Me, myself, and I—three desperados that were David’s companions on his trip to Gath. Where was God?
This chapter opens with David having a talk with himself. We actually hear what he’s saying in his heart! The problem with such soliloquies is that they limit a person to what is already known. When it sounds like this, it’s a good thing: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?…Hope in God” (Ps 42:11). But when it goes like this, not so much: “Now I shall perish someday by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape to the land of the Philistines” (1 Sam 27:1). When he arrived in Gath the last time (21:10), he was alone; now he heads there with his full militia. “Then David arose and went over with the six hundred men who were with him to Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath” (27:2). To make matters worse, David asked the king for some outpost as a residence for his family and his men: “If I have now found favor in your eyes, let them give me a place in some town in the country, that I may dwell there” (v 5). So “Achish gave him Ziklag” (v 6), knowing David would provide a buffer against marauding desert tribes. Such are the thoughts of demoralized believers. We become so downward-looking that we forget all we have inherited by faith. In fact, Ziklag was already part of the inheritance of the tribe of Judah (Jos 15:31). But while David moving to settle in Philistia couldn’t be a success in the long run, it may have preempted a civil war in Israel. In so doing, David also prefigured that day when the Lord Jesus, and later His Church, would be largely lost to the Gentiles for a while. So, finding a temporary home in Ziklag, David and his men kept busy in border skirmishes, driving back “the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites” (v 8). World-bordering is dangerous business!