1 Samuel 30:11

DAVID DISCOVERED GOD'S ANSWER TO ALL THE QUESTIONS

"They found an Egyptian in the open country, and brought him to David; and they gave him bread, and he ate, they gave him water to drink, and they gave him a piece of a cake of figs and two clusters of raisins. And when he had eaten, his spirit revived; for he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and three nights. And David said to him, `To whom do you belong? And where are you from?' He said, `I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite; and my master left me behind because I fell sick three days ago. We had made a raid upon the Negeb of the Cherethites and upon that which belongs to Judah and upon the Negeb of Caleb; and we burned Ziklag with fire.' And David said to him, `Will you take me down to this band?' And he said, `Swear to me by God that you will not kill me, or deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will take you down to this band.'"

What a providence was this! The Egyptian slave of an Amalekite knew the plans of the marauders, exactly where they would be, because, thinking themselves safely out of the reach of any enemy, they were indulging themselves in some kind of an uninhibited "fiesta," celebrating their supposed "victory" with eating, drinking and celebrating. Such an occasion might have lasted several days.

"My master left me ... because I fell sick three days ago" (1 Samuel 30:13). Here is the Biblical picture of the Amalekites. "To them, a sick slave was of no more importance than a crippled horse."[8] His master left him to die in the desert without even a flask of water to sustain him; it must be that God Himself kept that Egyptian young man alive to be the key instrument in the vengeance of God upon those heartless Amalekites. Here, then, is the reason that God commanded David to move at once upon his return to Ziklag.

As Henry supposed, "That Amalekite, thinking that he should now have servants enough from all those captives from Ziklag, cared nothing at all for his Egyptian slave whom he left to die in a ditch without even a drink of water, while he himself was feasting and drinking"![9]

"We made a raid upon the Negeb of the Cherethites" (1 Samuel 30:14). The other raids mentioned here were upon the territory of Judah; but, here, "The word Cherethites is used as a synonym for the Philistines."[10]

Armed with the marvelous information which this rescued slave gave David, he and his men arrived quickly at the camp of the celebrating Amalekites.