1 Samuel 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Saul organizes a standing force, and Jonathan attacks a Philistine outpost at Geba, which brings a huge Philistine army against Israel. Saul's men hide or desert while he waits at Gilgal for Samuel; when Samuel is late, Saul offers the burnt offering himself, and Samuel tells him his kingdom will not continue and that the LORD has sought another man to lead his people. Philistine raiders spread out in three directions, and the chapter closes by explaining that Israel had no blacksmiths, so only Saul and Jonathan carried a sword or spear on the day of battle.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • Saul was one year old when he began to reign.
   • The number giving Saul's age at his accession is defective in the text, so his age is not actually stated.
   • Saul reigned two years over Israel.
2. 13:2
   • Saul chose three thousand men out of Israel for himself.
   • Two thousand of them were with Saul at Michmash and in the hill country of Bethel.
   • One thousand of them were with Jonathan at Gibeah of Benjamin.
   • Saul sent the rest of the people away, each man to his tent.
3. 13:3
   • Jonathan struck down the Philistine post at Geba.
   • What Jonathan struck is called a netsiv, which may mean a garrison, a governor, or a pillar.
   • The Philistines heard about it.
   • Saul blew the ram's horn throughout all the land.
   • Saul said, 'Let the Hebrews hear.'
4. 13:4
   • All Israel heard it said that Saul had struck the Philistine post.
   • It was also said that Israel had become a stench to the Philistines.
   • The people were summoned to follow Saul to Gilgal.
5. 13:5
   • The Philistines gathered to fight against Israel.
   • The Philistines had thirty thousand chariots.
   • The Philistines had six thousand horsemen.
   • The Philistine troops were as numerous as the sand on the seashore.
   • The Philistines went up and camped at Michmash.
   • Michmash is east of Beth-aven.
6. 13:6
   • The men of Israel saw that they were in distress.
   • The people were hard pressed.
   • The people hid in caves.
   • The people hid in thickets.
   • The people hid among the rocks.
   • The people hid in cellars.
   • The people hid in cisterns.
7. 13:7
   • Some Hebrews crossed over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead.
   • Saul was still at Gilgal.
   • All the people who followed Saul were trembling.
8. 13:8
   • He waited seven days for the time Samuel had appointed.
   • Samuel did not come to Gilgal.
   • The people scattered away from Saul.
9. 13:9
   • Saul said, 'Bring me the burnt offering and the peace offerings.'
   • Saul offered up the burnt offering.
10. 13:10
    • As soon as Saul finished offering the burnt offering, Samuel arrived.
    • Saul went out to meet Samuel in order to greet him.
11. 13:11
    • Samuel said, 'What have you done?'
    • Saul said that he had seen the people scattering away from him.
    • Saul said that Samuel had not come at the appointed time.
    • Saul said that the Philistines were gathering at Michmash.
12. 13:12
    • Saul said he had thought the Philistines would come down against him at Gilgal.
    • Saul said he had not sought the favor of the LORD.
    • Saul said he forced himself.
    • Saul said he offered up the burnt offering.
13. 13:13
    • Samuel said to Saul, 'You have acted foolishly.'
    • Samuel said Saul had not kept the commandment the LORD his God commanded him.
    • Samuel said that otherwise the LORD would have established Saul's kingdom over Israel forever.
14. 13:14
    • Samuel said Saul's kingdom would not continue.
    • Samuel said the LORD had sought out for himself a man after his own heart.
    • Samuel said the LORD had appointed that man to be ruler over his people.
    • Samuel gave as the reason that Saul had not kept what the LORD commanded him.
15. 13:15
    • Samuel arose and went up from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin.
    • Saul mustered the people who were present with him.
    • The people with Saul numbered about six hundred men.
16. 13:16
    • Saul, Jonathan his son, and the people present with them were staying at Geba of Benjamin.
    • The Philistines were camped at Michmash.
17. 13:17
    • Raiders went out from the Philistine camp in three companies.
    • One company turned toward the road to Ophrah, into the land of Shual.
18. 13:18
    • Another company turned toward the road to Beth-horon.
    • Another company turned toward the road of the border that overlooks the Valley of Zeboim, toward the wilderness.
19. 13:19
    • No smith could be found in all the land of Israel.
    • The Philistines had said this was so the Hebrews would not make swords or spears.
20. 13:20
    • All the Israelites went down to the Philistines.
    • They went down so each man could sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, and his sickle.
21. 13:21
    • The charge for sharpening was a pim, a weight of silver.
    • The charge applied to plowshares, to mattocks, to three-pronged forks, and to axes.
    • The charge also applied to setting the point of an ox goad.
22. 13:22
    • On the day of battle no sword or spear was found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan.
    • A sword and spear were found for Saul and for Jonathan his son.
23. 13:23
    • A Philistine outpost went out to the pass of Michmash.

