David was very desirous to build a temple to the Lord, but God would not suffer him to do so, as he was a man of blood. This is the reason why he so desired to erect a temple. When he was young, and pastured his father’s sheep, he came one day upon a rhinoceros (unicorn) asleep, and he did not know that it was a rhinoceros, but thought it was a mountain, so he drove his flock up its back, and fed them on the grass which grew thereon. But presently the rhinoceros awoke, and stood up, and then David’s head touched the sky. He was filled with terror, and he vowed that if God would save his life and bring him safely to the ground again, he would build to the Lord a temple of the dimensions of the horn of the beast, an hundred cubits. The Talmudists are not agreed as to whether this was the height, or the breadth, of the horn; however, the vow was heard, and the Lord sent a lion against the rhinoceros; and when the unicorn saw the lion, he lay down, and David descended his back, along with his sheep, as fast as possible; but when he saw the lion, his spirit failed him again. However he took the lion by the beard, and smote, and slew him. This adventure the Psalmist recalls when he says, “_Save me from the lion’s mouth: Thou hast heard me also from among the horns of the unicorns_;”[640] and to his vow he alludes in Psalm cxxxii., “_Lord, remember David, and all his trouble: how he sware unto the Lord, and vowed a vow unto the Almighty God of Jacob._”[641] One day David was hunting in the wilderness. Then came Satan, in the form of a stag, and David shot an arrow at him, but could not kill him. This astonished him, for on one occasion, in strife with the Philistines, he had transfixed eight hundred men with one arrow.[642] Then he chased the deer, and it ran before him into the Philistine land. Now when Ishbi-benob, who was of the sons of the giant, knew this, he said, “David has slain my brother Goliath; now he is in my power!” and he came upon him and chained him, and cast him down, and laid a winepress upon him, that he might crush him, and squeeze all the blood out of him. But God softened the earth beneath him, so that it yielded to his body, and he was uninjured; as he says in the Psalms, “_Thou shalt make room enough under me for to go._”[643] And as David lay under the press, he saw a dove fly by, and he said, “_Oh that I had wings as a dove, that I might flee away, and be at rest_;”[644] and he alludes to his being among the pots, and noting the wings of the dove as silver, in another Psalm.[645]