En-gedi

En-gedi is a freshwater spring on the western shore of the Dead Sea, about the middle of that shore, roughly two hundred yards from the water. Its name means the spring of the kid, after the wild goats that still climb the cliffs above it.

The ground around the spring is cut with steep ravines and full of caves, which made it a natural refuge. That is exactly why Saul went looking for David there with three thousand men, and why the story of the cave could happen at all: the country itself is built for hiding.

The text presents it as principle. David's men urged him to kill Saul, and he had the king alone and unarmed in the dark. He cut the robe instead of the man, and even that small act struck his own conscience.

David's stated reason was that Saul was still the Lord's anointed, and he would not lift his hand against him on that ground alone. John Chrysostom's homily on this chapter calls the cave a kind of church that day, because David offered God his own anger and resentment instead of Saul's blood.

Later commentators say yes without exception in this site's pool. Bede's commentary on Genesis states plainly that Hazazon-tamar is the town later called En-gedi. Albert Barnes and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown repeat the same identification, and 2 Chronicles 20:2 itself glosses Hazazon-tamar as En-gedi for its own readers.

Genesis itself never makes that equation. It simply names Hazazon-tamar as a place Chedorlaomer's coalition struck on their campaign. The identification is the unanimous reading of later writers rather than a statement the Genesis text makes about itself, and this page presents it on that footing.

En-gedi was known in the ancient world for its vineyards and its balsam, prized and fragrant crops that could not be grown just anywhere. Calling the beloved a cluster of henna blossoms from En-gedi's vineyards is a picture of something rare and treasured, not available on every hillside.

Matthew Henry reads the image further, noting the word for henna blossom shares its root with the Hebrew word for atonement, and takes the cluster as a picture of Christ's own merit held out to believers.

Ezekiel sees a river flowing from the temple into the Dead Sea, and the sea's salt water is healed so that fish can live in it. Fishermen are pictured standing along the very shore where David once hid from Saul, spreading their nets in water that had been too salt for anything to survive.

Matthew Henry reads this as gospel grace reaching a place that was once useless and making it productive. The passage does not fix a date for when this healing happens; this site reads it as part of the larger renewal Ezekiel's closing vision pictures for the land.