CHAPTER SUMMARY

Nahash, the king/general of Ammon advance towards Yavesh Gil`ad; the people of Yavesh Gil`ad ask him to make a treaty with them, to allow them to serve him (without having to undergo the rigors of war). Nahash responds that he will only do so if they each put out (or allow him to put out) their right eyes, to make it an embarrassment for the entire Jewish people.

The elders of Yavesh, unsure of whether they have any option, ask him for a week to send messengers throughout the Land; if they do not find, they will have to surrender to him. When the messengers come to various places, the people all cry. Shaul comes on the scene and is told the message from Yavesh. At this point, the Spirit of God strikes Shaul, and his anger flares greatly. He takes a pair of bulls, cuts them up, and sends them throughout the Land, warning that the same fate would befall the cattle of anyone who did not show up to help him in this war.

The people, in fear, all come, and Shaul counts them, finding 300,000 Jews, and thirty thousand from the tribe of Yehudah. The messengers are sent back to the people of Yavesh with the information that Shaul and the army would be there the next day at noon. The people of Yavesh, happy at the news, inform Nahash that the next day they would come out to him and he could do with them as he pleased. Shaul divides the army into three groups, attacks Nahash’s camp just before dawn, an attack that continues until noon, until all the rest of Nahash’s army dispersed in fright.

The people now turn to Shmuel and say, "who were those who mocked Shaul’s being king, give them to us and we will kill them." Shaul demurs, saying that the day that God had provided salvation to the Jewish people was not the time to put people to death. Shmuel then suggests going to Gilgal and renewing the kingship (having a second inauguration); they do so, with many sacrifices and much joy.

A CHALLENGE ISSUED

The arrival of Nahash is worth considering, since it is clearly not about a military need. Were Nahash really concerned with conquering Yavesh Gil`ad, he would have accepted their surrender and offer of tribute. His insistence on putting out their right eyes, and his willingness to allow them a week to seek saviors point to an interest in laying bare their defenselessness. That state would be embarrassing not just to the people of Yavesh, but to the entire Jewish people (it is in that way that we can understand his comment that he will, by putting out the right eyes of the people, place it as an embarrassment to the entire Jewish people).

Malbim suggests that Nahash was bothered by the Jewish people’s anointing a king, and he attacked Yavesh as a direct challenge to Shaul. Malbim notes that at the end of the book of Shoftim, the tribe of Binyamin had specifically married women from Yavesh Gilad. Presumably, some of them had settled there, so that Shaul’s relatives would be among the people of Yavesh. In attacking Yavesh, then, Nahash was challenging Shaul to a duel.

THE COMING OF A KING

The people of Yavesh, uncertain of whether they will find salvation, send for help. When their message arrives in Shaul’s town, everyone breaks out crying—they are accustomed to their helplessness, and see this as another example of it. Shaul arrives aharei habakar, which literally means after the cattle, a problematic comment.

One way to see that there is a problem in that description is to note the varying explanations of the phrase given by the commentators. Rashi interprets the phrase as referring only to a time of day. Radak says it means that Shaul was still doing ordinary household activities, while Malbim suggests that he happened to be following cattle, which explains why he cut up a pair of them when he wished to summon the people to war.

Rashi and Malbim’s attempts to avoid the simplest reading of the text probably stem from their resistance to assuming that the first king of the Jewish people spent any time of his reign as a shepherd. Assuming that he did, though (following Radak), we have another example of Shaul’s excessive (and perhaps misplaced) modesty. While Shmuel had declared him king, as had the people, he seems not to have felt himself any different, and therefore acted no differently.

All that changes with the arrival of the messengers. The spirit of God strikes Shaul, and he is filled with righteous anger. Note that we have seen this spirit strike him before (in the previous chapter, where Shmuel had told him he could then do as he wished, but he did nothing). This time, however, he takes the decisive action a king must; he alerts the Jewish people to come together to go to Yavesh’s aid, backing up his call for their attendance with the threat that those who do not show will be appropriately punished.

