The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Samuel — Section 450

half a mile square. All around are the rums CHAPTER XXIV. of ancient gardens and thickets, among which DAVID SPARES SAUL'S LIFE IN A CAVE he saw the beautiful black grackles with (vers. 1-7). Ver. 1.-The wilderness of gold-tipped wings, bulbuls, and thrushes. En-gedi. Finding no safety on the western Solomon seems to have delighted in the side of the desert of Judah, where the Ziph- spot, and to have covered the hills with ites were ever watching his movements, vines ; for he compares his beloved to a Davicl now boldly crossed this arid waste, "cluster of camphire in the ,ineyards of and sought shelter in the remarkable oasis En-gedi" (Cant. i. 14). Neither palm nor- of En-gedi, on the shore of the Dead Sea. vine is to be found there now, but there is The word may si~ify either the Fountain still a rich vegetation, and groveR of trees. of Luck or the Kia.'s Spring, the latter being According to Thomson(' The Land and the the meaning of the name Ain-Jadi, which Book,' p. 602) the sides of the ravines lead- it still bears. In 2 Chron, xx. 2 it is ing to En-gedi are full of natural and llrti- identified with Hazazon-Tamar, the Palm- ficial caves and sepulchres. Wood, an ancient seat of the Amorites, and Ver. 2. -Chosen. See on this word eh. evidently famous from of old for its fertility ix. 2. The rocks of the wild goats. Ap- (Gen. xiv. 7). Conder('TentWork,' ii. 126) parently this was the proper name of some describes the country over which David would cliffs near En-gedi, so called from their being have· to travel as almost impassable, so that frequented by the ibex, or Syrian chamois, in four and a half hours of hard riding he an animal which, according to Thomson and his party advanced only six miles, so deep (p. 603) is still found there. It shows Saul's were the valleys which they were obliged to pertinacious hatrecl of David, that no sooner- cross. From a lofty peak on their way the was the war ,~ith the Philistines over, than view was most extraordinary. On every he pursues him with 3000 picked warriors- side were other ridges, equally white, steep, in to these lonely fastnesses. Comp. Ps. and narrow; their sides seamed by innumer- !vii. 4, written, according to the title, upon able' torrent-beds, their summits sharp and tlie occasion recorded in this chapter. rugged in outline. Not a tree was visible, Ver. 3. - He came to the sheepcotes. and the whole region was like the dry basin Rather, " to sheepcotes," there being no of a former sea, scoured by the rains, and article in the Hebrew. Such sheepcotes washed down in places to the hard founda- were common in Palestine ; for Thomson tion of metamor-phic limestone which under- (p. 603) says, "I have seen hundreds of these lies the whole district. But the desert once sheepcotes around the mouth of caverns, crossed, "there is no scene," he says, "more and indeed there is scarcely a cave in the vividly impressed on my memory than that land, whose location will admit of being of this magnificently rocky and savage pass, thus occupied (i. e. by the flocks), but has- and the view from the spring below." He such a "cote" in front of it, generally made- had encamped on a plateau upon the top of by piling up loose stones into a circular the cliffs, which rise to a height of 2000 feet wall, which is covered with thorns, as a above the Dead Sea ; and 1340 feet below him further protection against robbers and wild the warm spring of En-gedi, 83° F., rises beasts. During cold storms, aml in the· from under a great boulder, and dctshing night, tho flocks retreat into the cave, but down the rest of the descent, flows across the at other times thcv remain in this enclosecl pl1Lm at the foot of the clilfs, which is abont cote .. , . These c:,vcrn3 arc as ,lark us mid  460 THE FIRSl' BOOK OF SA:IIUEL. [cII. XXIV. 1--:'J