David on the Desert Fringe

This chapter’s investigation centers on two incidents related in the Book of Samuel about David’s days spent on the southern desert fringe of the Levant as an outlaw on the run from Saul: the first, surrounding David’s leadership over the Philistine outpost of Ziklag (1 Sam. 27:1–28:2); the second, of David’s distribution of gifts to the elders of Judah stationed at different Judahite sites in Hebron and to Hebron’s south (1 Sam. 30:26–31). In comparing these stories to the archaeological evidence we now possess about these locations, what results, it is argued, are insights into a past alloyed with references to different eras and geographies. Such entanglements of remembering arose, it is contended further, because the sources on which the biblical scribes relied were shaped by memories reflective of a changing landscape and varied political interests during the Iron Age period.