The Grave of Exile in Ziklag Text: 1 Samuel 27:5-7
Introduction: When the Anointed Sprints to Gath
We come now to a perplexing and frankly dismal chapter in the life of David. It is a season of profound spiritual depression, a time when the man after God's own heart begins to walk by sight and not by faith. He has been anointed king. He has been delivered from Saul’s hand time and again. He has seen the clear and repeated providence of God fencing him in. And yet, in the first verse of this chapter, we read that "David said in his heart, 'I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.'" This is the logic of unbelief. This is what happens when we listen to our own fearful hearts instead of the promises of God.
This chapter is a case study in the anatomy of compromise. It begins with a failure of faith, which leads to a flight to the enemy, which in turn necessitates a web of calculated deception. David, the future king of Israel, becomes a vassal of a Philistine king. He who was destined to rule from Jerusalem is now begging for a small town in the land of the uncircumcised. This is a low point, and the Scriptures do not whitewash it. God's heroes are presented with all their warts, all their failures, precisely so that we might see that the story is not about their greatness, but about the unblinking, sovereign faithfulness of God.
God's purposes are not thwarted by our foolishness. In fact, God in His hard providence often uses our foolishness to chasten us, to teach us, and ultimately, to advance His kingdom. David had to go down to Ziklag before he could ascend to Jerusalem. He had to be brought to the end of his own cleverness to learn to rely wholly on God's grace. This is a pattern we see throughout Scripture. Israel had to go down to Egypt. Jesus Himself, the greater David, was taken to Egypt as a child. There is a type of death and resurrection that must occur, a going down into the grave of exile before the glory of the throne. David is not just running from Saul; he is being driven by God into a necessary death, a death to his own self-reliance.
As we examine these verses, we must see the practical shrewdness of David, but we must also see the spiritual danger he is in. He is playing with fire, living a double life. And yet, even in this compromised state, God is working all things together for His good purposes. He is protecting His anointed, preserving His people, and setting the stage for the final fall of the house of Saul and the glorious rise of the house of David.
The Text
Then David said to Achish, “If now I have found favor in your sight, let them give me a place in one of the cities in the country, that I may live there; for why should your servant live in the royal city with you?”
So Achish gave him Ziklag that day; therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day.
And the number of days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.
(1 Samuel 27:5-7 LSB)
A Shrewd Request (v. 5)
We begin with David's calculated petition to King Achish.
"Then David said to Achish, 'If now I have found favor in your sight, let them give me a place in one of the cities in the country, that I may live there; for why should your servant live in the royal city with you?'" (1 Samuel 27:5)
Having fled to the Philistines out of a failure of faith, David now operates with a kind of worldly wisdom. His request is both shrewd and strategic. On the surface, it is a display of profound humility. He addresses Achish as his superior and calls himself "your servant." He frames the request as a desire not to be a burden on the royal city of Gath. "Why should your servant live in the royal city with you?" This is clever politics. It makes him appear unassuming, a humble refugee grateful for any small provision.
But beneath this veneer of humility, there are at least two practical motivations. First, living in Gath, the capital city, would put David and his six hundred men constantly under the microscope. Their every move would be scrutinized by the Philistine lords, many of whom were already deeply suspicious of him. Remember, this is the same Achish and the same Gath where David had previously feigned madness to escape. The Philistines knew him as Israel's champion, the one who killed their giant. Living in the capital was untenable; it would have been a pressure cooker.
Second, and more importantly, getting his own town out on the frontier gives David operational freedom. He needs breathing room. He needs a base of operations from which he can live his double life without constant oversight. He wants to be out of sight and out of mind. This request is not primarily about humility; it is about securing a tactical advantage. He is maneuvering for autonomy within the land of his enemies. It is a clever move, but we must not mistake cleverness for faithfulness. David is trying to manage a crisis that his own lack of faith created. He is leaning on the arm of the flesh, and while God will use it, it is a dangerous place to be.
A Providential Provision (v. 6)
Achish, taken in by David's apparent loyalty, grants the request.
