Material Culture and Making Visible: On the Portrayal of Philistine Gath in the Book of Samuel

Gath and the Highlands: A View from the Archaeological Record

Philistine Gath is located at the modern site of Tell es-Safi on the southern bank of the Wadi Elah, roughly 45 km southwest of Jerusalem on the edge of where the Shephelah meets the coastal plain. ¹² In antiquity, Gath's position afforded it anumber of advantages. In terms of transit and trade, Tell es-Safi occupied a key post on the local east–west route that passed through the Elah Valley, a corridor whose significance resided in its capacity to allow traffic to move between Mediterranean ports, through Gath, and into the Judean Hills and the Central Benjamin Plateau. ¹³ In addition to geography, Tell es-Safi also benefitted from its location within an alluvial basin that, when coupled with the rainfall that fell, on average, within its environs, allowed for intensive agricultural activity in its hinterland. ¹⁴ Given these conditions, a primary reason for the Philistine settlement that arose at Gath during the beginning of the early Iron Age was likely the area's substantial agrarian resources. ¹⁵ Perched atop an isolated hill and guarded by steep cliffs on its north and western flank, factors connected to defense, agriculture, and commerce coalesced at Tell es-Safi in a manner that granted the location ‘all the natural advantages of a great city.' ¹⁶

With regard to the material culture of this location and its broader relationship to the Iron Age highland polities of Israel and Judah, we start with a bare fact: to date, there is no evidence for any instances of hostility between Gath and highland communities to its east during the early Iron Age period. Of course, malice, enmity, or resentments do not necessarily leave behind material markers in the archaeological record. But it is nevertheless striking that for a period of around three centuries we find no clear evidence that forces from Gath ever attacked or destroyed a single location within the neighboring regions of Israel or Judah or, conversely, that it was attacked by individuals from these areas during this time. ¹⁷

In fact, the evidence that is available suggests nearly the opposite. Two features of the material record on this point stand out. First, the city of Gath grows and reaches its apogee—in terms of size, population, and prosperity ¹⁸ —during the same general timeframe (Iron IIA; c. 970 BCE–830 BCE) in which the nascent Iron Age polities of Israel and Judah also begin to establish themselves in the highlands. Gath did not appear to leverage its strategic location and considerable resources, in other words, to inhibit or destroy the emerging polities that were adjacent to it on its eastern border during this time. Where decline is evident in the region, however, is within Philistia itself and those Philistine centers to the north and west of Gath's kingdom. Ashkelon ¹⁹ and, perhaps, Ashdod, ²⁰ appear to be in a state of decline at the beginning of the tenth century BCE and the nearby Philistine city of Ekron is destroyed during this period, ²¹ with a number of smaller sites in Philistia also being abandoned. ²² Why Gath thrived as it did when other parts of Philistia languished is unknown, but Ekron's sudden collapse and the decline of other parts of Philistia in the tenth century BCE give credence to the view that Gath may have expanded its influence at the expense of other Philistine centers. ²³ At the very least, there are few archaeological reasons to maintain that Philistine polities in the southern Levant always worked in concert and in one another's best interest. ²⁴

Second, a number of important Judahite locations situated near the border of the Gittite realm are built during this era. In the late tenth/early ninth century BCE the border settlement at Beth-Shemesh, for example, is purposely reconfigured as a large Judahite administrative center, replete with newly constructed fortifications, a water reservoir, and large public buildings. ²⁵ Even more startlingly, the settlement at Lachish, once a substantial Late Bronze Age Canaanite city-state and natural rival to Gath in the Shephelah region because of its close proximity (a short 15 km away), is nevertheless also rebuilt and refortified as a prominent Judahite ‘military city’ (Level IV) sometime in the early ninth century BCE. ²⁶ The result of the massive reconstruction efforts at Lachish was that ‘two of the most important cities in the southern part of the country existed and flourished side by side’. ²⁷ Indeed, the development of Lachish by the kingdom of Judah leads N. Na'aman to go so far as to suggest that ‘throughout the late tenth–ninth centuries BCE, peaceful relations existed between Judah and Gath’ and that the re-founding of Lachish likely ‘resulted from an agreement between the two kingdoms’. ²⁸

