Was David wrong to flee into the land of the Philistines (see 1 Sam 27)?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Problems of Becoming and Being a King’ (1990).

We do have to be careful in premature judgments about morality. When I have been in various countries around the world, the missionaries have counselled me that one of the great difficulties has been getting believers to tell the truth all the time. It is a great weakness amongst some of our fellow believers, brought up in their particular cultures, to learn to tell the truth all the time, and even as mature believers they will sometimes tell you lies, so that of course the missionaries have to insist on truth telling. 'Do not lie to one another,' Scripture plainly teaches (Colossians 3:9). And therefore some of the stories of the Old Testament are a bit of an embarrassment, to say the least. But we must be careful, as has been said here, not to condemn Rahab too quickly, because in the Epistle to the Hebrews the Holy Spirit says she is a woman of faith: 'by faith' she received the spies (Hebrews 11:31), though it was in connection with those spies that she told a bit of a lie to the authorities in Jericho.

Similarly, the Gibeonites have been chased, not only by their fellow Canaanites but by many a preacher, for enacting that tremendous lie and dressing up as though they were belonging to a city afar off. And Israel have been castigated for not enquiring of the Lord, for if they'd enquired of the Lord they would have found out the falseness of these wicked Canaanites that had so wretchedly deceived them.

I don't know what the preachers would have the Gibeonites do. According to their record they had heard what Moses said, and Moses had said if you were a city afar off there was mercy for you, suppose only you were prepared to surrender and be servants to Israel. But if you were a city near at hand you had to be destroyed (see Joshua 9:24–25). If you had been a Gibeonite and heard what Moses said, what would you have done? Would your response be, 'Well I would have just sat there and said, "What a pity I'm not from a city afar off. I must now have my throat slit, so here's my throat. I do wish I'd been from a city afar off but I'm from a city near at hand, so I must."'

Well, if you say that you're obviously more spiritual than I am, because if I had been a Gibeonite, I'd have said, 'Well if there's a chance to prove to anybody by hook or by crook that I'm from afar off I'll do it!'

If we were to transpose the whole story to your experience, what a mercy you were afar off when Christ came, because that's how you got saved, isn't it? But then you were afar off, you wretched lot, very far off! Anyway, that's beside the point.

I think that it is an important observation that God looks upon the motivation of the heart. It doesn't mean he condones lying, necessarily. Second Samuel raises similar questions of the rights and wrongs of deliberately deceiving people by using double talk, deliberately choosing your words so the person you are talking to will take one meaning out of them when you mean the very opposite. Is that a right thing to do?

But now to come back to the question of David being amongst the Philistines, and whether that was an unworthy thing to do. I would have thought there are two matters of prominence here. One of them has been mentioned: if David going off to the Philistines to save his life is an unworthy thing, what would you say of Jesus of Nazareth who, when they took up stones to stone him, withdrew out of the temple? During the last week before his crucifixion, when the crowds came to the temple, he came and preached because the crowds were there all around him and the authorities could not arrest him in the absence of the people, as they wanted to. And at night when the people went away he went to a secret location on the Mount of Olives. Was that cowardice too? Was that lack of faith that God would protect him? Was it lack of faith on his part when, after having raised Lazarus he went off into a city called Ephraim into some obscure village, because he knew the authorities were determined to crucify him (see John 10:40–42)?

You wouldn't dare to say so, would you? So on that ground, we shouldn't too readily jump to the fact that David had a lack of faith. Having many times come within an inch of his life over long months, and only just escaping by a hair's breadth, and finding Saul finally absolutely unrepentant, he said, 'Now it's better I go to the Philistines.' I would find it very difficult to argue that this was some lack of faith on his part, some worldliness, some lack of trust in the Lord.

But to come to a major point. If you take not the one detail of his lies from time to time, but the whole tenor of the Philistine episode, and you are considering the case that will be made against David by some of the people subsequently in Israel, that he couldn't possibly be the Lord's anointed, then see how it would come across. Such people might have said, 'Who said he was the Lord's anointed? Oh, you say he was anointed by the prophet? Really? We never heard of that. When was this? Oh, it was done in secret? I should think so. And how could that have been of God? If God had anointed Saul he wouldn't go and anoint anybody else, would he? Samuel must have been out of fellowship with God, then, if he anointed another. And how could David have been the rightful king? He never was presented to the people. The people didn't acclaim him like they acclaimed Saul, did they? And how can he be the Lord's anointed if he went off to the Philistines and fought with them against Israel?'