Words Worth Explaining

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

13:1

The Hebrew of this verse is damaged. It follows the standard formula used for kings ("X was N years old when he began to reign, and he reigned M years") but the numbers themselves are missing or garbled, giving the literal nonsense of a one-year-old king with a two-year reign. Some ancient Greek copies leave the verse out altogether; other translations supply figures by guesswork ("thirty years old… forty-two years"). The rendering here follows the King James, which reads the verse as a note of time: one year into Saul's reign, and then the second.

13:2

Israel had no standing army: men were called up from their farms when fighting threatened and sent home afterwards. Keeping three thousand men permanently under arms was something new. Michmash, Bethel and Gibeah are all in the hill country a few miles north of what would later be Jerusalem; "the land of Benjamin" is the territory of Saul's own tribe.

13:3

The Philistines were a people settled on the coastal plain to the south-west, organized around five main cities. They controlled the region and were ahead of Israel in metalworking, which is what verse 19 is about. An "army post" (KJV "garrison") was a small occupying detachment stationed in Israelite territory, attacking one was an open act of rebellion. The ram's horn was the standard instrument for sounding an alarm and calling men to muster; it carried for miles across the hills. "Hebrews" is the word outsiders normally used for the Israelites, and it is used here in a message meant to be heard as a challenge.

13:4

The Hebrew idiom is that Israel "made itself a stench" to the Philistines, the same phrase used elsewhere for something that has become offensive and unbearable. It is about being intolerable rather than merely disliked.

13:5

Thirty thousand chariots is far larger than any known chariot force of the period, and some ancient copies read three thousand. Beth-aven means "house of trouble" or "house of wickedness"; it is a place name here, though elsewhere prophets use it as a deliberate insulting substitute for Bethel, "house of God."

13:6

The King James reads "high places" here. The Hebrew word means a hole, vault or cellar: the point is that people crawled into whatever holes the ground offered, not that they climbed. It is not the same expression as the "high places" that appear elsewhere as hilltop shrines.

13:7

Gad and Gilead lie east of the Jordan. Crossing the river put a major natural barrier between these men and the fighting.

13:8

The appointment goes back to Samuel's earlier instruction to Saul (1 Samuel 10:8) to go to Gilgal and wait seven days until Samuel came to offer sacrifices and tell him what to do.

13:9

In a burnt offering the animal was burned whole and none of it eaten; in a peace offering only part was burned and the rest became a shared meal. Offering sacrifice before a battle was the normal way of asking for divine backing before committing troops.

13:10

"Salute" in 1611 English means simply to greet someone, exchanging the customary words of welcome. It has nothing to do with a military salute.

13:12

"Asked the LORD for his favor" renders a Hebrew idiom that literally means to soften or stroke someone's face, the ordinary phrase for seeking the goodwill of a superior before making a request.

13:13

Samuel does not say which command; readers have usually connected it with the instruction to wait at Gilgal in 1 Samuel 10:8, but the text itself leaves the reference open.

13:14

"A man after his own heart" is a Hebrew way of saying "a man of his own choosing, one who suits him", the emphasis falls on God's selection rather than on the man's inner qualities. The word behind "leader" is one used for a ruler designated or marked out for the role.

13:15

The Hebrew moves abruptly here; the ancient Greek version has a longer text in which Samuel goes his own way and Saul goes up from Gilgal to join his men.

13:16

Geba is a separate town about two miles from Gibeah, sitting on the south side of the ravine opposite the Philistine camp. The King James prints Gibeah here, harmonizing the two.

13:17

These were plundering parties rather than a battle force: they fanned out in three directions to strip the countryside of food and livestock and to terrify the population into submission.

13:18

The three groups head north, west and east. The point of listing the directions is that the Philistines were ranging wherever they pleased through Israelite territory, and nobody was in a position to stop them.

13:19

A monopoly on metalworking was a standard way for a stronger power to keep a subject people disarmed. Farm tools could be maintained under supervision; swords and spears could not be made at all.

13:20

The Hebrew names of these four farm implements are not all certain: they are variously understood as plow blades, plowshares or ploughpoints, axes, and mattocks or sickles. All of them are agricultural, which is the point.

13:21

The KJV "file" comes from a misreading of an unfamiliar word. The Hebrew has *pim*, a unit of weight whose meaning was unknown until small stone weights stamped p-y-m were dug up in Palestine, about two thirds of a shekel of silver, roughly 7.6 grams. The verse is a price list of what the Philistines charged Israelite farmers to sharpen each kind of tool. An ox goad was a long pole with a metal point used to prod plow animals; the point had to be re-sharpened as it wore down.

13:22

Two swords in an entire army. The rest of Saul's men would have had farm implements, slings, bows and whatever they could improvise. This detail is placed here deliberately, just before the events of chapter 14.

13:23

The pass at Michmash is a steep, narrow gorge with cliffs on either side, the only practical crossing between the two camps, and the setting for what happens next.