Round. He made a complete inclosure or fortification, as Mello denotes perfection, or completion, (Haydock) by building houses from the castle to the town beneath it. David begun at the very house (or citadel, 4 Kings xii. 20.) from which the blind and the lame thought to have excluded him, and built all round, so as to make an entire communication. (Kennicott)

Built. Protestants, “repaired.” Hebrew yechaye, (Haydock) “saved alive.” (Syriac, &c.; Poole’s Synop.) But probably shear is now written instead of shor, and jéje ought to be jeje. The long and the short e are easily confounded, (Haydock) and a is frequently thus inserted. (Watson)

“He built....round to the beginning of that circuit. And Joab was made governor of the city.” (Kennicott)

“And surrounding it with a wall, he appointed Joab superintendant of the walls.” (Josephus, [Antiquities?] vii. 3.)

The position of the vowel points in these words, might naturally cause this mistake, (Haydock) as it seems to have done on other occasions. Thus shor, “an ox,” should be sar, “a prince,” Genesis xlix. 6., and Osee xii. 11. Shevarim, “oxen,” has been read sarim, “princes,” by the Septuagint. The former passage might admit of some corrections. “In their anger they slew the men, and in their fury (vabrothom; instead of vabrotsnom, which is always explained in a good sense) they destroyed the princes. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their fury, for it was inflexible.”