Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 11:7

"And he took a yoke of oxen, and cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the borders of Israel by the hand of messengers, saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. And the dread of Jehovah fell on the people, and they came out as one man." — 1 Samuel 11:7 (ASV)

A yoke of oxen. In a moment, all the great powers of Saul, until now dormant, awoke. He issued his swift commands in a way that at once showed Israel they had a hero-king who would brook no trifling. At that very hour, striking dead the oxen standing before his plow, he cut them in pieces. Handing a bloody strip to some of the men standing around him—weeping for grief, shame, and the wrong done to Israel—he commanded them to swiftly carry these terrible war-signals throughout the length and breadth of the land, and by these means to rouse the nation to prompt action.

On this strange war-signal of King Saul, Ewald, in his History of Israel, Book II, section iii. 1 (note), remarks, “how in a similar way it was formerly the custom in Norway to send forth the war-arrow; and in Scotland a firebrand, with both ends dipped in blood, was dispatched as a war-token.”

Not improbably, Saul cut the oxen into eleven pieces and sent one to each of the other tribes.

And the fear of the Lord fell on the people. It was such a mighty awakening under the influence of the Spirit of the Eternal, as is related here of King Saul, which suggested to the poet Asaph the bold but splendid image of Psalm 78. There, after describing in moving language the degradation and bitter woe of fallen Israel, the singer, struck with a new inspiration, bursts forth with, Then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine. And he smote his enemies, etc. (Psalms 78:65).

The people rose as one man (see margin) against the enemies of their national freedom. It was the same Spirit of the Lord who inspired Saul to put himself at the head of the children of Israel, and who now laid hold of all the people, lifting them up, giving them new strength and irresistible courage, and the mighty feeling that God was with them.

It was due to a similar influence that, with scanty numbers, ill-armed and ill-trained, the Swiss won centuries of freedom for their land on memorable fields like Laupen and Morat, though the proudest chivalry of Europe was arrayed against them. It was the same Spirit who impelled the peace-loving traders of the marshes of Holland to rise as one man and to drive out forever from their beloved strip of fenland the previously invincible armies of Spain. No oppressor, though backed by the wealth and power of an empire, has ever been able to resist the smallest people in whose heart has burned the flame of the Divine fire of the “fear of the Lord.”