And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave; and Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.
a foot (as used in walking) · noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
David
וְדָוִד֙ve.da.Vid
H1732
David · conjunction + proper noun, a man's name
men
וַאֲנָשָׁ֔יוva.'a.na.Shav
H582
a man in general (singly or collectively) · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
remained
יֹשְׁבִֽיםyo.she.Vim
H3427
properly · verb, qal active participle, masculine plural absolute
sides
בְּיַרְכְּתֵ֥יbe.yar.ke.Tei
H3411
properly · preposition + noun, common feminine dual construct
cave
הַמְּעָרָ֖הha.me.'a.Rah
H4631
a cavern (as dark) · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Judges 3:24 When he was gone out, his servants came; and when they saw that, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked, they said, Surely he covereth…
Psalms 57:1-11 Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until…
Psalms 142:1-7 I cried unto the LORD with my voice; with my voice unto the LORD did I make my supplication.
Psalms 141:6 When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words; for they are sweet.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 24:1-8
Here, I. Saul renews his pursuit of David, Sa1 24:1, Sa1 24:2. No sooner had he come home safely from chasing the Philistines, in which it should seem he had good success, than he enquired after David to do him a mischief, and resolved to have another thrust at him, as if he had been delivered to do all these abominations, Jer 7:10. By the frequent incursions of the Philistines, he might have seen how necessary it was to recall David from his banishment and restore him to his place in the army again; but so far is he from doing this that now more than ever he is exasperated against him, and, hearing that he is in the wilderness of En-gedi, he draws out 3000 choice men, and goes with them at…
he came to the sheepcotes--most probably in the upper ridge of Wady Chareitun. There a large cave--I am quite disposed to say the cave--lies hardly five minutes to the east of the village ruin, on the south side of the wady. It is high upon the side of the calcareous rock, and it has undergone no change since David's time. The same narrow natural vaulting at the entrance; the same huge natural chamber in the rock, probably the place where Saul lay down to rest in the heat of the day; the same side vaults, too, where David and his men were concealed. There, accustomed to the obscurity of the cavern, they saw Saul enter, while, blinded by the glare of the light outside, he saw nothing of him w…
The sheep-cotes - Caves in the rocks, in which it is common, even to the present time, for shepherds and their flocks to lodge. According to Strabo there are caverns in Syria, one of which is capable of containing four thousand men: Ὡν ἑν και τετρακισχιλιους ανθρωπους δεξασθαι δυναμενον; lib. xvi. p. 1096. Edit. 1707.
Saul went in to cover his feet - Perhaps this phrase signifies exactly what the Vulgate has rendered it, ut purparet ventrem. The Septuagint, the Targum, and the Arabic understand it in the same way. It is likely that, when he had performed this act of necessity, he lay down to repose himself, and it was while he was asleep that David cut off the skirt of his robe. It is stra…
The Church Fathers
And he also came to the sheepfolds, etc. In persecuting the great shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus Christ, he also dragged the wicked investigation to the gatherings of his faithful disciples, who offered themselves as sheep to the raging wolves, to see if they could find any reason within them to criticize their master. Hence the saying: "Behold, your disciples do what is not lawful on the Sabbaths," and others (Mark II).
David, as we have said, took on the character of the Lord Savior, and so what was to take place at the Lord's passion is now recounted of him. David was not to be effaced from the kingdom allotted to him, just as the inscription of the Lord's title could not be changed. The psalmist added, "When he fled from Saul into the cave." This incident seems to be very similar in the cases of both David and the Lord. Just as David in fleeing from Saul hid in a cave, so the Lord Savior's divinity is known to have been hidden within the temple of his body from the unfaithful Jews. In this way the individual events concerning David and Christ are shared by them in this respect.
Saul, unaware of David's hiding place, also entered the cave in order to take care of his needs, I presume.… Accordingly, this psalm of David is accepted for certain in the name of the Lord; Saul appears as the devil, and the cave becomes this world. The devil, furthermore, does not discharge any good into this world, but only dung and corruption. Then, too, the cave symbolizes this world because its light is very imperfect when compared with the light of the future world, albeit the Lord, on coming into this world as light, brightens it up considerably. That is why the apostle, in relation to the Father, speaks of him "who is the brightness of his glory." Now just as David entered the cave in his flight from Saul, the Lord, too, has come into this world and has suffered persecution.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Cave — There are numerous natural caves among the limestone rocks of Syria, many of which have been artificially enlarged for various purposes. The first notice of a cave occurs in the history of Lot (Gen.…
David — Beloved, the eighth and youngest son of Jesse, a citizen of Bethlehem. His father seems to have been a man in humble life. His mother’s name is not recorded. Some think she was the Nahash of 2 Sam.…
Engedi Or Engedi — (fount of the kid), a town in the wilderness of Judah, (Joshua 15:62) on the western shore of the Dead Sea. (Ezekiel 47:10) Its original name was Hazezon-tamar, on account of the palm groves which…
Cave · En-gedi — En-gedi
Caves · Were used as: Resting places — Were used as: Resting places
En-Gedi · General references — General references
Feet, The · Sleep expressed by covering — Sleep expressed by covering
Magnanimity · .David to Saul — .David to Saul
Self-Control · Of David — Of David
Sheep · Flocks of: Kept in folds or cotes — Flocks of: Kept in folds or cotes
Shepherd · Keeps the flocks in folds — Keeps the flocks in folds
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
1 Samuel 24:3 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave,.... For the sheep to be led into at noon, to shelter them from the heat: such was the cave of Polyphemus, observed by Bochart (z), in which sheep and goats lay down and slept; See Gill on Zephaniah 2:6,
and Saul went in to cover his feet; the Targum is, to do his necessaries; and so Josephus (a); and the Jewish commentators generally understand it of easing nature; and as the eastern people used to wear long and loose garments, these, when they performed such an action, they used in modesty to gather them close about them, that no part of the body, their feet, and especially the parts of nature which should be concealed, might be s…
Whilst Saul had gone against the Philistines, David left this dangerous place, and went to the mountain heights of Engedi, i.e., the present Ain-jidy (goat-fountain), in the middle of the western coats of the Dead Sea (see at Jos 15:62), which he could reach from Maon in six or seven hours. The soil of the neighbourhood consists entirely of limestone; but the rocks contain a considerable admixture of chalk and flint. Round about there rise bare conical mountains, and even ridges of from two to four hundred feet in height, which mostly run down to the sea. The steep mountains are intersected by wadys running down in deep ravines to the sea. "On all sides the country is full of caverns, which…
