King David was a “career soldier”. He was a King. But he was also in and out of battles and wars almost all his life. He started as a warrior when he was a teenager, i.e. when he “wiped out” Goliath the Philistine giant.
His soldiers did not want to lose him, so they demanded that he no longer risk his life in battle once he was somewhere into his 60’s. He did not die in battle, and he did not die of what we might call “sickness”.
He died as a result of an accident. The “back story” to the accident was that the Devil/Satan wanted to “take him out”. He was warned that the Satan would come after him on a Sabbath, but that if he was studying Torah on the Sabbath, Satan would not be able to harm him. So, “religiously”, pardon the pun, King David studied his Torah every Saturday.
He had a private apartment in his “palace”, with an outside balcony and “back stairs” leading to his apartment (in addition to the entrance/doorway from within the building. There was some sort of commotion in the yard below his apartment. He left hi desk and went out to the top of the stairs to see what all the “ruckus” was. The stairs were faulty, and he fell as the stairs collapsed. That fall left him weak and bed-ridden, and his health declined. He died at 70 years of age.
BUT HE DID NOT DIE IN BATTLE. Through all those years of warfare, he survived every battle. Legend has it that what was engraved on his shield was what protectcted him, or at least contributed to his protection.
The design on his shield was composed of Hebrew Letters and Words, laid out in the shape of a Menorah, the Seven Branched Candlestick in Moses’ Tabernacle, and in the Temple that Solomon, David’s son, would build.
We have those words as Psalm 67 in the Bible. The modern Psalm has the same words as were on David’s shield. There is a minor (two letters) spelling difference between the Shield and the Bible version, but the words are the same.
For more see the Post about The Menorah Psalm on this site.
Psalm 67 as a Menorah — as it was on King David’s Shield (above)