1 Samuel 27:1

²⁷Why do you say, Jacob, and speak, Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and the justice due me is disregarded by my God”? ²⁸Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His understanding is unsearchable. ²⁹He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might. ³⁰Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall; ³¹but those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.

¹⁰David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath. ¹¹The servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David the king of the land? Didn’t they sing to one another about him in dances, saying, ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”

¹²David laid up these words in his heart, and was very afraid of Achish the king of Gath. ¹³He changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands, and scribbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard. ¹⁴Then Achish said to his servants, “Look, you see the man is insane. Why then have you brought him to me? ¹⁵Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Should this fellow come into my house?”

¹⁷He said to him, “Don’t be afraid, for the hand of Saul my father won’t find you; and you will be king over Israel, and I will be next to you; and Saul my father knows that also.”

¹³Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the middle of his brothers. Then the LORD’s Spirit came mightily on David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

¹⁵For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, “You will be saved in returning and rest. Your strength will be in quietness and in confidence.” You refused, ¹⁶but you said, “No, for we will flee on horses;” therefore you will flee; and, “We will ride on the swift;” therefore those who pursue you will be swift.

¹²“I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you, that you are afraid of man who shall die, and of the son of man who will be made as grass?

¹In those days, the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. Achish said to David, “Know assuredly that you will go out with me in the army, you and your men.”

²David said to Achish, “Therefore you will know what your servant can do.” Achish said to David, “Therefore I will make you my bodyguard forever.”

¹⁰Achish said, “Against whom have you made a raid today?” David said, “Against the South of Judah, against the South of the Jerahmeelites, and against the South of the Kenites.”

¹¹David saved neither man nor woman alive to bring them to Gath, saying, “Lest they should tell about us, saying, ‘David did this, and this has been his way all the time he has lived in the country of the Philistines.’”

¹The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided a king for myself among his sons.”

¹²Isn’t this the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”