Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 11:3

"And the elders of Jabesh said unto him, Give us seven days` respite, that we may send messengers unto all the borders of Israel; and then, if there be none to save us, we will come out to thee." — 1 Samuel 11:3 (ASV)

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.