Ancient Ein Gedi was the wilderness area where David and his men found refuge from the pursuing forces of King Saul. It was there that David waived the opportunity to slay his royal adversary who had inadvertently entered alone into the cave where David was hiding. Rather than slay his pursuer, David contented himself with secretly snipping off the edge of King Saul’s coat in order to later prove that such a situation had existed.

Modern Ein Gedi is a small settlement established in 1949 as a stronghold near what was then the border with a hostile Jordan.

The natural beauty of the area finds expression in Shir HaShirim (1:14) where King Solomon describes the vineyards of Ein Gedi covering the surrounding mountainsides. Although the Roman historian Pliny later lamented that Ein Gedi was, like Jerusalem, “a heap of ashes,” the Prophet Yechezkel (Yechezkel 47:10) foresaw an Ein Gedi blessed with an abundance of fish, symbolic of the eventual restoration of the Holy Land.

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