1 But David thought, “Some day Saul will capture me if I stay around here. So the best thing that I can do is to escape and go to the Philistia area. If I do that, Saul will stop searching for me here in Israel, and I will be safe.”

2 So David and his 600 men left Israel and went to see Maoch’s son Achish, who was king of Gath city in the Philistia area. 3 David and his men and their families started to live there in Gath, the city where king Achish lived. David’s two wives were with him—Ahinoam from Jezreel, and Nabal’s widow Abigail, from Carmel. 4 When someone told Saul that David had run away and was living in Gath, he stopped searching for David.

5  One day David said to Achish, “If you are pleased with us, give us a place in one of the small villages where we can stay. There is no need [RHQ] for us to stay in the city where you are the king.”

6  Achish liked what David suggested. So that day Achish gave to David Ziklag town. As a result, Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah since that time.

7 David and his men lived in the Philistia area for 16 months. 8  During that time David and his men raided the people who lived in the areas where the Geshur, Girzi, and Amalek people-groups lived. Those people had lived there a long time. That area extended south from Telam to the Shur Desert and to the border of Egypt. 9 Whenever David’s men attacked them, they killed all the men and women, and they took all the people’s sheep and cattle and donkeys and camels, and even their clothes. Then they would bring those things back home, and David would go to talk to Achish.

10 Each time Achish would ask David, “Where did you go raiding today?” David would lie to him. Sometimes he would reply that they had gone to the southern part of Judah, and sometimes he would say that they had gone to Jerahmeel, or to the area where the Ken people-group lived. 11 David’s men never brought back to Gath any man or woman who was left alive. David thought, “If we do not kill everyone, some of them who are still alive will go and tell Achish the truth about what we really did.” David did that all the time that he and his men lived in the Philistia area. 12 So Achish believed what David told him, and said to himself, “Because of what David has done, his own people, the Israelis, must now hate him very much. So he will have to stay here and serve me forever.”