David and his men went up, and made a raid on the Geshurites, and the Girzites, and the Amalekites; for those [nations] were the inhabitants of the land, who were of old, as you go to Shur, even to the land of Egypt.
"The Geshurites ... the Girzites ... and the Amalekites"  (1 Samuel 27:8).  These were the peoples that David raided; and who were they?  They were all in the category of Israel's enemies, having dwelt in the land of Israel `from of old,' thus being among the nations God had devoted, placed under the ban, and ordered their total extermination during the Conquest. David no doubt used that ancient order of God to Joshua regarding the extermination of those peoples to justify his brutal butchery of whole cities among those peoples; and Matthew Henry thought that we can, "Acquit David of this injustice and cruelty because those peoples had been long ago doomed by heaven for destruction."[9]  Maybe so!  But David's constant lying to Achish about what he was actually doing is totally without justification.  "The butchery and deceit here practiced by David are indicative of the desperate situation in which he found himself."[10]