). But there was sharp discipline following, where David was driven back to encourage himself in the Lord his God.

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Ruben
Moderator
F.P.C.I.
Indiana

Vanities and disguises have covered us, and thereby we are naked; licenciousness hath inflam'd us, and thereby we are frozen; voluptuousness hath fed us, and thereby we are sterved, the fancies and traditions of men have taught and instructed us, and thereby we are ignorant.
John Donne

Board Rules - Signature Requirements - Suggestions?

Calvinistas Conversando
Teología en Mexico
The Howling Wilderness

I also think that he was intending to turn traitor because of his history of lying about the identity of the cities that he raided--he seems rather like a sociopath at this time in his history, something that I find hard to swallow. A sociopath after God's own heart? Strangely, the scriptures are silent on whether he was walking in obedience or disobedience in going to Philistia in the first place. God had told him to get out of Moab and return to Judea which one could take as a general command not to find refuge in a heathen nation. Yet if this whole episode was a gross act of disobedience, that's not consistent with God's tender conversations with him after Ziklag was burned. I think that God generally lets people stew for a while in the consequences of gross disobedience. He certainly did that when David fled from Absalom.

I guess in David's favor we can mention that the nations he was attacking while residing in Ziklag were those whose extermination had previously been ordered by God. I agree that the prophet's command to get out of Moab, and the way David's re-entry to Philistia is introduced as a product of his despairing thought would lead you to conslude that he was disobedient in that. Thankfully, God's gentleness made David great --in spite of himself.

I had a long drive today and was meditating on this. Is it true that God said to wipe out the Philistines? I thought it was the other Canaanite tribes, not the Philistines.

How would it set with the modern church, that some warlord went around wiping out whole villages, leaving no survivors, and then lying. Would they welcome him into membership as an exemplary man of God? Achish would have had a hissy fit if he knew what David was REALLY doing. Apart from a specific command of God to do so, it appears that David was being more than grossly immoral. There is no record of his repenting of his deception of Achish in either this or his attempting to go into battle with him with the probable intent of being a fifth column. This whole thing doesn't make sense to me. The scriptures don't seem to hang together. I'm missing something.

David wasn't wiping out Philistines while in Ziklag --he was wiping out other nations. I agree that this sort of systematic violence concealed with diligent lying and making sure no one is around to spill the beans is hard to swallow; but then, we've never been given a command to exterminate a people group and been severely cursed for our failure to carry it out, either.

This helps a bit in understanding what was going on.