Alongside of the apparent lack of animosity between Gath and the neighboring highland polities, other considerations drawn from the material record suggest a more benign relationship between these regions. One factor is the population once enclosed within Gath's walls. Like other Philistine sites in the southern Levant, the material culture recovered from Gath produced finds from groups who had migrated into Canaan from the Aegean and other locations situated within the eastern Mediterranean region. ²⁹ Yet in addition to the appearance of these well-known Philistine traits in the archaeological record (i.e., distinctive pottery, food preferences, architecture, cultic paraphernalia, etc.), there also remained pronounced local features within Gath's early Iron Age material assemblage connected to cultures native to the southern Levant. ³⁰ In part, the heterogeneous population that arose at Gath during this time may have been the outcome of settlement patterns that took hold within Gath's environs once Philistine peoples began to settle at the site. Whereas in the Late Bronze Age the Shephelah region was comprised of approximately 24 sites that ranged from large to middle-sized settlements with corresponding rural hinterlands, this number fell considerably, as A. Faust details, to a total of six settlements in the Iron I period. ³¹ In the area surrounding Gath itself, survey results indicate that its environs were almost entirely empty of towns or small villages. ³² Nevertheless, the overall population of the Shephelah remained relatively stable due to the expansion of principal cities within it, including Gath, which suggests that those who once lived in the countryside now resided in the expanding Philistine centers. ³³ The result of this settlement process was the creation of larger urban domains, such as Gath, that housed a disparate collection of individuals from both Philistine and non-Philistine backgrounds and whose distinct identities and cultural interactions are manifest in Gath's archaeological record. ³⁴

Such cultural interactions were not however restricted to the precincts of Gath itself. The idea that an amicable, or at least nonbelligerent, relationship developed between Gath and the highlands during the early Iron Age receives further support from the material culture recovered within Gath that originated from elsewhere. I. Shai, for example, has drawn attention to the presence of pre-LMLK storage jars within Gath's Stratum A3 layer, ³⁵ indicating that the city was actively involved in importing goods from its eastern highland neighbors during the Iron IIA period. ³⁶ In addition, A. Maeir and E. Eshel have recently published an inscribed vessel, made of clay from the Jerusalem region, that was recovered from an Iron IIA temple in Gath and which may have been involved in cultic activity. ³⁷ A common script tradition (linear, alphabetic writing in an Early Alphabetic script), in fact, was shared between early Iron Age locations in the Shephelah and highland regions, including epigraphs recovered from Gath and those unearthed at Beth-Shemesh and, further northeast, in Jerusalem, among other locations. ³⁸ The much-documented trend of particular Philistine cultural markers slowly disappearing through the adoption of local customs at Philistine sites would also attest, from this perspective, to the influence of native, southern Levantine culture and cultural traditions on populations descended from those who had once migrated to this region from elsewhere. ³⁹

The flow of economic and cultural exchange also proceeded in the other, eastern direction. The adoption of Philistine wares at sites in the eastern Shephelah ⁴⁰ and the presence of Philistine cooking vessels at various highland locales indicate that Philistine ceramics were appropriated in regions to Gath's east, perhaps as material markers used to signal elite status or alliance with Philistine communities, but also through practices such as intermarriage. ⁴¹ In Jerusalem, the abundant amount of Nile Perch (and certain Mediterranean fish species) found in its early Iron Age layers suggests that the highland center was actively involved in commerce that would have often flowed through Gath to the Mediterranean coast. ⁴² Figurines recently recovered from the Iron II temple at Tel Moza just outside of Jerusalem further attest to cultural interactions between Philistine and highland populations, as these figurines recall forms found among Philistine counterparts and were likely influenced by Philistine exemplars. ⁴³ And the ‘quite surprising’ ceramic evidence of Late Philistine Decorated Ware (LPDW) recently found in and around Jerusalem offer additional traces of Iron Age material culture in the highlands that had its origins in Philistia. ⁴⁴ The growing body of archaeological evidence pertaining to the multidirectional interactions and exchange between Gath and the highlands, including other instances, ⁴⁵ indicates that if the early Iron Age period witnessed forms of boundary maintenance between Gittite and highland peoples, ⁴⁶ it was nevertheless also an era of ‘ongoing interactions of a non-confrontational character between these cultures’. ⁴⁷