What would you have said in answer to that charge if you had been writing the book of 1 Samuel? Did David fight against Israel among the Philistines? Let's pass over for a minute any lies he told. What were the facts? What is the historian telling you? In that whole episode among the Philistines, was David disloyal to Israel? What are the big facts? No. He never once fought against Israel.

You say, 'He came within a whisker of doing it.'

Yes, he did indeed. The historian isn't trying to hide the fact. When the Philistines finally assembled to march against Israel and stage a very big invasion that went right through the centre of Israel to Mount Gilboa in the northeast, David went with them.

You say, 'There you are. He was being disloyal to Israel. If he hadn't been before, now he was. He goes with the Philistines against Israel.'

Can you tell me why he didn't succeed in going and actually fighting along with the Philistines? Do tell me. What is the historian's case?

You say, 'They wouldn't trust him.' And why wouldn't they trust him? Give me the reasons. Yes, his background. He was a Jew. And what did the lords of the Philistines actually say about David? Somebody read the actual words. What did they actually say?

As the lords of the Philistines were passing on by hundreds and by thousands, and David and his men were passing on in the rear with Achish, the commanders of the Philistines said, 'What are these Hebrews doing here?' And Achish said to the commanders of the Philistines, 'Is this not David, the servant of Saul, king of Israel, who has been with me now for days and years, and since he deserted to me I have found no fault in him to this day.' But the commanders of the Philistines were angry with him. And the commanders of the Philistines said to him, 'Send the man back, that he may return to the place to which you have assigned him. He shall not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary to us. For how could this fellow reconcile himself to his lord? Would it not be with the heads of the men here? Is not this David, of whom they sing to one another in dances, "Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands"?' (1 Samuel 29:2–5)

That's a pretty powerful case, in my book at any rate. The lords of the Philistines heard that David had been appointed 'the keeper of the head' of Achish (see 1 Samuel 28:2 kjv). They couldn't believe it. What on earth was Achish thinking about? David hadn't a great reputation for respecting Philistine heads, had he? And Achish appointed him the keeper of his head? The lords of the Philistines objected most strongly. It was all right when Achish put David in Ziklag, that funny little place out in the desert. Now Achish was proposing that David lead a contingent of Hebrew troops among the armies of the Philistines? They said, 'What utter nonsense! You can't rely on the man's loyalty to us. His loyalty is with Israel, and in the middle of the battle he'll turn around against us and take our heads off!'

The Philistine lords knew David's character. They said he would never be disloyal to Israel. 'Oh, he'll grasp the opportunity,' they said. 'He wants to reconcile himself with his nation and with his lord.'

Was that true? Did David long to get back to Israel? Oh, do see the major case being put forward in the text. You can bring up the question of lying if you like, or that due to his lack of faith he went under the Philistines, but the major case that the historian is urging is the right of David to be king! The people would have heard he'd gone among the Philistines. Yes, he went among the Philistines. Let me tell you why he had to go among the Philistines. Whose fault was it he went among the Philistines? The establishment drove him out.

'Ah,' you say, 'but they didn't know how loyal David was to Israel.'

Didn't they? Wait a minute. Who killed the giant Goliath? And who was the insane person that drove out the man that had delivered Israel from the Philistines? Who will you blame for David going to the Philistines? And when he got to the Philistines, what is the historic fact? Was David ever disloyal to Israel among the Gentiles?

Surely, that is the big case that the historian is arguing. And in my book, it is a very powerful case. It's not only saying, 'Yes, well, at heart David never wished Israel any harm.' That sort of argument might not get very far. Here we have it, on the testimony of the Philistines themselves, that they wouldn't allow him to bring his Hebrew contingent to fight against Israel. They didn't trust him. The loyalty of David to Israel is established, even among the Gentiles.

