Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 11

Nahash the Ammonite. Nahash was king of the children of Ammon (see 1 Samuel 12:12). This royal family was in some way related to David (see 2 Samuel 17:25; 1 Chronicles 2:16–17). At the time of David’s exile because of the rebellion of Absalom, a son of Nahash the Ammonite is specially mentioned as showing kindness to the fugitive king.

Jabesh-gilead was a city situated in Northern Gilead, in the territory assigned to Manasseh. Josephus states that it was the capital of the country of Gilead.

The Ammonites were a people related to the Moabites, being descended from the same ancestor, the patriarch Lot. They asserted that a portion of their territory had been taken from them by Israel, and in the days of the judges severely harassed the people. The Judge Jephthah attacked and defeated them with great slaughter.

No doubt, it was to avenge the disgrace they had suffered at the hands of Jephthah that their warlike monarch, Nahash—considering the opportunity a favourable one, because of the old age of the reigning judge, Samuel—invaded the Israelite country bordering his kingdom and besieged the city of Jabesh-gilead.

Make a covenant with us. The citizens of Jabesh-gilead, feeling their isolation and comparative remoteness from the chief centre of the people, were willing to pay tribute to the Ammonite king and made him overtures to this effect.

On this condition. —The horrible cruelty of this scornful proposal gives us an insight into the barbarous customs of this imperfectly civilized age. Indeed, many of the crimes we read of in these books—crimes which, to modern ears, justly sound shocking and scarcely credible—can be attributed to the fact that civilization and its humanizing influences had made little progress yet among the nations of the world.

The purpose of Nahash’s cruelty was to incapacitate the inhabitants of Jabesh from ever again assisting his enemies in war; they would from then on be blinded in the right eye, while the left eye would be concealed by the shield which fighting-men customarily held before them.

Give us seven days’ respite. —This kind of proposal has always been a common one in times of war; we constantly encounter such a request from a beleaguered fortress, especially in medieval chronicles. It was, no doubt, made by the citizens in the hope that Saul the Benjamite, in whose election as king they had recently taken part, would devise some means for their rescue. Between Benjamin and the city of Jabesh-gilead there had long existed the closest ties of friendship.

We do not know how far back this strange link between the southern tribe and the distant frontier town dated. When Israel was summoned as one man (Judges 21:0), probably under the direction of Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, to avenge on Benjamin the crime committed by the men of Gibeah, Jabesh-gilead alone, among the cities of Israel—no doubt, out of its friendship for the sinning tribe—declined to obey the imperious summons, and for this act of disobedience was razed to the ground, and its inhabitants put to the sword.

The tribes, however, subsequently regretted their remorseless cruelty in their punishment of Benjamin and feared that their brother’s name might perish from the land; mindful, then, of the old loving feeling which existed between the city of Jabesh-gilead and the tribe of Benjamin, they gave the maidens of the ruined city spared in the judicial massacre perpetrated on the citizens to the fighting remnant of Benjamin, still defending themselves on the impregnable Rock of the Pomegranate, “Rimmon,” and did what was in their power to restore the ruined and broken tribe.

Jabesh-gilead seems to have risen again from its ashes, and Benjamin once more held up its head among the tribes of Israel, and had recently given the first king to the people. No wonder, then, that the city in the hour of its great need and deadly peril should send for aid to Gibeah in Benjamin, and to Saul, the Benjamite king. Neither the tribe nor the king failed them in their distress.

Then came the messengers to Gibeah. —In the preceding verse we read that it was resolved by the beleaguered city to send messengers to all the regions of Israel, but we only hear of the action taken by Saul in Gibeah. It therefore may be assumed that this was the first city they sent to, not only because of their ancient friendship with Benjamin, but also because Gibeah was the residence of the newly-elected sovereign, Saul.

And all the people lifted up their voices, and wept. —This is exactly what might have been expected from Benjamites hearing of the terrible straits to which the city they all loved so well, and which was united to them by such close bonds of friendship and alliance, had been reduced; but though they grieved so deeply, they do not seem to have been able, on their own, to devise any plan for its relief, until their great fellow-citizen took the matter in hand.

And, behold, Saul came after the herd out of the field. —Saul was still busied with his old pursuits. At first, this might seem strange. However, it must be remembered that regal authority was something quite new in republican Israel. The new king’s duties and privileges were initially vague and poorly understood. Furthermore, jealousies, such as those already noted (1 Samuel 10:27), undoubtedly led Saul and his advisers to keep the kingship in the background until an opportunity to bring it to the forefront presented itself.

It is, therefore, quite understandable that the newly-elected king would spend at least a portion of his time in pursuits that had previously occupied his whole life. He was not the first hero summoned from agricultural labours to assume command of an army in a national emergency. Gideon, we read, was called from the threshing-floor to do his great deeds. To quote from secular history, one of the noblest sons of Rome, much like Saul, was ploughing when the Senate summoned him to be dictator and general of their armies. We also know that this great man returned to the plough after his work was successfully accomplished and his country saved.