What comes to light through this brief overview are three considerations that are meaningful for how we approach the narrative world of the book of Samuel and its representation of Philistine Gath in what follows. First, Gath was a large, thriving city that housed a diverse population of individuals from various cultural backgrounds during the time in which the stories surrounding David in the book of Samuel are set (late Iron I/early Iron IIA period). Second, we find little evidence of hostility between Gath and the highland communities to its east during this era. Rather, if one were to search for potential hostilities, one would be better led north and westward from Gath toward the Philistine site of Ekron and other settlements in Philistia that appear to have been in a state of decline. Locations in the highlands, by contrast, continue their slow growth and development during the same period in which Gath also flourishes. And, lastly, one finds numerous instances of ‘non-confrontational’ cultural interactions and exchange between Gath and highland communities to its east throughout the period in which stories about David unfold.

Gath and the Highlands: A View from the Book of Samuel

References to Gath within the book of Samuel are the most frequent of any Philistine location named within these writings. When these texts were composed and the identity of those who fashioned them are, however, matters of long-standing debate that, given the evidence currently at hand, garner few instances of consensus. ⁴⁸ But what is known is that the scribes who wrote and revised the stories now found in Samuel did not identify themselves as Philistine and that the documents they produced were not contemporaneous, eye-witness accounts of the events they described. However the book of Samuel came to be, it was the end result of several Hebrew scribal hands working over the course of a number of generations who drew on and further developed the written and oral source material at their disposal. ⁴⁹

Such factors behind the shaping of Samuel make the allusions to Gath only more fascinating. ⁵⁰ Depicted as a location comprised of both Canaanite and Philistine peoples in other biblical works (Num. 13.22, Deut. 9.2, Josh. 11.21-22; 13.2-3), Gath is included among a ‘pentapolis’ of Philistine city-states early in the book of Samuel and its extended account of the loss of the ark of Yhwh to Philistine lands (1 Sam. 4.1–7.1). ⁵¹ What becomes clear in these initial references to Gath, accordingly, is that the location was not affiliated with any Israelite tribal group or polity, either politically or culturally. Rather, in Samuel the site of Gath is situated near Ekron along the eastern edge of Philistine holdings (1 Sam. 6.17; 7.12; 17.52) and beyond the periphery of highland tribal populations, ⁵² a settlement whose inhabitants are quintessentially ‘Other’ than whom the biblical scribes consider their audience to be. ⁵³

Themes of foreignness pertaining to the city of Gath in these writings are bound up with matters of conflict as the narrative of Samuel unfolds. Within the skirmishes between Philistine and highland forces individuals from Gath often play a prominent role, perhaps because the location, alongside Ekron, abutted Israelite and Judahite lands and formed a border with them. Most famous of these battles is the one that transpires between David and Goliath in the Elah Valley not far from where Gath was located (1 Sam. 17), though the difficult compositional history of this text and allusions to Goliath's demise elsewhere (2 Sam. 21.19) suggest, as many have argued, that David's role in this affair may have been a belated addition to a prior tradition. ⁵⁴

