And Achish answered and said to David, I know that thou art good in my sight, as an angel of God: notwithstanding the princes of the Philistines have said, He shall not go up with us to the battle.
Achish answered ... I know that thou art good in my sight, as an angel of God. This phrase, which occurs several times in the books of Samuel (2 Samuel 14:17; 2 Samuel 14:20; 2 Samuel 19:27), seems apparently common among the Hebrews as a standard of comparison in the estimate of great wisdom; but it seems strange in the mouth of Achish. Perhaps it arose from the contact of the early Philistines with Abraham and Isaac.
Notwithstanding, the princes of the Philistines have said. The Philistine government had constitutional checks, or at least the king was not an absolute sovereign, but his authority was limited, his proceedings liable to be controlled by 'the powerful barons of that rude and early period-much as the kings of Europe in the middle ages were, by the proud, and lawless aristocracy which surrounded them' (Chalmers).