"So Achish gave him Ziklag that day; therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day." (1 Samuel 27:6 LSB)
Here we see the hidden hand of God's providence at work. Achish, a pagan king, an enemy of Israel, becomes an instrument in God's plan. He gives David the city of Ziklag. The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife. David, God's anointed king, receives his first piece of the kingdom, his first city, not by conquest in the name of Yahweh, but as a gift from a Philistine lord. God is sovereign over the hearts of kings, even pagan kings, and He moves them like pieces on a chessboard to accomplish His will (Proverbs 21:1).
Ziklag was originally allotted to the tribe of Simeon within the territory of Judah (Joshua 15:31, 19:5), but Israel had evidently failed to drive the Philistines out. Now, through David's compromise, a portion of the inheritance is restored to Israel. God is so sovereign that He can advance His covenant purposes through the faithless decisions of His people and the political calculations of His enemies. Achish thinks he is securing a loyal vassal on his southern border. God knows He is giving His future king a staging ground.
The narrator adds a historical note: "therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day." This comment, written after the kingdom had divided, underscores the significance of this moment. This pagan grant had lasting covenantal implications. It shows that no matter how far His servants wander, God is still steering history. He is still building His kingdom. David may have been walking in the shadows, but God was still working in the light, turning the enemy's "generosity" into an Israelite inheritance.
A Long Season of Compromise (v. 7)
The final verse of our text gives us the duration of this sorry episode.
"And the number of days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months." (1 Samuel 27:7 LSB)
This was not a brief lapse in judgment. This was not a bad weekend. This was sixteen months of sustained compromise. For a year and four months, the sweet psalmist of Israel was silent. We have no psalms from this period. He is living a lie, pretending to be a servant of Achish while secretly raiding the enemies of Israel. He is cut off from the tabernacle, from the sacrifices, from the fellowship of God's people in the land of promise.
This extended period serves as a severe chastening. It is a spiritual winter. David is learning a hard lesson about the soul-deadening effect of walking by sight. When you trust in your own schemes, you have to keep scheming to maintain the charade. This is what the following verses will show us. David's life becomes a tangle of deception, raiding villages and killing every man, woman, and child so that no witnesses could report to Achish what he was actually doing. This is a brutal business, born from a single moment of unbelief.
And yet, God's grace is still present. This time in Ziklag, this "grave of exile," is what God uses to finally kill David's self-reliance. It is what prepares him for the throne. God let him wander in this Philistine wilderness for sixteen months to teach him that he could not secure his own future. It is a painful but necessary lesson. God will eventually rescue him from this self-inflicted disaster, but not before the consequences of his choices have played out. God is a father who disciplines His sons, and this long, silent, bloody season in Ziklag was a severe and gracious rod of correction.
Conclusion: God's Sovereignty in Our Folly
What are we to make of this? We see a man of God, weary of the fight, who takes what seems to be a pragmatic way out. He exchanges the promises of God for the protection of a pagan king. He gets a city, he gets security, but he loses his song. This is always the trade-off. Compromise always seems practical at the moment, but it always leads to a more complicated and dangerous web than the one we were trying to escape.
David's story here is a warning to us. Do not listen to the fearful whispers of your heart. Do not trade the hard path of faith for the seemingly easy road of compromise. But it is also a profound comfort. For we see a God who does not abandon His people when they wander. He does not disown His anointed when they make foolish decisions. His sovereign plan is not held hostage by our failures.
God used the foolishness of a Philistine king to give His servant a city. He used sixteen months of compromise to prepare His servant for a lifetime of rule. He is always working, weaving even the dark threads of our sin and stupidity into the glorious tapestry of His redemption. David had to go down to Ziklag before he could be crowned in Hebron. And we, like David, must often be brought to the end of ourselves, to the grave of our own self-reliance, before we can truly experience the resurrection power of the Greater David, Jesus Christ. He is the king who never wavered, never compromised, and who went into the true grave for us, so that we, by faith in Him, might be delivered from all our fearful wanderings and be seated with Him in His eternal kingdom.