More important for our purposes here, however, is Goliath's connection to the city of Gath, thus numbering this fighter among other Gittites cited in Samuel for their martial prowess. In a series of anecdotes written into one of the final chapters of this work (2 Sam. 21.15–21), for example, reference is made to four different Gittite warriors, Goliath included, who are termed ‭הפרה ידילי‬, or ‘the descendants of the Raphah’ (2 Sam. 21.16). A common reading of this expression is to connect these Philistine champions with a race of giants referred to earlier in the biblical writings, the Rephaim (Gen. 14.5; 15.20; Deut. 2.10–11; 3.11), ⁵⁵ an interpretation buttressed by the impressive physical form of the four warriors described in this passage. But as a number of studies have argued, the term ‘descendant’ (‭דילי‬) in this account could also mean ‘devotee’, derived from the sense of someone adopted into or enslaved to a particular group. ⁵⁶ This interpretation for the Philistine champions finds some support from West Semitic traditions recovered from Ugarit, in which the Rephaim were represented as a collection of deceased, divinized warriors (e.g., KTU 1.17.I–II; 1.20–22; 1.108; 1.161). ⁵⁷ In light of such references, the Philistine fighters connected to the Raphah in 2 Samuel 21 could be understood as those consecrated into a similar warrior cult of the divinized dead that, in this instance, was once centered in Gath according to the biblical writers (so the ‘Raphah-in-Gath’ of 2 Sam. 21.22). ⁵⁸

Though it is maintained that the Philistines were routed at the battle of the Elah Valley and defeated at other moments by David's fighters (1 Sam. 17.53;2 Sam. 21.15-21), it is Philistine factions, often with Gath at its center, who prove the aggressor in these early stories of conflict. Battles that take place at Ebenezer (1 Sam. 4), Mizpah (1 Sam. 7), Michmash (1 Sam. 13–14), Socoh and Azekah (1 Sam. 17), Keilah (1 Sam. 23.1-5), or Gilboa (1 Sam. 31) are conspicuous for their geographical pattern, with all activity being situated to the east of Gath in regions that will, in time, become home to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. When highland groups are effective in resisting Philistine advances, the latter are pursued as far as ‘Gath and Ekron’ but no further (1 Sam. 7.14; 17.52). Memories of the technological superiority of the Philistines (1 Sam. 13.19–22) are thus substantiated throughout these narratives in Samuel by memories of Philistine military superiority, ⁵⁹ including the presence of Philistine garrisons in Geba (1 Sam. 13.3) and Bethlehem (2 Sam. 23.14) that were stationed in the very heart of where the biblical writers situate Benjaminite and Judahite tribal lands.

Specific references to Gath become more pronounced, however, once the book of Samuel focuses its narrative energy on the story of David's rise to the throne. Previously cast in battle against Gittite combatants, it is recounted that David turns to the city of Gath during a moment of distress when he flees Saul's court in Gibeah (1 Sam. 21.10). Why David is drawn westward to this Philistine center is never explained by the storyteller, a silence that leaves David's motivations a matter of speculation—all the more so since David soon retreats south to the stronghold of Adullam and then east to the land of Moab (1 Sam. 22.1-3). The decision to enter into Gath is also striking considering David's reputation in battle against Philistine opponents (1 Sam. 18.7; 21.11; 29.5).

But the turn to Gath commences an association that will often benefit David within the remainder of the stories told in Samuel, even if the circumstances surrounding this alliance, as with so many of David's dealings in this literary work, are shrouded in ambiguity. The first reported encounter between David and Gath, in fact, indicates little of the value the location will provide David in the years to come. Accused of being a Philistine assailant and accorded the title ‘king of the land’ by Achish's advisors, David soon fears for his life and feigns madness before the city's gate in orderto orchestrate his escape (1 Sam. 21.14). The ploy is successful and David moves east to Adullam, gathering to him a band of discontents in a manner that closely resembles the stratagems undertaken by Apiru leaders of the region in the centuries before (1 Sam 22.1-2). ⁶⁰

David's second encounter with Gath in 1 Samuel 27 is, however, of an entirely different character and part of a different, likely earlier collection of traditions about David's rise to the throne than those present in 1 Samuel 21. ⁶¹ In this chapter David again comes before the city of Gath, but at this moment with six hundred of his fighters in tow (1 Sam 27.2). Within this episode David receives little of the resistance he is said to have received from Gath's inhabitants before. Achish promptly offers refuge to David, his family, and his fighters within the confines of the location (1 Sam. 27.3). After some time, David asks leave of the ‘royal city’ of Gath (1 Sam. 27.5) and is granted the site of Ziklag to command, an outpost located somewhere along the southern reaches of Gath's domain near the Negev.

