1. Keilah. Keilah is a town on the western perimeter of the territory of Judah, facing the Philistine border. Its vulnerability to Philistine incursions is thus understandable. David’s men (verse 3) speak as though Keilah were not part of Judah because as a border town it seems to them much more dangerous than their location deep within their own tribal territory. Some scholars have speculated that Keilah was an independent town without tribal affiliation.

2. David inquired of the LORD. The means of inquiry are not specified, but since his questions invite the usual yes-or-no response, it seems likely he is using the ephod and not, as some interpreters have claimed, a more immediate mode of communication with God. The information, then, in verse 6 that the fugitive priest Abiathar has arrived from Nob with the ephod is probably retrospective. The phrase “at Keilah” (one word in Hebrew) in that verse perhaps should be deleted as an inadvertent scribal duplication of “Keilah” at the end of the preceding verse—by the testimony of chapter 22, Abiathar fled to David when David was in the forest of Hereth in Judah, before he undertook the rescue mission to Keilah.

6. the ephod came down in his hand. From the viewpoint of the ancient audience, the ephod would have been indispensable as an instrument of what we would call military intelligence. An ephod, we should recall, is also a priestly garment. At Nob, Saul slaughtered eighty-five priests “who wore the linen ephod.” Fokkelman perceptively describes the appearance of the oracular ephod in David’s camp as a “countermove by God”—“Saul may bloody the 85 linen priestly garments called the ephod, but the one ephod which acts as a medium for the decisive word of God turns up at the place of the alternative anointed one.”

7. given him in my hand. The Masoretic Text has nikar, “made a stranger,” but the Septuagint reflects a verb meaning “sold” or “handed over.”

11. Will the notables . . . hand me over . . .? Will Saul come down. Since the binary device of the ephod can give only one answer of yes or no, David receives an answer only to the second question and then is obliged to repeat the first question (verse 12) in order to get a response to it.

12. They will hand you over. It may seem base ingratitude on the part of the Keilah notables to betray the man who has just rescued their town from the Philistines. But they must fear Saul’s retribution should they collaborate with David at least as much as they fear the Philistines. The political paradox of the situation that has evolved is evident: David has achieved a victory against Israel’s principal enemy; Saul now moves to destroy that victor, enlisting the aid of the people David saved.

14. in the wilderness in strongholds. Since the Hebrew term for strongholds (metsadah or metsudah—attempts to distinguish the two being questionable) generally occurs in wilderness settings, it seems likely that these are not built-up structures but rather natural formations that afforded effective defensive positions, such as promontories surrounded by outcroppings of rock.

in the wilderness of Ziph. The location is in the tribal territory of Judah, about five miles southeast of Hebron and about ten miles southeast of Keilah, where David has just fought the Philistines.

16. bade him take heart in the LORD. The literal meaning of the Hebrew idiom used is “strengthened his hand in the LORD.” The Hebrew thus is able to pick up the word “hand” at the beginning of Jonathan’s speech, “the hand of my father Saul shall not find you.”

17. I on my part will be your viceroy. For the second time, Jonathan makes a pact with David in which he concedes that it is David who will inherit the throne. There is a pattern of incremental repetition here: only now does Jonathan specify that he will be David’s viceroy (literally “second,” mishneh, but this is an ellipses for mishneh lamelekh, “second to the king”). The faithful Jonathan persists in his naïveté, imagining that he will be able to serve as viceroy to his dear friend, who is also the man destined to displace the dynasty Saul would have established. As an alleged doublet, this episode has narrative plausibility: Jonathan first confirmed a pact with David when he told him he must flee from Saul; now, no doubt at some risk to himself, he is impelled to seek out the fugitive and beleaguered David in order to assure him of his continuing loyalty and encourage him in his adversity. Once again, characteristically, David’s response to Jonathan is not reported.

19. Ziphites. Since no definite article is used, this appears to be one group of Ziphites and not a delegation representing the entire clan. The motive for betraying David could equally be desire for a reward and fear of retribution should Saul discover that they had allowed David to hide out in their territory: the ruthless massacre at Nob would have been a grim object lesson duly noted throughout the Israelite populace.

in the strongholds in the forest on the hill of Hachilah to the south of the wasteland. The Ziphite informers want to make their identification of David’s whereabouts as precise as possible, hence the unusual string of geographical indications. As it emerges, the intelligence they provide is still not precise enough for the frustrated Saul, as his response (“make certain . . . when you are certain”) clearly shows. It should be said that most translators have treated the last geographical term used by the Ziphites, “the wasteland,” as a proper noun (yeshimon), but because it bears a definite article, and because yeshimon is a well-attested common noun, it is preferable not to construe it as a place-name. This episode uses three different terms for uninhabited terrain—wilderness, wasteland, and desert (or four, if one adds forest)—which has the cumulative effect of emphasizing how David is constrained to take refuge beyond the populated areas of Israel.

21. you have shown pity on me. Saul uses the same verb for pity or “sparing” that was prominently deployed in the Amalek story. The idea that the poor king, thwarted by a cunning and malicious David, needs to be shown pity is surely another manifestation of his paranoia—we might say, of its maudlin side.

22. where his foot treads. The Hebrew says literally “where his foot is.” The focus on David’s foot reflects the eye of the pursuer on the track of his elusive prey.

for it has been said to me. The Hebrew reads literally, “for he has said to me,” but there is no need to emend the text because biblical Hebrew sometimes uses a third-person masculine singular verb with no specified grammatical subject to perform the function of the passive. Notice that Saul claims someone has told him David is very cunning—not, which is the case, that Saul himself has decided that his “enemy” is cunning.

24. Maon. This would be roughly three miles due south of the wilderness of Ziph.

26. Saul and his men were circling the mountain. Kyle McCarter Jr. has made the plausible suggestion that what is indicated in this language is a pincer movement: Saul’s forces are moving around the circumference of the mountain on two sides in order to trap David between them, who is on the far side of the mountain. He, evidently realizing the nature of Saul’s maneuver, scrambles to flee—“David made haste to go off from before Saul”—before the pincer snaps shut.

27. Hurry, and go, for the Philistines have invaded the land. This last-minute diversion of course has the effect of rescuing David from Saul, but it also points up the madness of his obsessive pursuit of David: at a time when Israel’s major national enemy is repeatedly sending troops against the territory Saul is supposed to be governing and protecting, he is devoting his attention, and his troops, to the pursuit of David.

28. the Crag of the Divide. This etiological notice explains the place-name, sela‘hamaḥleqot, as deriving from the “divide” between Saul’s forces, which went one way, and David’s, which went another. Several commentators have proposed that the name derived not from maḥloqet, “division,” but from ḥalaq, “smooth,” and so the original meaning would have been Slippery Crag, or Unforested Crag.

24:1. the strongholds of Ein-Gedi. David now flees eastward from the forest area of Ziph, south of Hebron in the central region of Judah’s territory, to Ein-Gedi, in the rocky heights overlooking the Dead Sea. He would have felt safer in this remote region with its forbidding terrain. But Ein-Gedi is an oasis, which would have provided a water supply and vegetation for him and his troops