2 Samuel 18:8

8. Scattered For they could not march en masse through the tangled forests.

The wood devoured more people… than the sword This forest was probably full of deep gorges and pits, into which, in their haste, multitudes were thrown and perished; others were lost; and some, perhaps, as the Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic versions suggest, destroyed by wild beasts. Tristram, who passed through this region in 1864, writes: “We rose to the higher ground, and cantered through a noble forest of oaks. Perhaps we were in the woods of Mahanaim. Somewhere a little to the east of us was fought the battle with the rebellious Absalom, and by such an oak as these was he caught. In picturing the broken lines, and a rout through such an open forest, how we realized the statement: ‘The battle was there scattered over the face of all the country, and the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.’ As I rode under a grand old oak tree, I, too, lost my hat and turban, which were caught by a bough.”