At the Gittite stronghold of Ziklag, David and his fighters engage in raids that target desert tribes inimical to highland populations while offering protection to peoples in the region of Hebron and its south. Achish is told the opposite, and, appearing to know nothing of the ruse, requests that David and his fighters join him in battle against Saul and Israelite forces (1 Sam. 28.1). However, the decision to station David nearby as a bodyguard during the conflict suggests some hesitation with regard to Achish's assessment of the loyalty of his vassal (1 Sam. 28.1-2). And David's response to Achish's appeal—‘Very well, you will know what your servant can do’ (1 Sam. 28.2)—is also rich in ambiguity, resisting confident readings that would find in this statement a clear indication of David's loyalty to Saul and betrayal of Achish, or the reverse. But what is clear is that throughout this narrative episode both David and Achish benefit from David's activities at Ziklag ⁶² where the region is rid of forces hostile to both Philistine and highland populations, and that when we return to this scene after a brief interruption we find David and his men marching alongside of Achish's forces near Aphek. Achish's last recorded words to David in the book of Samuel—‘you have done well before me’ (1 Sam. 29.10) ⁶³ —need not be read, then, as the statements of a mistaken or befuddled ruler.

The connection between David and the city of Gath in the book of Samuel is not restricted to its ruler alone. In 2 Samuel 6 a story is told of how David transferred the ark of Yhwh from the town of Baale-Judah (Kiriath-Yearim), located on the western border of his realm, to Jerusalem. On the way trouble ensues and David abandons the war palladium before entering the city. Fascinating about the decision to do so with our concerns in mind, however, is that David stations the ark in the household of one who, of all the possible residences presumably available, is a Gittite—namely, Obed-Edom (2 Sam. 6.10). ⁶⁴ The ark resides within the home of Obed-Edom somewhere near Jerusalem for three months until the abundance of blessings bestowed on the house's owner inclines David to retrieve the ark once more and install it in his royal center. In later tellings, Obed-Edom and his descendants come to be identified among the Levites (1 Chron. 15–16, 26).

In 2 Samuel 15 another native of Gath plays a pivotal role in the story of David's life. This individual, Ittai, is the leader of a force comprised of Gittite soldiers who had formerly joined David in Jerusalem. Within the narratives devoted to Absalom's coup, Ittai emerges as a follower deeply loyal to David, undaunted by the rebellion against David and disinclined to return to Gath once Absalom had descended on the capital (2 Sam. 15.21-22). In the decisive battle of the Ephraim Forest where Absalom is defeated and David is restored to the throne (2 Sam. 18), it is Ittai, furthermore, who functions as one of three commanders of David's forces (2 Sam. 18.2), ostensibly overseeing the Gittite warriors who support David in the conflict. W. Dietrich observes that an ‘eerie analogy’ thus emerges in the traditions surrounding David and the city of Gath within these scenes: where once David worked alongside Gath to defeat the House of Saul and the Israelites who fought on its behalf, now certain inhabitants of Gath assist David's defeat of Absalom and the Israelites who sought to make Absalom king. ⁶⁵ A partnership between Jerusalem and Gath is hinted at once more in the moments after David's death when Shimei, scion of the House of Saul, moves freely back and forth between Gath and Jerusalem in an episode that allows Solomon to rid himself of one more Saulide descendant in a form of entrapment likely supported by leaders in Gath (1 Kgs 2.39-41).

