David struck the land, and saved no man or woman alive, and took away the sheep, the cattle, the donkeys, the camels, and the clothing. Then he returned, and came to Achish.
World English Bible
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
Show this verse in
Show this verse in
Showing
WEB World English Bible Public Domain ✓
David struck the land, and saved no man or woman alive, and took away the sheep, the cattle, the donkeys, the camels, and the clothing. Then he returned, and came to Achish.
World English Bible
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
1 Samuel 15:7-8 says Saul utterly destroyed all the Amalekites with the edge of the sword. The same chapter lets Agag's mother survive (15:33), David is still slaughtering Amalekites years later in 1 Samuel 27:8 and 30:1-17 (with 400 escaping), and an Amalekite kills Saul in 2 Samuel 1:8-10.
Critical scholarship: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction.
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"1 Samuel 27:9 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/1-samuel/27/9?version=WEB (retrieved 27 August 2026).