So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Millo and inward.
David dwelt in the fort ... Having taken it by storm, he changed its name to "The city of David," to signify the importance of the conquest, and to perpetuate the memory of the event.
David built round about from Millo and inward - probably a row of stone bastions placed on the northern side of Mount Zion, and built by David to secure himself on that side from the Jebusites, who still lived in the lower part of the city. The house of Millo was, perhaps, the principal corner-tower of that fortified wall. Such was the small beginning of Jerusalem; and although its walls were far from being of so diminutive a size at this time, that, like those of Rome, any one could have leaped over them in contempt, "The city of David" was but the rudiments of what became afterward the most celebrated in the world. Viewing its site in connection with the limits of the promised land, it was not a happy selection; yet it is constantly spoken of in Scripture as the place which God had chosen to put his name there, (Psalms 132:13, etc.) There is an apparent difficulty here, which, however, is at once explained when we remember that David utterly failed to realize the Mosaic type and ideal of the Hebrew nation. His empire, as it was constituted, and as he enlarged it by conquest, was formed after the model of the Assyrian kingdom-empires. In reference to the actual circumstances and the after-history of the Jews, Jerusalem was, of all sites in the country, the best that could have been chosen; and yet on its mountain height (2,500 feet above the sea), far away from the roads between the great empires, and accessible only by steep and winding passes, it was secluded, so that it was freed, as it now is, from any necessary implication in the great movements of the world. So secluded, and yet so central, it was marvelously fitted as the scene of the events that were to be transacted in it (Drew's 'Scripture Lands,'
p. 147: see also Robinson's 'Biblical Researches,' 1:, p. 389).