1 Samuel 21:10-15--David Flees to Gath

1 Samuel 21:10-15
English Standard Version

David Flees to Gath
10 And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath. 11 And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances,

‘Saul has struck down his thousands,
    and David his ten thousands’?”

​12 And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. 13 So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. 14 Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? 15 Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?”

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Last time we left David fleeing from Saul, he had stopped at the Tabernacle for he and his men to get bread for the journey and for the priest to provide David with a sword.  David was given the sword that he had taken off of Goliath, and David and his men made their way towards Goliath's home of Gath in the land of the Philistines.  He went to approach Achish the king of Gath to ask him for protection from King Saul (the enemy of my enemy is my friend type thing).  However, the Philistines were aware of the political atmosphere of the Israelites, that David had been anointed as king of Israel, the the LORD was blessing all that David laid his hand to, and that King Saul would not leave the throne willingly and sought to kill David so that he or at least his son Jonathan might stay on the throne.  David was disturbed when he heard the king of Gath call him the king of Israel, though he took the words to heart that even the enemies of God realized what the LORD was doing and how He had made David to be king over all of Israel.

David then pretended to be insane before the king of Gath, for it was the only way he could imagine to save the lives of himself and his men, for if the Philistines had been able to capture him and kill him, they would have relished the fact that they were able to capture and kill the king, but if he was an insane man who drooled all over himself and couldn't put words together to make a sentence, then they would have been doing the Israelites a favor by killing him, and they certainly didn't want to be seen as doing the Israelites any favors.  So David let his beard grow out, and made marks on the door of the gate and let dried spit stay in his beard so that he looked disheveled and insane.

The king of Gath sees David's act and believes it and asks his men why they captured and brought to him a madmen--he had enough of them among his own people to worry about and didn't need to deal with a madman from Israel too.  If David was truly insane, then he posed no threat to the Philistines.  So they let David stay there for a time until he had an opportune time to escape, but he will escape alone without any of the men who originally accompanied him to the Tabernacle.  It's unclear whether David sent these men home, or if they turned back before David went into Philistine territory (for if David wasn't armed, they probably weren't either), or if they were captured.  All we know is that after he escapes in the next chapters, he'll have to put together a band of outlaws and degenerates to be his new army.  He'll have gone from commanding Israel's elite fighting forces to leading a group of four hundred men that can't agree on much of anything other than looking out for themselves.  We'll look at that passage a little more next time.