^23:7When Saul was told that David had come to Keilah, Saul said, “God has delivered³ him into my hand, for he has boxed himself into a corner by entering a city with two barred gates.”⁴^23:8So Saul mustered all his army to go down to Keilah and besiege David and his men.⁵

^23:9When David realized that Saul was planning to harm him,⁶ he told Abiathar the priest, “Bring the ephod!” ^23:10Then David said, “O Lord God of Israel, your servant has clearly heard that Saul is planning⁷ to come to Keilah to destroy the city because of me. ^23:11Will the leaders of Keilah deliver me into his hand? Will Saul come down as your servant has heard? O Lord God of Israel, please inform your servant!”

Then the Lord said, “He will come down.” ^23:12David asked, “Will the leaders of Keilah deliver me and my men into Saul’s hand?” The Lord said, “They will deliver you over.”

^23:13So David and his men, who numbered about six hundred, set out and left Keilah; they moved around from one place to another.⁸ When told that David had escaped from Keilah, Saul called a halt to his expedition. ^23:14David stayed in the strongholds that were in the desert and in the hill country of the desert of Ziph. Saul looked for him all the time,⁹ but God did not deliver David¹⁰ into his hand.

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Footnotes

3 The reading (“God has alienated him into my hand”) in v. 7 is a difficult and uncommon idiom. The use of this verb in Jer 19:4 is somewhat parallel, but not entirely so. Many scholars have therefore suspected a textual problem here, emending the word נִכַּר (nikkar, “alienated”) to סִכַּר (sikkar, “he has shut up [i.e., delivered]”). This is the idea reflected in the translations of the and , although it is not entirely clear whether they are reading something different from the or are simply paraphrasing what for them too may have been a difficult text. The has “God has sold him into my hands,” apparently reading מַכַר (makar, “sold”) for ’s נִכַּר. The present translation is a rather free interpretation.
4 Heb “with two gates and a bar.” Since in English “bar” could be understood as a saloon, it has been translated as an attributive: “two barred gates.”
5 Heb “So Saul mustered all his army for battle to go down to Keilah to besiege against David and his men.”
6 Heb “Saul was planning the evil against him.”
7 Heb “seeking.”
8 Heb “they went where they went.”
9 Heb “all the days.”
10 Heb “him”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.