Saul Rescues Jabesh

A month later, the war Saul fought against Nahash, king of the Ammonites, won him the respect of all the people. This Nahash had done a great deal of harm to the Jews who lived beyond the Jordan, through the campaign he had made against them with a large and warlike army. He reduced their cities to slavery, and not only by subduing them for the moment with force and violence; he also weakened them by cunning and craft, so that they would never afterward be able to get free of their slavery to him. He put out the right eyes of all who either surrendered to him on terms or were taken by him in war. He did this so that, since their left eyes were covered by their shields, they would be completely useless in war. When the king of the Ammonites had treated the people beyond the Jordan this way, he led his army against those called Gileadites. He pitched his camp at their chief city, Jabesh, and sent envoys to them, ordering them either to surrender on condition of having their right eyes gouged out, or to undergo a siege and have their cities overthrown. He gave them the choice of cutting off a small part of their bodies or perishing altogether. The Gileadites were so terrified at these terms that they did not dare give either answer, neither that they would surrender nor that they would fight him. Instead they asked him for seven days’ grace, so that they could send envoys to their countrymen and beg their help. If help came, they would fight; but if it was impossible to get it from them, they said, they would surrender and suffer whatever he pleased to inflict on them. [a]

So Nahash, despising the Gileadite populace and the answer they gave, granted them the delay and let them send to whomever they pleased for help. They immediately sent to the Israelites, city by city, and told them what Nahash had threatened to do to them and what great distress they were in. The people broke into tears and grief at what the envoys from Jabesh said, and their terror allowed them to do nothing more. When the messengers reached King Saul’s city and told of the danger the people of Jabesh were in, the people there were as distressed as those in the other cities, for they mourned the disaster of their kinsmen. When Saul came back into the city from his farm work, he found his fellow citizens weeping. On asking, he learned the cause of their confusion and sadness, and he was filled with God. He sent the envoys from Jabesh away, promising to come to their help on the third day and to defeat their enemies before sunrise, so that the rising sun would see that they had already won and were freed from their fears. But he told some of them to stay behind to guide them by the right road to Jabesh. [c]

Wanting to rouse the people to this war against the Ammonites by fear of the losses they would otherwise suffer, and so that they might gather the more quickly, he cut the hamstrings of his oxen and threatened to do the same to the oxen of all who did not come with their armor to the Jordan the next day and follow him and Samuel the prophet wherever they led them. So they gathered at the appointed time, out of fear of the losses they had been threatened with. The army was counted at the city of Bezek, and he found the number of those assembled, apart from the tribe of Judah, to be seven hundred thousand, while the men of that tribe were seventy thousand. Then he crossed the Jordan, marched all that night, more than thirty miles, and reached Jabesh before sunrise. He divided the army into three companies and fell on the enemy from every side, suddenly, when they expected nothing of the kind. Joining battle with them, they killed a great many of the Ammonites, and also their king Nahash. This glorious deed was done by Saul, and it was reported with high praise of him among all the Hebrews, and he won from it a wonderful reputation for courage. Though some of them had despised him before, they now changed their minds, honored him, and regarded him as the best of men. For he was not content with saving the people of Jabesh only; he marched into the country of the Ammonites, laid it all waste, took a large amount of plunder, and so returned to his own country in great glory. The people were delighted at Saul’s splendid achievements and rejoiced that they had made him their king. They also raised an outcry against those who had claimed he would be of no use to their affairs, and said, “Where are these men now? Let them be brought to punishment!” They said all the other things crowds usually say, when success has lifted them up, against those who not long before despised the men who brought it about. But Saul, though he took these men’s goodwill and affection very kindly, swore that he would not see any of his countrymen killed that day. It was absurd, he said, to stain with blood the victory God had given them, and to celebrate it by slaughtering their own kin. [d]

When Samuel told them that he must confirm the kingdom to Saul by appointing him a second time, they all gathered at the city of Gilgal, for that is where he told them to come. There the prophet anointed Saul with the holy oil in the sight of the people and declared him king a second time. So the government of the Hebrews was changed into a monarchy. In the days of Moses and of his disciple Joshua, who was their general, they had continued under an aristocracy; but after Joshua’s death, for eighteen years in all, the people had no settled form of government and were in anarchy. After that they returned to their former government, letting themselves be judged by whoever appeared to be the best and bravest warrior; that is why they called this period of their government the Judges.

Then Samuel the prophet called another assembly and said to them, “I solemnly charge you by the supreme God, who brought those excellent brothers, I mean Moses and Aaron, into the world, and delivered our fathers from the Egyptians and from the slavery they endured under them: do not say what you say to please me, do not hold anything back out of fear of me, and do not be swayed by any other feeling. Tell me, what have I ever done that was cruel or unjust? What have I done for gain or greed, or to gratify others? Testify against me if I have taken an ox or a sheep or any such thing, though when such things are taken to support men it is considered blameless; or if I have taken anyone’s donkey for my own use, to his grief. Lay any one such crime to my charge, now that we are in your king’s presence.” But they cried out that he had done no such thing, and that he had governed the nation in a holy and righteous way.

Then Samuel, when they had all given him this testimony, said, “Since you admit that up to now you cannot lay anything wrong to my charge, come, listen while I speak to you very frankly. You have been guilty of great impiety against God in asking for a king. You ought to remember that our forefather Jacob went down into Egypt because of a famine with only seventy persons of our family, and that their descendants multiplied there to many tens of thousands, whom the Egyptians brought into slavery and harsh oppression; and that God himself, in answer to our fathers’ prayers, sent Moses and Aaron, who were brothers, and gave them power to deliver the people from their distress, and this without a king. These men brought us into this very land you now possess. And when you enjoyed these benefits from God, you betrayed his worship and religion. Even so, when you were brought under the hands of your enemies, he delivered you: first by making you stronger than the Assyrians and their forces, then by letting you overcome the Ammonites and the Moabites, and last of all the Philistines; and you accomplished these things not with a king leading you, but under the command of Jephthah and Gideon. What madness, then, possessed you to run away from God and want to be under a king? Still, I have appointed as king the man he chose for you. But to make it plain to you that God is angry and displeased at your choice of kingly government, I will so move him that he declares it very plainly to you by strange signs. What none of you has ever seen here before, a winter storm in the middle of harvest, I will ask of God, and I will make it visible to you.” As soon as he had said this, God gave such great signs, with thunder and lightning and a fall of hail, that they confirmed the truth of everything the prophet had said. The people were amazed and terrified. They confessed that they had sinned, and had fallen into that sin through ignorance, and they begged the prophet, as a kind and considerate father to them, to make God merciful enough to forgive this sin, which they had added to the other offenses by which they had insulted him and transgressed against him. He promised them that he would plead with God and persuade him to forgive them these sins. But he urged them to be righteous and good, and always to remember the miseries that had come on them because they had turned away from virtue, and also to remember the strange signs God had shown them and the body of laws Moses had given them, if they had any wish to be preserved and made happy along with their king. But if they grew careless of these things, he said, great judgments would come from God on them and on their king. When Samuel had prophesied this to the Hebrews, he sent them away to their homes, having confirmed the kingdom to Saul for the second time. [j]