Located in the Shephelah near Mazkeret Batya, it falls under the jurisdiction of Gezer Regional Council.

[2] The village was founded as a kibbutz in 1948 by Holocaust survivors from Romania and former soldiers,[2] and was named after David Marcus, a United States Army colonel of Romanian Jewish heritage, who assisted Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and later became the country's first general.

The communal lifestyle was diminishing by the 1990s; the kibbutz's dining hall closed in 1994, and in 1999 the system of being paid according to needs was abolished.

[2] During an archeological salvage excavation in 2006, prior to the commencement of building, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced that they had discovered an ancient Umayyad settlement covering six dunams in Mishmar David.

[4] The discovery included a never-seen-before round building dated to the Byzantine-Islamic period, with a diameter of around 10 metres and a polychrome mosaic floor covered with geometric patterns and a palm tree motif.