Ittai the Gittite

Ittai the Gittite was a soldier from the Philistine city of Gath who attached himself to David and, during the revolt of Absalom, refused to leave the king's side when David himself urged him to go back. He appears in only two chapters of 2 Samuel, yet within them he moves from a newly arrived foreigner to one of the three commanders of David's field army (2 Samuel 15:19-22; 18:2, 5, 12).

Biblical Account

When word reached David that the hearts of Israel had gone after Absalom, the king left Jerusalem with his household and halted at the last house while his forces filed past: his servants, the Cherethites and Pelethites, and "all the six hundred Gittites who had followed him from Gath" (2 Samuel 15:13-18). David then addressed Ittai directly. He told him to go back and stay with "the king", meaning Absalom, on three grounds: Ittai was a foreigner, he was an exile from his own home, and he had come "only yesterday", so David would not make him wander with a king who did not know where he was going (2 Samuel 15:19-20). Ittai answered with an oath by the LORD and by the life of the king: wherever the king was, "whether for death or for life, there also will your servant be" (2 Samuel 15:21). David let him pass, and Ittai crossed with "all his men and all the little ones who were with him" before the whole company went over the Kidron Valley toward the wilderness (2 Samuel 15:22-23).

The narrative next names him at Mahanaim, where David had taken refuge east of the Jordan (2 Samuel 17:24). There the king mustered his men and sent the army out in three divisions, under Joab, Abishai the son of Zeruiah, and Ittai the Gittite (2 Samuel 18:1-2). The king's charge, "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom", was addressed to all three by name and heard by the whole army (2 Samuel 18:5). After the battle in the forest of Ephraim, the soldier who found Absalom hanging in the oak refused Joab's reward for striking him, citing the order the king had given "you and Abishai and Ittai" in the army's hearing (2 Samuel 18:6-12).

Identity and the Six Hundred Gittites

Ittai is called a Gittite, that is, a man of Gath, and David's words make his foreign birth and recent arrival explicit (2 Samuel 15:19-20). Whether the six hundred Gittites of 2 Samuel 15:18 were Ittai's own contingent of Philistines is debated. Some commentators (Keil and Delitzsch, the Pulpit Commentary) identify the six hundred with David's original band of Israelite followers, who had lived in Gath and Ziklag under Achish and kept the name from that period (1 Samuel 27:2-6; 30:9). Others (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Encyclopaedia Judaica) read them as a unit of Gittite mercenaries, in line with the Cherethites and Pelethites who march beside them, and take Ittai as their commander; Barnes, Ellicott and Gill likewise place the six hundred under Ittai's command without settling where the men came from. The text itself does not say that Ittai led the six hundred, only that he passed on with "all his men".

The name Ittai (Hebrew Ittay) is of uncertain etymology; older Bible dictionaries gloss it "with the LORD" or "near". He is to be distinguished from Ittai the son of Ribai of Gibeah of Benjamin, one of David's thirty mighty men, whose name the parallel list spells Ithai (2 Samuel 23:29; 1 Chronicles 11:31).

Historical Context

Absalom's Conspiracy falls in the later years of David's reign (about 1010 to 970 BC). By then David had subdued the Philistines (2 Samuel 8:1) and already employed foreign guards, the Cherethites and Pelethites, under Benaiah (2 Samuel 8:18). No extrabiblical source names Ittai.

Theological Significance

The narrative sets Ittai's oath beside the defections of the same chapters: Ahithophel goes over to Absalom (2 Samuel 15:31) and Israel's own men turn from their king (2 Samuel 15:13), while a foreigner who arrived "only yesterday" binds himself to David for death or for life. His vow echoes the words of Ruth the Moabitess to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17), another outsider who bound herself to Israel's people and God.