Such references to Gath and Gittite individuals are distinct, then, from the more general depiction of Philistine groups within the book of Samuel. On the one hand, Gath is differentiated from other Philistine city-states as being of an elevated political status, with Achish named ‘king’ (1 Sam. 21.10; 27.2) in contrast to the title of seren accorded to other Philistine leaders during this time (so 1 Sam. 5.8, 11; 6.4, 12, 16, 18; 29.2, 6, 7). ⁶⁶ Gath's import is also hinted at indirectly in these narratives through the martial capabilities exclusive to its warriors, whether in the famous figure of Goliath, Ittai and his fellow fighters stationed in Jerusalem, or the ‘descendants of the Raphah’ referred to in the final collection of anecdotes that conclude Samuel's narrative. Moreover, Gath's significance is intimated by the territory it controls within these stories, with boundaries extending, at least in certain moments of Samuel, from the eastern Shephelah to holdings in the far south along the Negev where Ziklag resides. Never does this Gittite territory come under Israelite/Judahite control in the stories surrounding David's rise to throne, nor during the years when David rules from Jerusalem and extends his dominion from ‘Dan to Beersheba’ (2 Sam. 24.2).

Gath's role in the story of David's rise is also conspicuous. Even if David meets initial resistance from Achish's advisors (1 Sam 21.11) and is not always forthcoming with his overlord (1 Sam. 27.10-12), Gath is nevertheless portrayed throughout these stories as a necessary refuge (1 Sam. 27.1-4), a patron (1 Sam. 27.9–28.2), and a vital component of Philistine forces that will occasion the deaths of central figures within the House of Saul (1 Sam. 31), thereby setting the stage for David's emergence as leader of the highland regions. David places the great war palladium of the highlands in the home of a Gittite after trouble strikes (2 Sam. 6.10), and at the moment when David's kingship encounters its greatest crisis it is once again Gittite fighters, housed in Jerusalem during this period (2 Sam. 15.18-22), who prove to be decisive in David's victory over Absalom and those loyal to the prince. One key to unraveling the ciphered character of David in the book of Samuel appears to reside, then, in the city of Gath, with David's political fortunes often contingent upon those from this Philistine center. ⁶⁷

Material Culture and Making Visible: On Samuel's Portrayal of Gath, Once More

Among readings of Samuel, the dominant interpretation of Gath is that of a site marked by animosity, hostile and disruptive to the characters who stand at the center of Samuel's story. Finkelstein and Silberman, for example, remark that the ‘Philistine city of Gath was a powerful, aggressive threat to the people of the highlands; its ruler, Achish, was a deadly enemy’, ⁶⁸ and many others have offered similar readings, deeming Gath an ‘archenemy' ⁶⁹ to the highland kingdoms and Achish an ‘enemy king who harbours renegade vassals and runaway slaves’. ⁷⁰ Gath's realm is ‘enemy territory' ⁷¹ for the biblical writers and one divided from Israelite and Judahite holdings through Samuel's ‘sharp ethnic separation’ of Gittite and highland peoples. ⁷² Because of the book of Samuel's ideological commitments, it is argued, the Philistines, including those of Gath, are rendered by the biblical writers as ‘evil’ and as ‘strangers’ who are ‘nasty and greedy’. ⁷³

Specific individuals from Gath are also suspect. If the Gittite Obed-Edom, the worshipper of a ‘strange god’, accepts the ark in his home, he could not have done so of his own free will. ⁷⁴ If Ittai the Gittite is so loyal to David in Jerusalem, it must be because he was forced out of Gath and could not return to his home city, ⁷⁵ —an outcome perhaps precipitated by David's deception of Achish, a ‘clumsy' ⁷⁶ and ‘foolish' ⁷⁷ ruler who ‘brings disaster on his people’ when David ‘decimates the Philistine population behind his back’. ⁷⁸ Some have argued that David's coronation as king in the highlands is an act of rebellion against his overlord in Gath and, ⁷⁹ though no explicit mention is made of it, it is asserted further that the narratives of Samuel insinuate that David must have eventually conquered Gath and subdued it as he extended his kingdom westward from the Judean Hills. ⁸⁰ Archaeologists, too, have offered similar interpretations at moments of David's putative aggression toward Gath and other conquests in Philistia based, at least in part, on their readings of this biblical book. ⁸¹

