1 Samuel 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Nahash the Ammonite besieges Jabesh-gilead and offers terms only if every man there loses his right eye. Messengers reach Saul, the Spirit of God comes on him, and he musters Israel by sending pieces of butchered oxen through the land as a threat. Saul's army attacks at dawn and destroys the Ammonites, and afterward he refuses to let anyone execute the men who had doubted him. The people go to Gilgal, confirm Saul as king before the LORD, offer peace offerings, and celebrate.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • Nahash the Ammonite came up.
   • Nahash encamped against Jabesh-gilead.
   • All the men of Jabesh spoke to Nahash.
   • The men of Jabesh asked Nahash to make a covenant with them.
   • The men of Jabesh said that they would serve Nahash.
2. 11:2
   • Nahash the Ammonite answered the men of Jabesh.
   • Nahash said he would make a covenant with them on one condition.
   • The condition was that every one of their right eyes be gouged out.
   • Nahash said he would make this a reproach upon all Israel.
3. 11:3
   • The elders of Jabesh spoke to Nahash.
   • The elders asked Nahash to leave them alone for seven days.
   • The elders said they would send messengers throughout all the territory of Israel.
   • The elders said that if there were no one to save them, they would come out and surrender to Nahash.
4. 11:4
   • The messengers came to Gibeah of Saul.
   • The messengers spoke the words in the ears of the people.
   • All the people lifted up their voices.
   • All the people wept.
5. 11:5
   • Saul was coming in from the field behind the oxen.
   • Saul asked what was wrong with the people that they were weeping.
   • They told Saul the words of the men of Jabesh.
6. 11:6
   • The Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words.
   • Saul's anger burned greatly.
7. 11:7
   • Saul took a pair of oxen.
   • Saul cut the oxen into pieces.
   • Saul sent the pieces throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of the messengers.
   • Saul declared that whoever did not come out after Saul and after Samuel would have this done to his oxen.
   • The dread of the LORD fell upon the people.
   • The people came out as one man.
8. 11:8
   • Saul numbered them at Bezek.
   • The Israelites numbered three hundred thousand.
   • The men of Judah numbered thirty thousand.
9. 11:9
   • They spoke to the messengers who had come.
   • They instructed the messengers to tell the men of Jabesh-gilead that deliverance would be theirs tomorrow by the time the sun was hot.
   • The messengers came and reported this to the men of Jabesh.
   • The men of Jabesh rejoiced.
10. 11:10
    • The men of Jabesh said that tomorrow they would come out.
    • The men of Jabesh said that whoever they spoke to could do with them whatever seemed good in their eyes.
11. 11:11
    • On the next day Saul set the people in three companies.
    • They came into the midst of the camp during the morning watch.
    • They struck down the Ammonites until the heat of the day.
    • Those who survived were scattered.
    • No two of the survivors were left together.
12. 11:12
    • The people spoke to Samuel.
    • The people asked who it was that said, Shall Saul reign over us?
    • The people demanded that those men be handed over so they could put them to death.
13. 11:13
    • Saul said that no man would be put to death that day.
    • Saul gave as the reason that on that day the LORD had worked deliverance in Israel.
14. 11:14
    • Samuel spoke to the people.
    • Samuel told them to go to Gilgal.
    • Samuel said they would renew the kingship there.
15. 11:15
    • All the people went to Gilgal.
    • There they made Saul king before the LORD in Gilgal.
    • There they sacrificed sacrifices of peace offerings before the LORD.
    • There Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

The Ammonites were a people living east of the Jordan River, in what is now Jordan; they and Israel had fought on and off for generations. Jabesh-gilead was an Israelite town on that same eastern side of the river, cut off from the main body of Israel by the Jordan valley. The town had old ties of marriage and kinship with the tribe of Benjamin, Saul's tribe. The "covenant" or "agreement" being asked for here is a surrender treaty: the town would keep its lives and become a subject population, paying tribute and supplying labor or troops to Nahash.

11:2

In ancient warfare a man fought with a shield on his left arm, which covered the left side of his face. Destroying the right eye left a man unable to aim or fight but still able to work: it disabled a town's fighting men permanently without killing them. "Reproach" here means public humiliation: every mutilated man would be a walking advertisement that Israel could not protect its own.

11:3

"Elders" were the senior heads of families who governed a town and spoke for it. "Coasts" in 1611 English meant borders or territory generally, and has nothing to do with the sea.

11:4

The King James word "tidings" just means news.

11:5

Saul had already been publicly chosen as king in the previous chapter, but he is here walking home behind his plow oxen. Israel at this point had no palace, no capital and no standing army; the news has to reach him at his farm.

11:6

The Hebrew verb is a violent one, the Spirit "rushed" or "seized" upon him. The same phrasing is used of the earlier judges such as Gideon and Samson: a sudden, temporary surge of power for a specific emergency, rather than a permanent state.

11:7

Butchering an animal and sending the pieces around was a recognized summons to war, and it carried a double force. It was a threat (this is what happens to your livestock if you stay home) and it echoed the way treaties were sealed in this period, by cutting an animal apart to picture what would befall anyone who broke the agreement.

11:8

Bezek was a mustering point west of the Jordan, opposite Jabesh-gilead. The Hebrew word translated "thousand" (eleph) can also mean a clan or a military unit of unspecified size, so the totals may mean 300 units from Israel and 30 from Judah rather than 330,000 individual men. The text can be read either way. The separate counting of Judah is a hint of the split between north and south that becomes open division later in Israel's history.

11:9

"By the time the sun is hot" means mid-morning, well before noon, a promise of rescue within hours, not days.

11:10

The men of Jabesh are lying. They now know help is coming at dawn, so they tell Nahash what he expects to hear in order to keep him relaxed and unprepared for one more night.

11:11

The night was divided into three watches. The "morning watch" was the last of them, running roughly from two o'clock until sunrise, the darkest, sleepiest stretch, and the standard hour for a surprise attack.

11:12

This refers back to the end of the previous chapter, where certain men had openly sneered at Saul's selection as king and refused to bring him the customary gift. The people now want those men executed for it.

11:13

"Wrought salvation" here means won a rescue. In older English "salvation" simply meant being saved from danger, in this case from an army, and the sentence is about the outcome of a battle rather than about anyone's soul.

11:14

Saul had already been chosen by lot and presented to the people at Mizpah in the previous chapter, but not everyone had accepted him. "Renew the kingdom" means holding a second, public confirmation ceremony now that he has proved himself in battle. Gilgal was a long-standing gathering and worship site in the Jordan valley near Jericho.

11:15

Peace offerings (Hebrew shelamim) were the one kind of sacrifice in which the worshipers ate most of the meat themselves. Only certain portions went on the altar; the rest became a shared feast. So this is a coronation banquet as much as a religious rite. "Before the LORD" means at the sanctuary, in the place set aside for worship.