How is Psalm 34 linked to 1st Samuel 21?

Question

The annotation of Psalm 34 (ESV) reads:

Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.

Clearly this is a reference to 1 Samuel 21:10-15 (ESV):

And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances,

‘Saul has struck down his thousands,
   and David his ten thousands’?”

And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?”

But the Psalm itself doesn't seem to be referring to that event. Why are they linked?

Clarification: I know that they are linked by the annotation, which is part of the received text of the Psalm, but I don't know what the connection is. Is it a Psalm written by David at the time or is it a later Psalm by David looking back to the event or is it a Psalm by another author reflecting back on the story about David?

Answer 1

Robert Alter deals with this question in his translation and commentary of the Book of Psalms:

"...when he altered his good sense before Abimelech."

The superscription refers directly to 1 Samuel 21:14, where David, surrounded before the city of Gath by the Philistine king and his men, saves himself by playing the madman. The same unusual idiom for feigning madness, "altered his good sense" (shanot et ta amo), is used in Samuel. But the Philistine king there is not Abimelech (who appears in Genesis 20) but Achish. This may be a confusion on the part of the editor, though Rashi and other medieval commentators try to save the text by arguing that Abimelech was a hereditary royal title, not a proper name. Why did the editor detect a link between our psalm and this incident in the David story? In all likelihood, the connection he saw was in the psalm's emphasis on God's rescuing power, even when the just man is threatened with imminent death by his enemies. Particularly pertinent are these lines near the end of the poem:

"Many the evils of the righteous man, / yet from all of them the Lord will save him. // He guards all his bones, / not a single one is broken."

And perhaps the image in 1 Samuel 21 of the future king of Israel rolling in the dirt and drooling over his beard may have been called to the editor's mind by:

"Near is the Lord to the broken-hearted, / and the crushed in spirit He rescues."