The recent remains recovered from Tell es-Safi nevertheless caution against such one-sided assessments of Gath's status in the book of Samuel. Instead, what the material culture recovered from this location contributes is another vantage point by which to read these accounts, refraining how we view the depiction of Gath by focalizing those narrative moments when relationships between Gittite and highland individuals are something other than contentious. To be sure, images of animosity between Philistine and highland peoples, Gath included, are embedded throughout the book of Samuel, especially in the stories of conflict between Philistine forces, the House of Eli, and, later, the House of Saul. Interpreters are certainly right, then, to call attention to these depictions and, even more, to ask what possible circumstances led the biblical writers to portray such moments of contact between highland and Philistine peoples as they did.

But what has been much less commented on within readings of Samuel are the images of coordination and even alliance between highlanders and Gittites that are also found in these writings. And it is here that the instances of amiable exchange and cultural interactions between these neighboring communities, manifest in the archaeological record, help draw our attention to depictions within Samuel that are also suggestive of more hospitable associations. An awareness of ceramic traditions that passed between Gath and highland sites in the early Iron Age, the occasions of shared cultic items and practices between these communities, their common writing system, the evidence of inter-regional trade—such material traces from the early Iron Age period encourage us as readers to return to the descriptions of contact between Gittite and highland individuals within the book of Samuel and reassess how we understand these referential claims.

When doing so, a number of allusions to Gath in Samuel find some resonances with the more congenial Gittite/highland relationships also hinted at in the archaeological record. David's stay in Gath with his family and his fighters (1 Sam. 27.3) or, conversely, Obed-Edom and Ittai's residences near Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6.10-12; 15.19-22), are in keeping, for example, with what was a common phenomenon throughout the Iron Age period—namely, numerous occasions of shared localities and communal spaces between individuals descended from highland districts and those native to Gath's domain in the Shephelah. Scenes of highland peoples dwelling in Gath's confines or Gittites in Jerusalem are sensible imaginings, then, with regard to those who would have lived in these places in the Iron Age given the material remains left behind of populations who resided at these sites. The absence of material evidence that would indicate outright hostility between Gath and highland communities, furthermore, makes it reasonable to infer that Gittites and highlanders could coexist and likely did so for centuries, and that the writers of Samuel were not unaware of such circumstances.

That Gath features so prominently within Samuel when compared to other Philistine locations also comports to what has come to light through Gath's material remains. A dominating presence in the southern Levant for centuries during the early Iron Age, more than twice the size of any Israelite or Judahite settlement from this time and positioned on key transit routes that led into the highlands from the coastal plain, the sheer monumentality of Gath, both before its destruction in the late ninth century BCE and afterward in the ruins left behind, would have left a lasting impression on those who lived in Israel and Judah. ⁸² An understanding of the scale and tactical advantages of Gath thus shapes how we might understand David's decision to flee westward to this location over against other possibilities while evading Saul (1 Sam. 21; 27–28). The special status accorded to Gath in these narrative episodes makes some sense, in other words, in light of the impressive material remains recovered from Tell es-Safi, including its massive early Iron Age gate complex and extensive fortifications that included even its large lower city. ⁸³ Of all the potential locations the biblical writers could have placed David in his flight from Saul, Gath was the one site in the southern Levant that could be imagined to have offered the most protection and the most opportunities.

What also comes to the fore through this manner of reading is the characterization of Achish within Samuel. The narrative space accorded to Achish in this work and the manner in which he is differentiated from other Philistine leaders squares well, for example, with what is known about Gath's political fortunes in the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, when it flourished as other Philistine locations declined. ⁸⁴ The ‘exceptional’ character of Gath's material culture in the Iron IIA period, ⁸⁵ its capacity to withstand changes that affected most other Philistine locations and territories at this time, is a peculiarity of the settlement that is also registered from a literary perspective in stories that find David drawn to this site and its leader above all others. And though David may have deceived Achish as he sought to survive as an outlaw in the desert south (1 Sam. 27.8-12), this duplicity is somewhat tempered given that David's actions never have a deleterious effect on any part of Achish's kingdom, nor does David ever seek to assail Gath's realm once newly enthroned (2 Sam. 2.4).

