The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero by Joel S. Baden Page A

Saul’s army near the Jezreel valley at Mount Gilboa. This was likely a strategic decision on their part. After decades of fighting on the border between Judah and Philistia in the south, with little to show for it, it would have made good sense to try a new tactic. By moving up the coast and swinging around near the top of the Israelite hill country, the Philistines could attack Saul from a new and unfamiliar direction. The details of the battle are lost to us, but the result is not. The Philistines won decisively and set out in pursuit of Saul and his sons when the rest of the Israelite forces abandoned the field. We may imagine that the royal family had its own private unit of bodyguards, but even these elite forces were unable to withstand the Philistine attack. Saul’s three sons—Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua (the latter two being unknown to us before this point)—were killed, and soon after, Saul was mortally wounded with arrows. According to the biblical account, rather than risk being tortured by the Philistines, Saul asks his arms-bearer to finish him off. The man refuses, so Saul commits suicide. 23 The Israelite inhabitants of the area, seeing the king and his sons dead and the army fleeing, abandoned the area to the Philistines.
    The following day, the Philistines returned to the battlefield to collect the loot that was their due as victors. Even after his death, Saul was unable to avoid the physical abuse he had feared. The Philistines cut off his head, stripped him of his armor, and sent both throughout the Philistine territory as a means of spreading the news of Israel’s defeat. As awful as it sounds, this seems to have been a common method of communication: body parts are also used as wordless messages in the grotesque story of Judges 19–20 (coincidentally set in Saul’s hometown of Gibeah), in which the body of a raped concubine is cut into twelve pieces that are distributed to the Israelite tribes as a call to war. 24 Saul’s body, along with those of his sons, was impaled on the wall of Beth-shean, a town near Mount Gilboa. But the Philistines permitted some Israelites from Jabesh-Gilead, a town across the Jordan from Beth-shean, to come at night and remove the bodies and give them a proper burial, in accordance with Israelite custom: “his corpse must not remain on the stake overnight, but you must bury him the same day, for an impaled body is an affront to God” (Deut. 21:23). 25
     
     
    David’s Involvement
     
    W HERE WAS D AVID DURING all this? After all, he was the Philistine king’s bodyguard, so he should have been in the thick of the battle, alongside Achish. The Bible, naturally, will have none of this. Just as they were mustering to march north, we are told, some of the Philistine officers from cities other than Gath asked Achish who his bodyguard was and who the men with him were—“those Hebrews” (1 Sam. 29:3). When they learn that it is David, they demand that he be sent back to his little fiefdom of Ziklag, for they are sure that he will turn against them in the heat of battle. They even recall the Israelite women’s chant: “Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands” (29:5). Achish relents and asks David to return; David protests; Achish insists; and David and his men turn back south while the Philistines continue north.
    This all seems a bit too fortuitous. David had served Achish for long enough that his credentials should have been well established, even among the rest of the Philistines. It is also difficult to believe that the Philistines would have known about the songs of the Israelite women in praise of David—if such songs were ever really sung. And the back and forth between David and Achish, even as it presents David as almost desperate to fight on the side of the Philistines, serves an important purpose: it tells the reader that even if David had wanted to enter the battle against Saul, he was forcibly forbidden. Again, it is made