1 Samuel 30:1 Commentary and Bible Study

Then God does something else. Here is the deep trial that will finally bring him back to the Lord. The problem of David’s backsliding is going to be solved. David has entangled himself with the Philistines. They have rejected him and refused his services, though in good grace, and he travels the fifty miles back to Ziklag. But while David is offering his services to the lords of the Philistine, the Lord allows another Canaanite raiding party to swoop down on David's hometown, where he is a refugee, and take his wives and all the families of his fighting men, and carry them off into captivity. ‘And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south.’ This is not the Philistines who have done this themselves; it is an Amalekites raid. ‘And Ziklag [also they had invaded], and smitten Ziklag and burned it with fire.’ And those six hundred men with David; they arrive and they see a great column of smoke, and the city is smouldering, and the houses are ash, and the people have all been taken, presumably to serve the Amalekites or to be sold on into slavery. They had taken the women captives; they had taken David's two wives; taken the sons and the daughters. It is this tragedy and this judgement upon him and his men that turns him back to the Lord. ‘They had taken the women captives that were therein; they slew not any either great or small, adults or children, but carried them away and went their way.’ In his mercy the Lord had restrained these invaders from murdering the people, and so the situation was recoverable, but all had gone. The tragic circumstances are repeated in the next verse. ‘David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives.’ So there was Ziklag, the town where David and his six hundred men and all their wives and families – the wives, the families, the youngsters, had been left there, it appears pretty much unguarded – and the city was destroyed, and the houses, the stone houses, were blackened, and the roofs burned with fire. It was nothing but ash and cinder and smoke rising, smouldering; and the families had gone. There was no sign of executions. They had just been carried away either to be sold into slavery or used as slaves by the Amalekites, who had carried out this invasion.