1 Samuel 29:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Make this fellow return to his place To Ziklag, which they were content he should possess. For wherewith should he reconcile, &c. Should it not be with the heads of these men? That is, of the Philistines. They reasoned wisely, according to the common maxims of prudence and true policy; for by such a course great enemies have sometimes been reconciled together. But the Divine Providence was no doubt concerned in suggesting these prudential considerations to their minds; for by this means David was delivered from that great strait and difficulty into which he had brought himself, and from which no human wisdom could have extricated him; either of being an enemy to, and fighting against his country, (as before observed,) or being false to his friend and to his trust. And, by the same providential incident, he was sent back time enough to recover his wives, and the wives and children of his men, and his all, from the Amalekites, which would have been irrecoverably lost if he had gone to this battle. And the kindness of God to David was the greater, because it would have been most just for God to have left him in those distresses into which his own sinful counsel had brought him.