David said to Achish, If now I have found favor in your eyes, let them give me a place in one of the cities in the country, that I may dwell there: for why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?
"The number of days that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months"  (1 Samuel 27:7).  This is a mistranslation, representing some "scholarly guess" instead of what the Hebrew text says. Dummelow wrote that, "The Hebrew text here is literally, `days and four months,'"[7] thus being no definite statement whatever of the time David was with the Philistines.  The RSV (the version we are following) guessed the time as a year and four months; but the Septuagint (LXX) guessed it as only four months; and according to H. P. Smith, both versions missed it, being far "Too short in the light of Achish's own statement in  1 Samuel 29:3."[8]