The Philistine Campaign: 27:1 David’s lack of trust in Saul’s profession of sorrow and promise to cease harming David is made explicit. David assumes that Saul will try again and may eventually succeed in destroying him; he may envisage this destruction coming not through any military prowess on Saul’s part but by David or his men being unable to resist another temptation to act against Saul. The destruction would then come not through death but through the kind of guilt that would destroy David’s reign as certainly as it had destroyed Saul’s.

To avoid this possibility David takes the dubious route of emigration into Philistine territory. He rightly predicts that Saul will not follow him there (v. 4). Saul may even think that since David has fled the country he has given up any chance to re…