as if for a regular military expedition, he marched down to Keilah, to besiege him and his followers. Aware of the king’s secret designs, David consulted the Divine Will by means of the ephod, and thus ascertaining the intention of the townspeople to betray him, he and his men departed, _and went whithersoever they could_ (1 Sam. xxiii. 13). CHAPTER VII. _DAVID AT ZIKLAG. BATTLE OF MOUNT GILBOA._ 1 SAM. XXIV.–XXXI. B.C. 1061–1056. FROM Keilah David now removed to a stronghold in the wilderness of Ziph[258], in the highlands of Judah, between Carmel and Juttah, about three miles south of Hebron. Hither Saul pursued him with ceaseless zeal, but was utterly unable to discover his hiding-place. Jonathan, however, sought him out and found him in a neighbouring wood, _and strengthened his hand in God_, assuring him of his belief that his father would never find him, that he would live to come to the throne, and that he himself should be next unto him. The former covenant was now for the third time ratified, and the two friends parted, never to meet again (1 Sam. xxiii. 16–18). Meanwhile Saul returned to Gibeah, whither messengers from the Ziphites followed him with news of David’s hiding-place, and offering to betray him into his hands[259]. Thereupon the king set out, and so close were the pursuer and pursued on one another’s track, that while David was climbing down one side of a cliff in the waste pasture ground of Maon, in the extreme south of Judah, Saul and his men were posted to intercept them on the other. But the arrival of a messenger, with news of a sudden inroad of the Philistines, obliged the king to discontinue the pursuit, and the name of the spot Sela-hammahlekoth, _The Cliff of Divisions_, long commemorated David’s narrow escape (1 Sam. xxiii. 28).