1 Samuel 13

1Sa  13:1

The history of the reign of Saul commences with this chapter;

(Note: The connection of 1Sa 13:8-11 of this chapter with 1Sa 10:8 is adduced in support of the hypothesis that 1 Samuel 13 forms a direct continuation of the account that was broken off in 1Sa 10:16. This connection must be admitted; but it by no means follows that in the source from which the books before us were derived, 1 Samuel 13 was directly attached to 1Sa 8:16, and that Samuel intended to introduce Saul publicly as king here in Gilgal immediately before the attack upon the Philistines, to consecrate him by the solemn presentation of sacrifices, and to connect with this the religious consecration of the approaching campaign. For there is not a word about any such intention in the chapter before us or in 1Sa 10:8, nor even the slightest hint at it. Thenius has founded this view of his upon his erroneous interpretation of ירדתּ in 1Sa 10:8 as an imperative, as if Samuel intended to command Saul to go to Gilgal immediately after the occurrence of the signs mentioned in 1Sa 10:2.: a view which is at variance with the instructions given to him, to do what his hand should find after the occurrence of those signs. To this we may also add the following objections: How is it conceivable that Saul, who concealed his anointing even from his own family after his return from Samuel to Gibeah (1Sa 10:16), should have immediately after chosen 3000 men of Israel to begin the war against the Philistines? How did Saul attain to any such distinction, that at his summons all Israel gathered round him as their king, even before he had been publicly proclaimed king in the presence of the people, and before he had secured the confidence of the people by any kingly heroic deed? The fact of his having met with a band of prophets, and even prophesied in his native town of Gibeah after his departure from Samuel, and that this had become a proverb, is by no means enough to explain the enterprises described in 1Sa 8:1-7, which so absolutely demand the incidents that occurred in the meantime as recorded in 1 Samuel 10:17-12:25 even to make them intelligible, that any writing in which 1Sa 13:2. following directly upon 1Sa 10:16 would necessarily be regarded as utterly faulty. This fact, which I have already adduced in my examination of the hypothesis defended by Thenius in my Introduction to the Old Testament (p. 168), retains its force undiminished, even though, after a renewed investigation of the question, I have given up the supposed connection between 1Sa 10:8 and the proclamation mentioned in 1Sa 11:14., which I defended there.)

and according to the standing custom in the history of the kings, it opens with a statement of the age of the king when he began to reign, and the number of years that his reign lasted. If, for example, we compare the form and contents of this verse with 2Sa 2:10; 2Sa 5:4; 1Ki 14:21; 1Ki 22:42; 2Ki 8:26, and other passages, where the age is given at which Ishbosheth, David, and many of the kings of Judah began to reign, and also the number of years that their reign lasted, there can be no doubt that our verse was also intended to give the same account concerning Saul, and therefore that every attempt to connect this verse with the one which follows is opposed to the uniform historical usage. Moreover, even if, as a matter of necessity, the second clause of  1Sa 13:1 could be combined with 1Sa 13:2 in the following manner: He was two years king over Israel, then Saul chose 3000 men, etc.; the first half of the verse would give no reasonable sense, according to the Masoretic text that has come down to us. בּמלכו שׁאוּל בּן־שׁנה cannot possibly be rendered "jam per annum regnaverat Saul," "Saul had been king for a year," or "Saul reigned one year," but can only mean "Saul was a year old when he became king." This is the way in which the words have been correctly rendered by the Sept. and Jerome; and so also in the Chaldee paraphrase ("Saul was an innocent child when he began to reign") this is the way in which the text has been understood.

It is true that this statement as to his age is obviously false; but all that follows from that is, that there is an error in the text, namely, that between בּן and שׁנה the age has fallen out, - a thing which could easily take place, as there are many traces to show that originally the numbers were not written in words, but only in letters that were used as numerals. This gap in the text is older than the Septuagint version, as our present text is given there. There is, it is true, an anonymus in the hexapla, in which we find the reading υἱὸς τριάκοντα ἐτῶν Σαούλ; but this is certainly not according to ancient MSS, but simply according to a private conjecture, and that an incorrect one. For since Saul already had a son, Jonathan, who commanded a division of the army in the very first years of his reign, and therefore must have been at least twenty years of age, if not older, Saul himself cannot have been less than forty years old when he began to reign. Moreover, in the second half of the verse also, the number given is evidently a wrong one, and the text therefore equally corrupt; for the rendering "when he had reigned two years over Israel" is opposed both by the parallel passages already quoted, and also by the introduction of the name Saul as the subject in 1Sa 13:2, which shows very clearly that 1Sa 13:2 commences a fresh sentence, and is not merely the apodosis to 1Sa 13:1. But Saul's reign must have lasted longer than two years, even if, in opposition to all analogies to be found elsewhere, we should understand the two years as merely denoting the length of his reign up to the time of his rejection (1 Samuel 15), and not till the time of his death. Even then he reigned longer than that; for he could not possibly have carried on all the wars mentioned in 1Sa 14:47, with Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah and the Philistines, in the space of two years. Consequently a numeral, say כ, twenty, must also have dropped out before שׁנים שׁתּי (two years); since there are cogent reasons for assuming that his reign lasted as long as twenty or twenty-two years, reckoning to the time of his death. We have given the reasons themselves in connection with the chronology of the period of the judges (pp. 206f.).

