e of
His children. How far above his fears and lies has this hero and saint
risen by the power of supplication and the music of his psalm!

David naturally fled into Israelitish territory from Gath. The exact
locality of the cave Adullam, where we next find him, is doubtful; but
several strong reasons occur for rejecting the monkish tradition which
places it away to the east, in one of the wild wadies which run down
from Bethlehem to the Dead Sea. We should expect it to be much more
accessible by a hasty march from Gath. Obviously it would be convenient
for him to hang about the frontier of Philistia and Israel, that he
might quickly cross the line from one to the other, as dangers appeared.
Further, the city of Adullam is frequently mentioned, and always in
connections which fix its site as on the margin of the great plain of
Philistia, and not far from Gath. (2 Chron. xi. 7, etc.) There is no
reason to suppose that the cave of Adullam was in a totally different
district from the city. The hills of Dan and Judah, which break sharply
down into the plain within a few miles of Gath, are full of "extensive
excavations," and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold,
where he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look down
over the vast sweep of the rich Philistine country. Gath lay at his
feet, close by was the valley where he had killed Goliath, the scenes of
Samson's exploits were all about him. Thither fled to him his whole
family, from fear, no doubt, of Saul's revenge falling on them; and
there he gathers his band of four hundred desperate men, whom poverty
and misery, and probably the king's growing tyranny, drove to flight.
They were wild, rough soldiers, according to the picturesque
description, "whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as
swift as the roes upon the mountains." They were not freebooters, but
seem to have acted as a kind of frontier-guard against southern Bedouins
and western Philistines for the sheep-farmers of the border whom Saul's
government was too weak to protect. In this desultory warfare, and in
eluding the pursuit of Saul, against whom it is to be observed David
never employed any weapon but flight, several years were passed. The
effect of such life on his spiritual nature was to deepen his
unconditional dependence on God; by the alternations of heat and cold,
fear and hope, danger and safety, to temper his soul and make it
flexible, tough and bright as ste