1 Samuel 27:1-4 - I will be destroyed by the hand of Saul

27:1

So far David has come across as a righteous man who trusts God. In this chapter we get a rather different picture. And looking at David’s life as a whole we get the full picture of David, including his sinfulness. David, like all men, sinned and fell short of the glory of God. Yet he did achieve a lot of good for the nation, and did many good things. We see in the West that the nations of the west were blessed in many ways, and were based on roughly Christian principles. They too had many failings, sometimes absolutely terrible ones. Now they are abandoning their Christian heritage, and are reaping the consequences. 

This first verse show that here David living out of fear. Interestingly, God does not get a mention in this chapter! David thinks he will be “destroyed by Saul”, and decides that as soon as he can he will “escape to the land of the Philistines”. The rest of the chapter will show what a disastrous decision this was. Decisions based on fear are almost always bad decisions.

27:2-4

David and his six hundred men went over to Gath. Now remember that Gath was where Goliath had come from. The men and their families, and David and his two wives, settled in Gath with Achish son of Maok, king of Gath. Saul learnt where David was and gave up searching for him.