(Note: The traditional account that Saul reigned forty years (Act 13:24, and Josephus, Ant. vi. 14, 9) is supposed to have arisen, according to the conjecture of Thenius (on 2Sa 2:10), from the fact that his son Ishbosheth was forty years old when he began to reign, and the notion that as he is not mentioned among the sons of Saul in 1Sa 14:49, he must have been born after the commencement of Saul's own reign. This conjecture is certainly a probable one; but it is much more natural to assume that as David and Solomon reigned forty years, it arose from the desire to make Saul's reign equal to theirs.)

The war with the Philistines (1 Samuel 13-14) certainly falls, at least so far as the commencement is concerned, in the very earliest part of Saul's reign. This we must infer partly from the fact, that at the very time when Saul was seeking for his father's asses, there was a military post of the Philistines at Gibeah (1Sa 10:5), and therefore the Philistines had already occupied certain places in the land; and partly also from the fact, that according to this chapter Saul selected an army of 3000 men out of the whole nation, took up his post at Michmash with 2000 of them, placing the other thousand at Gibeah under his son Jonathan, and sent the rest of the people home (1Sa 13:2), because his first intention was simply to check the further advance of the Philistines. The dismission of the rest of the people to their own homes presupposes that the whole of the fighting men of the nation were assembled together. But as no other summoning together of the people has been mentioned before, except to the war upon the Ammonites at Jabesh (1Sa 11:6-7), where all Israel gathered together, and at the close of which Samuel had called the people and their king to Gilgal (1Sa 11:14), the assumption is a very probable one, that it was there at Gilgal, after the renewal of the monarchy, that Saul formed the resolution at once to make war upon the Philistines, and selected 3000 fighting men for the purpose out of the whole number that were collected together, and then dismissed the remainder to their homes. In all probability Saul did not consider that either he or the Israelites were sufficiently prepared as yet to undertake a war upon the Philistines generally, and therefore resolved, in the first place, only to attack the outpost of the Philistines, which was advanced as far as Gibeah, with a small number of picked soldiers. According to this simple view of affairs, the war here described took place at the very commencement of Saul's reign; and the chapter before us is closely connected with the preceding one.

Saul posted himself at Michmash and on the mount of Bethel with his two thousand men. Michmash, the present Mukhmas, a village in ruins upon the northern ridge of the Wady Suweinit, according to the Onom. (s. v. Machmas), was only nine Roman miles to the north of Jerusalem, whereas it took Robinson three hours and a half to go from one to the other (Pal. ii. p. 117). Bethel (Beitin; see at Jos 7:2) is to the north-west of this, at a distance of two hours' journey, if you take the road past Deir-Diwan. The mountain (הר) of Bethel cannot be precisely determined. Bethel itself was situated upon very high ground; and the ruins of Beitin are completely surrounded by heights (Rob. ii. p. 126; and v. Raumer, Pal. pp. 178-9). Jonathan stationed himself with his thousand men at (by) Gibeah of Benjamin, the native place and capital of Saul, which was situated upon Tell el Phul (see at Jos 18:28), about an hour and a half form Michmas.

Saul's untimely sacrifice. - 1Sa 13:8, 1Sa 13:9. Saul waited seven days for Samuel's coming, according to the time appointed by Samuel (see at 1Sa 10:8), before proceeding to offer the sacrifices through which the help of the Lord was to be secured for the approaching campaign (see 1Sa 13:12); and as Samuel did not come, the people began to disperse and leave him. The Kethib וייחל is either the Niphal ויּיּחל, as in Gen 8:12, or Piel וייחל; and the Keri ויּוחל (Hiphil) is unnecessary. The verb יעד may easily be supplied to שׁמוּאל אשׁר from the word למּועד (see Ges. Lehrgeb. p. 851).

