The Holy Land and the Bible; . thehill, and another farther south, while the opposite sides of the tribu-tary valley are lined with rows of caves, all smoke-blackened, andmostly inhabited, or used as pens for flocks and herds. The cave onthe south of the hill itself was tenanted by a single family when thesurvevors visited it, just as it might have been by David and hisimmediate friends, while his followers housed themselves in those nearat hand.* The whole neighborhood, indeed, is intensely interesting. Aboutthree miles south-east of Adullam, among hills 1,500 feet high, isKeilah, a town of J
The Holy Land and the Bible; . thehill, and another farther south, while the opposite sides of the tribu-tary valley are lined with rows of caves, all smoke-blackened, andmostly inhabited, or used as pens for flocks and herds. The cave onthe south of the hill itself was tenanted by a single family when thesurvevors visited it, just as it might have been by David and hisimmediate friends, while his followers housed themselves in those nearat hand.* The whole neighborhood, indeed, is intensely interesting. Aboutthree miles south-east of Adullam, among hills 1,500 feet high, isKeilah, a town of Judah, which David rescued from an attack of thePhilistines, who had fallen upon it at the beginning of the harvest andcarried off its cattle, and the corn from the threshing-floors.^ Theyhad come up the valley of Elah, from the plain, to these highland 1 Tent Work in Palestine, p. 277. 2 Jos. Ant., vi. 12, 3. 3 1 Sam. xxii. 2. 4 Pal. Beports, 1875, p. 148fi 5 1 Sam . xxiii. 1.; Jos. Ant., vi. 13,1. <a OS a c <p •cp 015. VI] LOCALITIES FAMOUS IN DAVIDs LIFE. 73 corn-fields, which lay at their mercy year by year. The broad valleyis, for the greater part of its course, over a mile across, and tiie ricliarable ground, watered by brooks and s))rings, ofters in s])ring-time awide landsca[)e of green corn-fields and brown furrows, and in harvesta great undulating sea of yellow grain. Of old, as now, the villagerlived in the hills for safety; the peasantry coming down to the valleyto till their fields. As long as the Philistines held Gath, if Tell esSafieh be that cit}^, they could ascend the great valley to the richestcorn-land of Judaii; or if they chose to kee}) on to the east, the roadlay open to them to Jerusalem itself, while by turning south justbeyond Bethshemesh, up a broad valley running into the valley ofElah, they could reach Keilah. The Wady es Sunt, or the Valley of the Acacia, runs east andwest from the valley of Elah, Socoh lying at its eastern end; and thuslook
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