1 Samuel 26:3

3 Saul camped along the road beside the hill of Hakilah, near Jeshimon, where David was hiding. When David learned that Saul had come after him into the wilderness,

1 Samuel 26:3 Meaning and Commentary

1 Samuel 26:3

And Saul pitched in the hill of Hachilah, which [is] before
Jeshimon, by the way
To the wilderness; the very same place where the Ziphites suggested David was:

but David abode in the wilderness;
not in the hill of Hachilah, but in the wilderness of Ziph itself:

and he saw that Saul came after him into the wilderness;
he understood, by some information he had, that Saul had set out from Gibeah, and was coming to seek for him in the wilderness of Ziph; perhaps Jonathan had given him intelligence; however, he was not quite certain, as appears by what follows.

1 Samuel 26:3 In-Context

1 Now some men from Ziph came to Saul at Gibeah to tell him, “David is hiding on the hill of Hakilah, which overlooks Jeshimon.”

2 So Saul took 3,000 of Israel’s elite troops and went to hunt him down in the wilderness of Ziph.

3 Saul camped along the road beside the hill of Hakilah, near Jeshimon, where David was hiding. When David learned that Saul had come after him into the wilderness,

4 he sent out spies to verify the report of Saul’s arrival.

5 David slipped over to Saul’s camp one night to look around. Saul and Abner son of Ner, the commander of his army, were sleeping inside a ring formed by the slumbering warriors.