The City David Saves Cannot Promise Him Shelter

Keilah stood in the Shephelah a few miles south of Adullam (Joshua 15:44). Raiding threshing floors at harvest was an old tactic; the Midianites of Gideon’s day came up whenever Israel had sown (Judges 6:3–4). “They told David” shows people now bringing their troubles to the fugitive, as though to a king.

“Save” is yasha, the word of the judges, and the task for which Saul himself was anointed: “that he may save my people out of the hand of the Philistines” (9:16). How David enquired is not said; the ephod only arrives in verse 6, so this first inquiry may have come through Gad.

“Armies” is ma’arkot, the battle ranks of chapter 17. David’s men were the distressed and indebted of 22:2, not a trained force. They are frightened hiding in Judah’s own hills, and the Philistine line is a different order of danger.

The first answer said “save Keilah”; the second adds a promise, “I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand”, the words Jonathan took as his sign at Michmash (14:10). “Go down” is exact: Keilah lay below the hill country where David’s men were hiding.

The raiders had brought livestock with them, and David’s men drive the animals off, so the rescue also feeds six hundred hungry men. The Philistines came for Keilah’s grain and lost their own herds.

The verse steps back to explain how David can consult God in verse 9. The Hebrew says the ephod “came down in his hand”, an object small enough to carry out of a massacre. Everything Saul destroyed at Nob was meant to cut David off; the one thing that escaped was the means of asking God.

“God hath delivered him” renders nikkar, an unusual verb that may mean “sold” or “handed over as a stranger”; the Greek has “sold”. “Gates and bars” is the phrase Deuteronomy uses for strongly fortified cities (Deuteronomy 3:5). Saul reads defensive walls as a cage.

Saul summons “all the people” to war, as he once did with the bloody oxen against Nahash (11:7). The Philistines have just raided Judah, and the king marches not against them but against the man who drove them off.

“Practised mischief” is macharish, from charash, to plough or engrave, the root of the word for the smiths Israel lacked (13:19). Saul was forging evil, working it out like metal. “Bring hither the ephod” is the command Saul once gave at Michmash (14:18) and then broke off.

David understands the danger to Keilah because of Nob: “to destroy the city for my sake”. He knows now what Saul will do to a town that has sheltered him. He calls himself “thy servant” before God as carefully as he once did before Saul.

David asks two questions in the wrong order: will the men of Keilah hand me over, and will Saul come? God answers only the second. Consulting the ephod seems to have worked by single yes-or-no answers, which may be why the first question has to be asked again in the next verse.

“Deliver up” is sagar, to shut in or hand over, the same verb Saul used in verse 7 when he said David was “shut in”. Saul thought the walls would shut David in; God says the townspeople would do it. Each answer is simply “He will come down” and “They will deliver thee up.”

Four hundred men (22:2) have become about six hundred, the number Saul had at Gibeah under the pomegranate tree (14:2). “Went whithersoever they could go” is literally “went about wherever they went”, wandering without a destination. “Forbare” means he gave up the expedition.

The wilderness of Ziph lay southeast of Hebron, dry hill country falling away toward the Dead Sea. “Strong holds” were natural refuges in the rocks. “Every day” is literally “all the days”: the pursuit becomes Saul’s occupation.

The Hebrew consonants for “saw” can also be read “was afraid”, and some translators take it that way. “In a wood” may be a place name, Horesh, perhaps the ruin Khirbet Khoreisa near Ziph. David is watching the hunt close in.

To strengthen someone’s hand was to encourage him, and “in God” names the source. At Ziklag, with no one left to do it for him, David “encouraged himself in the LORD his God” (30:6). Jonathan does for David here what David will later have to do alone.

“Next unto thee” is mishneh, second in rank, the word for Joseph riding in Pharaoh’s “second chariot” (Genesis 41:43). “The hand of Saul” will not find him: the chapter’s word “hand” again. This is the last recorded meeting of the two friends.

This is their third covenant (18:3; 20:16), and it is made “before the LORD”, perhaps with a formal act of worship, though the text does not say what. Jonathan goes home. The next word David receives of him will be the report of his death at Gilboa (2 Samuel 1:4).

The Ziphites were men of Judah, David’s own tribe. The title of Psalm 54 quotes their words: “Doth not David hide himself with us?” Jeshimon means “the wasteland”, the barren Judean desert, and Hachilah was a hill on its southern edge.

“All the desire of thy soul” uses a word for craving; the Ziphites flatter the king’s appetite for the chase. “Our part” is literally “upon us”: we will take care of the handing over. They volunteer both the information and the deed.

“Compassion” is chamal, to spare or pity, the verb used when Saul and the people “spared” Agag and the best of the sheep (15:9, 15). The king who spared an Amalekite blesses strangers for sparing a thought for him.

“He dealeth very subtilly” renders a doubled form of the root of the serpent’s craftiness in Eden (Genesis 3:1). “His haunt” is literally “where his foot is”. Saul wants witnesses who have seen David, not rumours.

“The thousands of Judah” were its clans, the phrase Micah uses of Bethlehem, “little among the thousands of Judah” (Micah 5:2). “The certainty” means established fact. Saul promises to dig David out of every clan of David’s own tribe.

The Ziphites go ahead to prepare the ground. Maon lay some eight miles south of Hebron, the home of Nabal (25:2), and “the plain” is the Arabah, desert flatland. David has already moved, keeping just beyond the search.

“Into a rock” is literally “the rock”, sela, which gives the place its name in verse 28. “They told David” shows that David had informants of his own. Every move by one side is reported to the other.

The two forces are on opposite slopes of the same ridge. “Made haste” is the verb for hurried flight in panic. “Compassed” is atar, to surround or encircle, the verb of a crown set round a head. Saul’s men are closing the ring.

“Invaded” is pashat, which can mean to strip or to raid, the verb used of Jonathan stripping off his robe (18:4). David himself will use it for his raids from Ziklag (27:8), and the Amalekites for theirs (30:1). The Philistines save David without meaning to.

Sela-hammahlekoth is usually explained as “rock of divisions”, where the two forces parted. The root can also mean “smooth” or “slippery”, which gives “rock of slipping away”. Both suit what happened there.

En-gedi, “spring of the kid”, is an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, where fresh water falls through limestone cliffs full of caves. The Song of Solomon mentions its vineyards (Song 1:14). In the Hebrew Bible this verse opens chapter 24.