When Saul was told that David was in Kegilah, he said: God has delivered him into my hand in that he has shut himself up in a city with gates and bars. He set out against Kegilah. David commanded Abiathar the priest, who had fled to him from Nob with the image of Jehovah, to bring the image, and David inquired of the image: Will the men of Kegilah deliver me and my followers into the hand of Saul? Jehovah, God of Israel, announce this to me. And Jehovah said, They will deliver thee.[260] Then David despaired of remaining in the city and fled; he retired again into the desert by the Dead Sea near Ziph and Maon. But Saul pursued and overtook him; nothing but a mountain separated David's troop from the king; David was already surrounded and lost, when the news was brought to Saul, "Hasten and come, for the Philistines are in the land." This was no doubt an incursion made by the Philistines in aid of the hardly-pressed rebels. Saul abandoned the pursuit and went against the Philistines: David called the mountain the rock of escape.[261] When the king had driven back the Philistines he took 3000 men out of the army to crush the rebellion utterly. David had retired farther to the east, on the shore of the Dead Sea, in the neighbourhood of Engedi, to the "rock of the goat," and there he was so closely shut in by Saul that he had to despair of remaining in Judah. He escaped with his troop to the Philistines: the rebellion was at an end.[262] David's attempt to induce the tribe of Judah to fall away from Saul was entirely wrecked. Driven from the ground on which he had raised the standard of revolt, he no longer scrupled to enter formally into the service of the Philistines, and these must have welcomed the aid of a brave and skilful leader, who, though once their enemy, had already in Judah engaged the arms of Saul, the weight of which they had so often felt, and which had taken from them their dominion over Israel. Achish, king of Gath, to whom David again fled, was of opinion "that David had made himself to stink among his people, Israel, and would be his servant for ever;" and gave the border city Ziklag to be a dwelling for him and his band of freebooters.[263] David now settled as a vassal of Achish at Ziklag. At his command he was compelled to take the field, and also to deliver up a part of the spoil which he obtained.[264] Thus from the land of the Philistines, with his band, which here became strengthened by the discontented in Israel[265] who fled to him over the border, David carried on a petty war against Saul and his country. In these campaigns David was wise enough to spare his former adherents in Judah, the cities which had once declared for him, and his attacks were only directed against the adherents of Saul; in secret he even maintained his connection with his party in Judah, and to the elders of the cities which clung to him he sent presents out of the booty won in his raids and plundering excursions.[266]