The plateau formed part of the district called Negeb, or "dry land,â in the Bible; and here, in the southern part of the possessions of Caleb we should seek for Debir, which he gave to his daughter; for the Choresh Ziph, where David and Jonathan met; and for the hill of Hachilah, where David hid from Saul.
One is at once struck with the fitness which the plateau presents for the adventures of the fugitive bandit chief who was destined to become the king of Israel. The inhabitants, like Nabal of Carmel, are rich in sheep and oxen. The villagers of Yuttah owned 1700 sheep, of which 250 belonged to the Sheikh. All along the borders of the Jeshimon and Beersheba deserts there is fine pasturage, to which the peasants descend in spring-time, having made some sort of agreement with the neighbouring Bedawîn to protect them from other tribes. Thus we find perpetuated the old system under which David's band protected the cattle of Nabal.
The story of David's wanderings is one of the most interesting episodes of the Old Testament, and we have now so recovered its topography, that the various scenes seem as vivid as if they had occurred only yesterday. First we have the stronghold of Adullam, to be described later, guarding the rich corn valley of Elah; then Keilah, a few miles south, perched on its steep hill above the same valley. The forest of Hareth lay close by, on the edge of the mountain chain where Kharas now stands, surrounded by the "thicketsâ which properly represent the Hebrew "Yar,â--a word wrongly supposed to mean a woodland of timber trees.
Driven from all these lairs, David went yet farther south to the neighbourhood of Ziph (Tell Zîf); and here also our English version speaks of a forest--the "Wood (Choresh) of Ziph,â where David met with Jonathan. A moment's reflection will, however, convince any traveller that as the dry, porous formation of the plateau must be unchanged since David's time, no wood of trees could then have flourished over this unwatered and sun-scorched region. The true explanation seems to be that the word Choresh is a proper name with a different signification, and such is the view of the Greek version and of Josephus. We were able considerably to strengthen this theory by the discovery of the ruin of Khoreisa and the Valley of Hiresh (the same word under another form), close to Ziph, the first of which may well be thought to represent the Hebrew Choresh Ziph. Should this word appear as a proper name in the new English Version, a very marked improvement will be made in what might be called the orientalising of the Bible, substituting the actual language of the land, for that essentially English tone which has been imparted to the narrative by the expressions of translators to whom the East was less familiar than their own fair country.