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Rise” is unlikely to have been put into writing less than two hundred years after David’s time. Is it possible that the narrative was composed at that time and that the general settlement patterns and population distribution described in the story of David’s rise reflect the situation at the time of writing —and have no real connection to the situation in the tenth century BCE ?
    The answer is no. The geographical background behind the earliest David stories simply does not fit the eighth century BCE , when Judah was a fully developed monarchy with the apparatus of literary production and the need for a national history. First and foremost, in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE , the fringe areas of Judah where David is described as fleeing from Saul and conducting his raids and bandit activities were densely settled; they could hardly have been chosen as an appropriate setting for free movement and daring escapes. The area south of Hebron was filled with large villages in easy reach of the central authority in Jerusalem. Even farther south, in the arid zone of the Negev and the Beer-sheba Valley, where David reportedly conducted lightning raids against the neighboring desert peoples (1 Samuel 27:10), a dense network of walled towns, forts, and villages protected the southern borders of the kingdom and offered security for the caravan trade.
    As archaeological surveys have shown, this area had begun to be developed as early as the ninth century BCE . Two Judahite forts—at Beer-sheba and Arad—were established in the Beer-sheba Valley to control the roads from Hebron to the desert regions to the south. It was in this period that the Shephelah also came under centralized royal control. Excavations at two important Judahite sites in this region—Lachish and Beth-shemesh—show significant building activities in the ninth century, when they became the most important administrative centers for Judahite rule in the west. It is significant that none of these places is mentioned in the cycle of David stories, not even as a geographical aside.
    Thus the description of a “wild south”—of lawlessness and banditry in the fringe areas of Judah, so central to the David story—does not fit the situation in the earliest possible period when “The History of David’s Rise” was put into writing. A scribe who lived in Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE (or later) would not have described such a reality and had no reason to invent it. In fact, there is another important clue that takes us back another century and a half, suggesting that the story must have originated even before the end of the ninth century BCE —only a few generations after David’s time.
    That clue is the prominence of the Philistine city of Gath in the David stories. It is there that David twice seeks refuge from Saul’s vengeance; and its king, Achish, is described as a powerful ruler, controlling territories and villages well beyond his city. The central role that Achish plays in the gathering of the Philistine forces before the climactic battle with Saul (1 Samuel 29) suggests a prominent role for Gath in a wider coalition, described in the Bible, of five Philistine cities that extended up the coast, which also included Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron. That coalition appears in some other accounts of the Philistines in the Bible, such as Joshua 13:3 and 1 Samuel 6:17, which refer to the political organization of the five Philistine cities. Interestingly, in late monarchic and exilic texts (those parts of the Bible written in the late seventh and sixth century BCE ), such as Jeremiah 25:20 and Zephaniah 2:4, only four Philistine cities are mentioned, and Gath is left off the list. Likewise, seventh century Assyrian royal records refer only to Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron in their descriptions of Philistine territory. Gath is not mentioned at all.
    What happened? According to 2 Kings 12:17, during the reign of King Jehoash of Judah