15:20-63 Here is a list of the cities of Judah. But we do not here find Bethlehem, afterwards the city of David, and ennobled by the birth of our Lord Jesus in it. That city, which, at the best, was but little among the thousands of Judah, Mic 5:2, except that it was thus honoured, was now so little as not to be accounted one of the cities.

Verse 55. - Maon, Carmel, and Ziph. These, as Dean Stanley reminds us ('Sinai and Palestine,' p. 101), still retain unaltered their old names. "That long line of hills was the beginning of the 'hill country of Judaea,' and when we began to ascend it the first answer to our inquiries after the route told us that it was 'Carmel,' on which Nabal fed his flocks, and close below its long ranges was the hill and ruins of Ziph," close above the hill of Maon, Wilson also ('Lands of the Bible,' 1:380) makes the same remark. Maon is to be remembered as David's hiding place from the enmity of Saul (1 Samuel 23:24-26), and as the home of Nabal (1 Samuel 25:2). Carmel (not the famous mountain of that name) meets us again in the history of Saul and of David (1 Samuel 15:12; 1 Samuel 25:2, 5, 7, 40). The neighbourhood of Ziph was also one of David's hiding places, and is described as a "wilderness" in which there was a "wood" in 1 Samuel 23:15, 19; 1 Samuel 26:1, 2. See also the prologue to Psalm 54. Another Ziph is mentioned in ver. 24.

Maon, Carmel,.... Maon was the dwelling place of Nabal the Carmelite, whose possessions were in Carmel, and were not far from one another, 1 Samuel 25:2. It gave name to a wilderness near where David hid himself from Saul, 1 Samuel 23:25; Jerom (p) places it to the east of Daroma, who also informs (q) us, that there was in his time a village that went by the name of Carmelia, ten miles from Hebron towards the east, and where was a Roman garrison.

and Ziph, according to the same writer (r), was eight miles from Hebron to the east; and there was a village shown in his time where David was hid; this gave name to a wilderness also, 1 Samuel 23:14,

and Juttah, which Jerom calls (s) Jeshan, was in his time a large village of the Jews, eighteen miles from Eleutheropolis, to the southern part in Daroma. Reland (t) conjectures that this was the native place of John the Baptist; and that, instead of "a city of Judah", it should be read "the city Juta", Luke 1:39.

(p) De loc. Heb. fol. 93. E. (q) lbid. fol. 92. C. (r) Ibid. fol. 95. G. (s) Ibid. fol. 92. I.((t) Palestin. Illustrat. tom. 2. p. 870.

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