Cherethites and Pelethites

Biblical Text

The "Cherethites and Pelethites" always appear as a pair in the Old Testament and designate King David's personal troops.

• 2 Samuel 8:18; 1 Chronicles 18:17: The list of David's officials records that Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and Pelethites. The same information is repeated in 2 Samuel 20:23.
• 2 Samuel 15:18: When David leaves Jerusalem during Absalom's rebellion, they pass on before the king together with six hundred men who had come from Gath.
• 2 Samuel 20:7: During Sheba's rebellion, they pursue the rebel together with Joab's men.
• 1 Kings 1:38, 44: When David establishes Solomon as his successor, they join Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah in bringing Solomon to Gihon and stand guard while he is anointed king.

The Cherethites also appear on their own in some passages. 1 Samuel 30:14 calls the region south of Philistia "the south of the Cherethites," and Ezekiel 25:16 and Zephaniah 2:5 refer to the inhabitants of the Philistine coast as the "Cherethims" and "the nation of the Cherethites" in pronouncing judgment on them.

Background

The Hebrew forms underlying the two names are Kerethi and Pelethi. Because the Cherethites are mentioned alongside the Philistines in Ezekiel and Zephaniah, and because Amos 9:7 says that the Philistines came from Caphtor, scholars generally regard the Cherethites as a seafaring people associated with the island of Crete. The view that "Pelethites" is a variant of the name "Philistine" is widely held, but it has not been established.

It is commonly supposed that they were not drawn from the tribes of Israel but were a royal bodyguard made up of foreigners of Philistine stock—that is, mercenaries. On this explanation, they were troops directly under the king, loyal to him personally and not bound by intertribal interests. The biblical text itself, however, does not explicitly state their origin or how they were employed.

Significance in Scripture as a Whole

They appear at each moment of crisis in David's reign. During the rebellions of Absalom and Sheba, and in the dispute over the royal succession, they stood on David's side. In the succession account, they sided with Solomon and helped secure his throne. As with Ittai the Gittite, who appears in the account of Absalom's rebellion (2 Samuel 15:19–22), the text draws attention to the fact that men from outside Israel remained loyal to David to the end.

The name does not occur in the New Testament. The island of Crete appears in the New Testament in passages such as Acts 2:11 and Titus 1:5, but apart from the geographical association, no passage connects it directly with the Cherethites.

Interpretation and Points of Discussion

• Identity: The prevailing view is that they were mercenaries of Philistine or Cretan stock. Some scholars regard them as a bodyguard similar in character to the "Carites" mentioned in 2 Kings 11.
• Ancient Jewish interpretation: The Aramaic Targum is reported to render the names as "archers and slingers." Rabbinic literature also preserves a tradition that interprets them symbolically as something other than a military unit.
• Additions beyond the text: Sermons frequently draw the contrast that "foreign mercenaries were more loyal than the Israelites." Since the text says nothing about their faith or whether they converted, however, this contrast should be distinguished from what the text actually records.