Keilah, meaning Citadel, was a city in the lowlands of Judah. It is now a ruin, known as Kh. Qeila, near the modern village of Qila. According to the biblical narrative in the first Book of Samuel, the Philistines had made an inroad eastward as far as Keilah, and had begun to appropriate the country for themselves by plundering its granaries, until David prevented them. Later, upon inquiry, he learnt that the inhabitants of the town, his native countrymen, would prove unfaithful to him, in that they would deliver him up to King Saul, at which time he and his 600 men "departed from Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go”. They fled to the woods in the wilderness of Ziph. "And David was in the wilderness of Ziph, in a wood". Here his friend Jonathan sought him out, "and strengthened his hand in God": this was the last meeting between David and Jonathan. Keilah is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as one of the cities of the Shephelah. Benjamin of Tudela identified Kâkôn as ancient Keilah in 1160. Conder and Kitchener, however, identified the biblical site with the ruin Kila, "seven English-miles from Beit Jibrin," and northwest of Hebron. The site was earlier described by Eusebius in his Onomasticon as being " eight miles east of Eleutheropolis, on the road to Hebron." Victor Guérin, who visited Palestine between the years 1852–1888, also identified Keilah with the same ruin, Khirbet Kila, near the modern village by that name, a place situated a few kilometers south of Adullam and west of Kharas. This view has been adopted by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The ruin, Khirbet Kila, lies on the north side of the village Kila. Guérin found here a subterranean and circular vault, apparently ancient; the vestiges of a wall surrounding the plateau, and on the side of a neighboring hill, tombs cut in the rock face. The town is mentioned in the Amarna tablets under the corruption Ḳilta. The town's present residents are Bedouins who were expelled during Israel's War of Independence from areas around Beer Sheba.
