He comes to Ai, passes through Migron, At Michmash deposits his baggage; They cross the pass, Geba is our night station: Terrified is Ramah, Gibeah of Saul flees. Shriek with thy voice, daughter of Gallim; Listen, O Laish! Ah! poor Anathoth! Madmeneh escapes, dwellers in Gebim take flight. Yet this day he halts at Nob: He shakes his hand against the mount, daughter of Sion, The hill of Jerusalem. “In this passage” (says Sir Charles Wilson), “if it has a meaning--and I cannot suppose that it has not--the prophet describes, in such detail that it is difficult to believe he is not describing an actual event, the march of an Assyrian army upon Jerusalem; and we may be quite certain that, with his knowledge of the country, and writing as he did for those who were equally well acquainted with it, he would describe a line of march, which, under certain conditions, an army would naturally follow if its special object were the capture of Jerusalem. The conditions to which I allude are the passage of the great ravine at Michmash, and encampment for the night at Geba; why this route was selected in preference to the easier road along the line of water-parting we have no means of ascertaining, and it does not affect the question.” “Of the places mentioned by Isaiah, we know, with a considerable degree of certainty, the positions of Michmash, Geba, Ramah, Gibeah, and Anathoth; of the others nothing is known. From Geba to Nob was evidently a day’s march in the progress of the army; and the order in which the villages are mentioned leads us in the direction of Jerusalem. If, as I believe, the passage means that the Assyrian warrior was leading an army from Geba against Jerusalem, and that his progress was suddenly arrested at Nob, we must seek a site for Nob on the road between these two places, and I cannot imagine a more natural one than some place in the vicinity of that Scopus whence, in later years, Titus and his legions looked down upon the Holy City.” Doeg, the Edomite, who happened to be present when Ahimelech gave David the sword, informed Saul, and Saul, who was mad with suspicion, slew all the priests and utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Nob. But even after the destruction of the sanctuary by his violence the sanctity of the summit of Olivet was still respected. It was necessary, however, to remove the tabernacle from the scene of so much bloodshed, and perhaps it was immediately removed to the high-place of Gibeon, where we find it in the early part of Solomon’s reign.