Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all
Israel,
&c.] Out of his army, with which he had been pursuing the
Philistines:
and went to seek David, and his men, upon the rocks of the
wild goats;
which were in the wilderness of Engedi; those rocks were
exceeding high and terrible to look at, full of precipices, and
so prominent, that to travellers they seemed as if they would
fall into the adjacent valleys, that it even struck terror into
them to look at them F24; called the rocks of wild goats,
because these creatures, called from hence "rupicaprae", or rock
goats, see ( Job 39:1 ) ; delighted to
be there; and are, as Pliny F25 says, of such prodigious
swiftness, that they will leap from mountain to mountain, and
back again at pleasure; these mountains David and his men chose
for safety, and the height and craggedness of them did not deter
Saul and his men from seeking him there.