DAVID MADE A LIVING AS A RAIDER. He wiped out Philistine-friendly towns in what is now southern Israel. He killed everyone, took their stuff, got rich, and bought powerful Israelite leaders who declared him King of the Tribe of Judah.
DID YOU KNOW that before David was a king, he was a raider who wiped out entire villages—babies and all?
That’s how he made a living and got rich.
He killed Philistines and their friends. Then he took what they had. That wealth is how he made powerful friends because he shared the wealth.
David was only too human
Okay, that shocked me. I knew David was human and flawed. He impregnated the wife of one of his soldiers. Then he secretly ordered the soldier’s commander to make sure that warrior for king and country died in battle on the front line.
That’s plenty human. Too human. But he did worse.
I just finished paraphrasing and creating 3D Bible maps for much of David’s story, reported in the Bible books of 1-2 Samuel. You may know that after David killed the Philistine champion warrior, a giant of a man named Goliath, Israelite ancestors of today’s Jewish people cheered him as a hero.
Israelite King Saul went crazy with jealousy. He made it his mission to kill David. That’s what forced David into a life on the run, chased by the king and his men.
Bad news for Goliath’s relatives
David eventually figured out how to stop Saul from hunting him. David faked out Philistine King Achish of Gath. That city was the hometown of then-dead Goliath. Why the king welcomed David is a crazy mystery. As in, “You killed the hometown hero, sure, come on in.”
The king even gave David a city. So, Jerusalem wasn’t the first City of David. Ziklag was. Who ever heard of Ziklag. It’s about 15 miles (25 km) east of what is now the ruins of Gaza City. That puts it near the area that Hamas raiders struck Israeli settlements and wiped them out on October 7.
What Hamas did to Jewish people, David did to Philistines and their friends. He killed them all. He considered them his enemy and a threat to Israelites. I know that’s hard to hear. It’s hard to report.
David’s job description: Raider
“David and his men made a living as raiders. They raided enemies of Israel and friends of the Philistines…
When David and his men attacked a community, they killed all the people. But they kept the livestock and gave it to King Achish: sheep, cattle, donkeys, camels. They gave him stolen clothing as well. King Achish would respond to the gifts by asking, ‘Who’d you raid today?’ David would lie and say he raided Israel or their allies…
No victims could dispute David. He killed them all. David kept pitching his lies to the king, one raid after another. He did this for as long as he lived among the Philistines.
Achish thought he had a solid ally in David—someone who would never move away. The king figured that after all those raids David made on his own people in Israel, they must hate his guts.” (1 Samuel 27:8-12, Casual English Bible).
Instead, they kinged him.
After Philistines killed King Saul in battle, David began a campaign of friend-making.
“He distributed the confiscated property to his friends and leaders in his tribe of Judah. He told them, ‘This is my gift to you. We took this from the LORD’s enemies.’ He sent gifts to the following locations: Bethuel, Ramoth of the Negev [the list goes on]…Hebron and wherever David and his men traveled” (1 Samuel 28:26-31, Casual English Bible).
The Lord’s enemies
David implied that he killed on behalf of God.
I watched a video of a Hamas raider chanting about the greatness of God while he shot people to death before someone finally shot him, apparently to death.
Any god who would feel great about what this man did would seem more hellish than holy.
And I don’t see anything in David’s story suggesting God told him to erase the Philistines. Joshua got that order centuries earlier. And the seeming cruelty of that order causes many Christian scholars to mumble a forced defense. That’s because to some Christians, baby-killing never seems good and godly.
Blood on David’s hands, by the way, is why Bible writers said God wouldn’t let him built the first Jewish Temple (1 Chronicles 28:3).
And the point is?
There’s a lot of violence in God’s name.
In God’s name, may we as a species find our way to peace before there is no one left to pick up the pieces.
We are no less violent than in David’s day, it seems. But we are much better equipped for it.
We are more than capable of blowing it all to holy high heaven.
Casual English Bible®
Bible map search engine
Help support Casual English Bible®
Become Patron
Steve’s Bible-background YouTube Channel
More feature articles
Who stole Matthew 17:21
Bible Gateway
27:8–12 During his sixteen-month stay with the Philistines, David made raids against the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites. These people were heathen inhabitants of Canaan whose destruction had been ordered by God (Ex. 17:14; Josh. 13:13; 1 Sam. 15:2, 3). Even in exile, David was fighting the Lord’s battles. This presents quite a paradox: He could trust the Lord to preserve him for victory over Israel’s enemies, but he could not trust Him for protection from Saul!
David was also benefiting himself, because these spoils of war met the needs of his men for food and livelihood.
David’s skill in seizing such an opportunity is clear. From a Christian standpoint, we cannot admire his use of deceit nor his butchery of men and women alike. The passage is not, of course, commending deceit and cruelty. Basically, it is showing how desperate David’s situation was—a situation which had been created by Saul. It also shows David’s determination to do nothing to harm his own people, but to do anything and everything possible to help them. His first duty was to Israel, and he felt no obligations at all to Israel’s enemies.
That’s one way of looking at it, but not the only way, and possibly not the historically correct way. We can’t know for sure. We don’t know David’s motivation because the writer didn’t seem to know it.
The idea that David butchered entire villages for Israel’s sake doesn’t seem to come across in the story-telling. He seems to be doing it for the same reason pirates rob from ships…to make a living, to survive. But the pirates don’t always kill everyone on the boat.
David’s first duty may have been to Israel, I don’t know. But our first duty isn’t to Israel, nor it is to America. Our first duty is to Christ and all he stood for in his life on earth. His duty was to humanity. That becomes ours as well. There’s little humanity in war upon those who suffer most…men, women, and children with no desire to be a part of the bickering of a few crazy men and their enablers, all trying to get or hold onto power and wealth.
The story of what David did, it seems to me, has the modern parallel of what some groups are trying to do to Israelis and what Israel is trying not to do, unsuccessfully, to Palestinians whose families have lived in the land for a millennia or more.
There’s a place for peace in their land and ours, if we can ever overcome the insistence that everyone should agree with us, look like us, and pray like us.
Here’s my fear. Someone addicted to drugs often can’t break free of that behavior until they hit bottom and lose everything. My fear is that the same may have to happen to the human race if we can’t find a way around toxic vitriol that feeds false fear and violence. We are much better equipped than David ever was to wipe out cities.
David did a lot of good things. But some bad things as well. The Bible paints this story as a bad one. It doesn’t defend or excuse it. It just reports it.
Thanks for your note and for the opportunity to think about this again.
Very well said, thanks for the response.