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(^211) Not, as in the Authorised Version, "on the south of Jeshimon" (ver. 19), where
the word is left untranslated.
(^212) Lieutenant Conder labors to show that there never could have been "a wood" in
Ziph. But the text does not call it a yaar, "wood" or "forest," but a choresh, which
conveys the idea of a thicket of brushwood. Our view is fully borne out by the
portraiture of a scene exactly similar to that on Hachilah in Isaiah 17:9: "In that day
shall his strong cities be like the forsakenness of the thicket (choresh) and of the
mountain-top." In the Jeremiah Targum to Genesis 22:13 the term is applied to the
thicket in which the ram was caught.
(^213) There is a difference between the "inhabitants" of Keilah (23:5), and the
"citizens," burghers, "lords of Keilah" (the Baale Keilah), ver. 12, who were ready
to sell David for their own advantage.
(^214) In our Authorised Version (23:24): "the plain on the south of Jeshimon."
(^215) Our Authorised Version has erroneously (ver. 25), "he came down into a rock."
(^216) Such is the correct rendering of the second half of ver. 26.
(^217) We suppose that Psalm 54 refers to this rather than to the second betrayal by the
Ziphites, recorded in 1 Samuel 26.
(^218) The LXX., as it seems to us needlessly, alter the text by making it the
wilderness of Maon.
(^219) Ver. 6, which is somewhat difficult, should, I think, be thus rendered: "And ye
shall say thus: To life! Both to thee peace, to thy house peace, and to all that is
thine peace!"
(^220) Although guilty of a rash imprecation (ver. 22), it was at least not upon himself.
(^221) The "bottles" were, of course, "skins of wine;" "the clusters" and "cakes" of fruit
were large compressed cakes, such as are common in the East.
(^222) This Jezreel is, of course, not the place of that name in the north (Joshua 19:18),
but a town in Judah near Carmel (Joshua 15:56).
(^223) Such a nucleus seems implied in 1 Samuel 13:2, where we have the same
number, constituting apparently Saul's standing army. From our remarks it will be
(^)