Saul then resolved, in his anxiety lest the people should lose all heart and forsake him altogether if there were any further delay, that he would offer the sacrifice without Samuel. העולה ויּעל does not imply that Saul offered the sacrifice with his own hand, i.e., that he performed the priestly function upon this occasion. The co-operation of the priests in performing the duties belonging to them on such an occasion is taken for granted, just as in the case of the sacrifices offered by David and Solomon (2Sa 24:25; 1Ki 3:4; 1Ki 8:63).

The offering of the sacrifice was hardly finished when Samuel came and said to Saul, as he came to meet him and salute him, "What hast thou done?" Saul replied, "When I saw that the people were scattered away from me, and thou camest not at the time appointed, and the Philistines were assembled at Michmash, I thought the Philistines will come down to me to Gilgal now (to attack me), before I have entreated the face of Jehovah; and I overcame myself, and offered the burnt-offering." יי פּני חלּה: see Exo 32:11.

Samuel replied, "Thou hast acted foolishly, (and) not kept the commandment of Jehovah thy God, which He commanded thee: for now (sc., if thou hadst obeyed His commandment) Jehovah would have established thy sovereignty over Israel for ever; but now (sc., since thou hast acted thus) thy sovereignty shall not continue." The antithesis of הכין עתּה and תקוּם לא ועתּה requires that we should understand these two clauses conditionally. The conditional clauses are omitted, simply because they are at once suggested by the tenor of the address (see Ewald, §358, a.). The כּי (for) assigns the reason, and refers to נסכּלתּ ("thou hast done foolishly"), the וגו שׁמרתּ לא being merely added as explanatory. The non-continuance of the sovereignty is not to be regarded as a rejection, or as signifying that Saul had actually lost the throne so far as he himself was concerned; but תקוּם לא (shall not continue) forms the antithesis to עד־עולם הכין (established for ever), and refers to the fact that it was not established in perpetuity by being transmitted to his descendants. It was not till his second transgression that Saul was rejected, or declared unworthy of being king over the people of God (1 Samuel 15). We are not compelled to assume an immediate rejection of Saul even by the further announcement made by Samuel, "Jehovah hath sought him a man after his own heart; him hath Jehovah appointed prince over His people;" for these words merely announce the purpose of God, without defining the time of its actual realization. Whether it would take place during Saul's reign, or not till after his death, was known only to God, and was made contingent upon Saul's further behaviour. But if Saul's sin did not consist, as we have observed above, in his having interfered with the prerogatives of the priests by offering the sacrifice himself, but simply in the fact that he had transgressed the commandment of God as revealed to him by Samuel, to postpone the sacrifice until Samuel arrived, the punishment which the prophet announced that God would inflict upon him in consequence appears a very severe one, since Saul had not come to the resolution either frivolously or presumptuously, but had been impelled and almost forced to act as he did by the difficulties in which he was placed in consequence of the prophet delaying his coming. But wherever, as in the present instance, there is a definite command given by the Lord, a man has no right to allow himself to be induced to transgress it, by fixing his attention upon the earthly circumstances in which he is placed. As Samuel had instructed Saul, as a direct command from Jehovah, to wait for his arrival before offering sacrifice, Saul might have trusted in the Lord that he would send His prophet at the right time and cause His command to be fulfilled, and ought not to have allowed his confidence to be shaken by the pressing danger of delay. The interval of seven days and the delay in Samuel's arrival were intended as a test of his faith, which he ought not to have lightly disregarded. Moreover, the matter in hand was the commencement of the war against the principal enemies of Israel, and Samuel was to tell him what he was to do (1Sa 10:8). So that when Saul proceeded with the consecrating sacrifice for that very conflict, without the presence of Samuel, he showed clearly enough that he thought he could make war upon the enemies of his kingdom without the counsel and assistance of God. This was an act of rebellion against the sovereignty of Jehovah, for which the punishment announced was by no means too severe.

After this occurrence Samuel went up to Gibeah, and Saul mustered the people who were with him, about six hundred men. Consequently Saul had not even accomplished the object of his unseasonable sacrifice, namely, to prevent the dispersion of the people. With this remark the account of the occurrence that decided the fate of Saul's monarchy is brought to a close.

Disarming of Israel by the Philistines. - The following account is no doubt connected with the foregoing, so far as the facts are concerned, inasmuch as Jonathan's brave heroic deed, which brought the Israelites a splendid victory over the Philistines, terminated the war for which Saul had entreated the help of God by his sacrifice at Gilgal; but it is not formally connected with it, so as to form a compact and complete account of the successive stages of the war. On the contrary, the 16th verse, where we have an account of the Israelitish warriors and their enemies, commences a new section of the history, in which the devastating march of the Philistines through the land, and the disarming of the Israelites by these their enemies, are first of all depicted (1Sa 13:17-23); and then the victory of the Israelites through Jonathan's daring and heroic courage, notwithstanding their utter prostration, is recorded (1 Samuel 14:1-46), for the purpose of showing how the Lord had miraculously helped His people.