If we can settle at the historical level that that is the major thrust of this bit of the narrative, then we can think of it at another level. Of course it is the fact that the Lord Jesus himself personally remained in Israel and only once did he step outside its borders. But he commanded his apostles to go to the Gentiles, didn't he? At what point in the history of the Acts of the Apostles did the apostles go to the Gentiles? 'Your blood be on your own heads,' they said. 'It was right that the gospel be preached to you first. But when you stoned Paul, and left him for dead, and tried to murder him time after time after time, and you judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, your blood be on your own head, then. Now we turn to the Gentiles' (see Acts 13). Let's come to the very big, grievous question that has come to the fore in all sorts of writing. Surely, you have come across it. It fills the pages of even evangelical books on the topic.

There are some that say it would be a thing of very bad taste for Christians to try and convert Jews. Yes, some evangelicals say it. Why? Because evangelicals ought to remember the terrible anti-Semitism for which Christianity is responsible. We ought to remember the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Dachau, and we ought not say anything against the Jews that couldn't decently be said when you were standing inside those gas chambers.

I'm sure you won't go to the position of saying, 'We ought not as Christians to try to convert Jews.' Liberalism is now saying, 'Judaism is a valid alternative way to God, just as valid as Christianity is. You don't have to convert Jews to Christ. Their way is just as valid a way to God as ours is.' You don't accept it, do you? You want to say that there is no other name given amongst men whereby you must be saved, except the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12). The liberals will turn around on you and say, 'Yes, you're the kind of person, you narrow minded bigot, that has taught your children that the wicked Jews murdered Jesus, and sowed in their hearts anti-Semitism against the Jews!'

Surely, you've read it. You can't move in certain circles without meeting this kind of thing all the time. What is your answer? In sending the gospel to the Gentiles, has Jesus and his gospel been responsible for anti-Semitism? Has Jesus provoked Gentiles to be against Israel? You know your history. What do you say to the charge? What do you say to your Jewish friends? It is a very big historical question, is it not?

The answer is that Christendom has been guilty of the most appalling anti-Semitism. Christendom got it into its head early on that the church is Israel and that God has abandoned and forsaken Israel forever. Is it true that God has abandoned Israel? No, it is not, and we want to get up on our hind legs and say it. Christianity does not teach that God has abandoned Israel. Christianity says, 'Yes, they are in a grievous state because they rejected their Messiah—enemies, for the gospel's sake, but beloved for the fathers' sake' (see Romans 11:28). And God will yet restore Israel. All-Israel will be saved. That is true Christianity. You want to preach it, don't you? I do!

And has Christianity taught the church to join up with the political state and, in the interest of church politics, to persecute Jews? Christendom has done it over many centuries, but is that what Christianity taught? It is a very important part of our gospel to plead the case of Christ and to justify the Lord and his message. It is not true Christianity that was responsible for the hideous effects of the autos-da-fé in Spain, backed by the church. Nor is true Christianity responsible for the gas chambers in Germany, instituted by Hitler, who when he went to Spain to support Franco was blessed by the pope. But what shall we say about Luther and his fearful persecution and denunciation of the Jews?

Some true Christians have cause to repent, haven't they? When Hitler came to power in Germany he demanded that small, evangelical groups associate in a bund and so the so-called assemblies, along with Baptists and Pentecostals, were all put into one bund, the appointed leaders of which were responsible directly to the government. And on those conditions, these churches were allowed still to function. But there was another condition. It was that the churches that were allowed to function under this system must agree that they would not admit Jews into their fellowship. How many open assemblies signed and agreed to the conditions? They will say that they didn't know what Hitler was doing or was about to do. It's not my place to judge them before God, but I can tell you there are men of my age and older, who now live with a very troubled conscience. Exclusive brethren, so called, refused to sign such a thing and went underground.

These are real issues. Our wisdom surely, first of all, is to take the history in its historical context. What was the writer doing for the public for which he was immediately writing? If he was trying to justify the claim of David and his descendants to the throne of the nation, as the anointed of the Lord, he had to answer some of the objections that had been levelled against them on this ground, amongst others, that David at one stage went among the Philistines.

¹ See page 61 of the transcript, ‘The God of New Beginnings’.