Rather, one could argue that David's coronation works to Gath's benefit within these stories. ⁸⁶ The initial battles David wages after being crowned by Judah's elders at Hebron are, in fact, those directed against the House of Saul (2 Sam. 2–4), including skirmishes with Benjaminites near the border of Gath (2 Sam. 2.12-28) that would have profited the Gittite realm. And, though battles with Philistine forces are said to have taken place near Jerusalem in the Valley of Rephaim after David's conquest of the city (2 Sam. 5.17-25), such traditions are widely understood to be chronologically displaced (cf. 2 Sam. 23.13) and, ⁸⁷ furthermore, no Gittites are mentioned within these struggles. Instead, in every instance when Gath or Gittite residents are referred to explicitly in Samuel after David's capture of Jerusalem, such characters are always portrayed in a supportive role, not unlike those brief moments in the Amarna Letters of the Late Bronze Age when Gittite and Jerusalemite leaders chose to work in concert with one another rather than in conflict. ⁸⁸

What becomes evident through readings of Samuel framed by Gath's archaeological remains, consequently, is how this location is set apart from other Philistine centers referred to in this literary work, demarcated not only in its depiction of Achish (1 Sam. 21.10) but also in the episodes of disagreements that emerge between Gath's ruler and other Philistine leaders (1 Sam. 29.4-10) that are rooted in Achish's confidence in David. The destruction of Ekron to Gath's north when David is said to have emerged as a highland leader in these stories, moreover, and the eventual construction of prominent Judahite centers on Gath's border in the decades afterward, ⁸⁹ would again take on some interpretive significance for how we read both the tension expressed in Samuel between Philistine leaders but also the absence of similar tensions between Gath and Jerusalem within these same texts. From this perspective, it is again significant that no act of aggression is undertaken against Gath once David comes to power; instead, the House of David retains crown property within Gath's realm (1 Sam. 27.6) and, after David's death, old agreements appear to persist between the two kingdoms (1 Kgs 2.36-44).

Such observations are not meant to belie the moments of opposition that do arise between Philistine and highland groups in Samuel, including Gath itself (e.g. 1 Sam. 5.8-9; 17.14; 27.12–28.2), nor are they made to discount the archaeological evidence of boundary maintenance between Philistine and non-Philistine populations during the Iron Age period. But when surveying the material remains of an Iron Age world with which the scribes of Samuel were familiar, ⁹⁰ we are offered a perspective of the claims embedded in these texts that balances out interpretations of Gath which have long concentrated chiefly on themes of animus and otherness. What comes to light through this interpretive approach, then, is an appreciation of the textured, multifaceted portrayal of Gath in Samuel that was likely influenced by what were often unsettled but also intimate relationships between communities who lived alongside one another for centuries. ⁹¹

In addition to the scenes surrounding Abraham and Sarah's stay in Abimelech's realm (Gen. 20–21), Samson's ambivalent relationship with various Philistine characters (Judg. 13–16), ⁹² or references to ‘Hebrews’ siding with Philistine forces (1 Sam. 14.21), the portrayal of Gath in the book of Samuel also suggests a more tentative depiction, then, of the relationship between this neighboring kingdom and those highland populations to its east. Separated from the composition of Samuel by a vast distance of time and culture, our entry into the narrative world it unfolds is hampered by how little access we have to the ancient contexts in which these writings were created and the lives of those who wrote them. ⁹³ But reading these texts with an eye toward the material frameworks that surrounded their production helps to enflesh and thicken their portrayals, making visible certain details of their stories that could be overlooked or disregarded without an awareness of these broader archaeological finds.