(Note: From this arrangement of the history, according to which the only two points that are minutely described in connection with the war with the Philistines are those which bring out the attitude of the king, whom the nation had desired to deliver it from its foes, towards Jehovah, and the way in which Jehovah acted towards His people, whilst all the rest is passed over, we may explain the absence of any closer connection between 1Sa 13:15 and 1Sa 13:16, and not from a gap in the text. The lxx, however, adopted the latter supposition, and according to the usual fashion filled up the gap by expanding 1Sa 13:15 in the following thoughtless manner: καὶ ἀνέστη Σαμουὴλ καὶ ἀπῆλθεν ἐκ Γαλγάλων· καὶ τὸ κατάλειμμα τοῦ λαοῦ ἀνεβη ὀπίσω Σαοὺλ εἰς ἀπάντησιν ὀπίσω τοῦ λαοῦ τοῦ πολεμιστοῦ· αὐτῶν παραγενομένων ἐκ Γαλγάλων εἰς Γαβαὰ Βενιαμὶν καὶ ἐπεσκέψατο Σαοὺλ, κ.τ.λ. For there is no sense in εἰς ἀπάντησιν ὀπίσω, and the whole thought, that the people who were left went up after Saul to meet the people of war, is unintelligible, since it is not stated whence the people of war had come, who are said to have met with those who had remained behind with Saul, and to have gone up with him from Gilgal to Gibeah. If, however, we overlook this, and assume that when Saul returned from Gilgal to Gibeah a further number of fighting men came to him from different parts of the land, how does this assumption agree with the account which follows, viz., that when Saul mustered the people he found only six hundred men, - a statement which is repeated again in 1Sa 14:2? The discrepancy remains even if we adopt Ewald's conjecture (Gesch. iii. 43), that εἰς ἀπάντησιν is a false rendering of לקּרב, "to the conflict." Moreover, even with the Alexandrian filling up, no natural connection is secured between 1Sa 13:15 and 1Sa 13:16, unless we identify Geba of Benjamin with Gibeah, as the Septuagint and its latest defenders have done, and not only change the participle ישׁבים (1Sa 13:16) into the aorist ἐκάθισαν, but interpolate καὶ ἔκλαιον after "at Geba of Benjamin;" whereas the statement of the text "at Geba in Benjamin" is proved to be correct by the simple fact that Jonathan could only attempt or carry out the heroic deed recorded in 1 Samuel 14 from Geba and not from Gibeah; and the alteration of the participle into the aorist is just as arbitrary as the interpolation of καὶ ἔκλαιον. From all this it follows that the Septuagint version has not preserved the original reading, as Ewald and Thenius suppose, but contains nothing more than a mistaken attempt to restore the missing link. It is true the Vulgate contains the same filling up as the Septuagint, but with one alteration, which upsets the assertion made by Thenius, that the repetition of the expression הגּלגּל מן, ἐκ Γαλγάλων, caused the reading contained in the Septuagint to be dropped out of the Hebrew text. For the text of the Vulgate runs as follows: Surrexit autem Samuêl et ascendit de Galgalis in Gabaa Benjamin. Et reliqui populi ascenderunt post Saul obviam populo, qui expugnabant eos venientes de Galgala in Gabaa in colle Benjamin. Et recensuit Saul, etc. Jerome has therefore rendered the first two clauses of 1Sa 13:15 in perfect accordance with the Hebrew text; and the addition which follows is nothing more than a gloss that has found its way into his translation from the Itala, and in which de Galgala in colle Benjamin is still retained, whereas Jerome himself rendered הגּלגּל מן de Galgalis.)

The two clauses of this verse are circumstantial clauses: "But Saul, and Jonathan his son, and the people that were with him, were sitting, i.e., tarrying, in Geba of Benjamin (the present Jeba; see at 1Sa 13:3); and the Philistines had encamped at Michmash." Just as in 1Sa 13:2-4 it is not stated when or why Saul went from Michmash or Geba to Gilgal, but this change in his position is merely hinted at indirectly at the close of 1Sa 13:4; so here Saul's return from Gilgal to Geba with the fighting men who remained with him is not distinctly mentioned, but simply taken for granted as having already occurred.