Part of leadership, at least for a king of the Jewish people, is coercing people who might otherwise neglect their responsibilities. In the incident from the end of Shoftim we referred to above, the man whose concubine was raped to death cuts up her body and sends it throughout the land, a way of calling people to action. Shaul here cuts up two bulls and does the same. Apparently the threat that those who do not unify with the Jewish people on a certain occasion will be cut up, either themselves or their property, carried enough power to spur the people to action.

CONDUCTING THE WAR

Shaul counts the people when they arrive, a tradition that will continue in later wars, for reasons that I find unclear. If the number was relatively small, it is perhaps to emphasize the miracle involved in their victory; if large, perhaps to show how many Jews had heeded the call of their king, who had no real power over them.

Most interesting to me is the status of the tribe of Yehudah, which counts themselves separately and constitutes a tenth of the total (if there are twelve tribes, they should theoretically only have been a twelfth; especially since we could have expected the tribe of Binyamin to respond more vigorously to the call, the tribe of Yehudah’s presence is all that much more noticeable). They seem to already have a sense of themselves as separate from the rest of the people, which only foreshadows their future role.

Also notable is the subterfuge that Shaul uses in conducting the war. First, the people of Yavesh inform Nahash that at noon the next day they will surrender themselves to him, possibly lulling him into a false sense of security. Then, Shaul attacks just before morning (a time, in those days, when people were not much moving about, as it was extremely dark), from three directions. The spirit of God carries you only so far; you also need to contribute your own intellect and insight as to how to conduct a war.

THE REINAUGURATION

After the war, the reactions of the people, of Shaul, and of Shmuel are all worth watching. The people turn to Shmuel and say, "Who questioned Shaul’s worthiness as king; give them to us and we will kill them?" Although this may look like a worthy declaration of respect and allegiance to Shaul, it actually highlights their fickle nature. When those people originally mocked Shaul’s fitness, these people were nowhere to be found. Now that Shaul has proven himself, they are so indignant that they are ready to kill those others. Had they cared about the moral high ground, they should have defended Shaul earlier; having foregone doing so, their call now smacks of hypocrisy.

In that light, we might have expected Shmuel to resist killing those people. Before he has a chance to respond, however, Shaul steps in and says that a day of celebration is not a day for killing. Aside from teaching an important lesson about when to pursue which of our agendas—righting past wrongs should happen on a different day from celebrating God’s salvation—it shows Shaul’s forbearance in a positive light. He is not, or at least not yet, so caught up in his status that he needs to watch out for his honor at every juncture.

Shmuel simply suggests that they go to Gilgal, to renew Shaul’s status as king. Malbim notes that this was to reconstitute the kingship with the approval of all (or at least a greater majority) of the people, which raises the issue of popular approval of monarchs. While Shaul’s right to the throne was fully legitimate after Shmuel had appointed him, and more so after that appointment had been announced, there is nonetheless an extra strength to a king who also has the approval of the people. In reenacting the inauguration, Shmuel is formalizing this change in the nature of Shaul’s reign.

GILGAL RATHER THAN MITSPAH

Notably, Shmuel mentions going to Gilgal to renew the melukhah rather than Mitspah, where he had originally declared Shaul king. If we even briefly consider the roles of these two places in the history of the people thus far, we can see the ramifications of this change. Mitspah is a place where the Jews gathered to conduct national business of various sorts, but with no other uniting factor to them.

Gilgal, on the other hand, figures prominently in a particular area of our national history. That was the place by which God defined Mts. Grizim and Eval, where the Jews were ordered to declare (upon entering the Land) the blessings and curses for those who do or do not uphold the Torah. In addition, it was at Gilgal that Yehoshu`a set up the stones that were a permanent reminder of the miracle of crossing the Jordan on dry land.

There, too, Yehoshu`a administered a brit to all the uncircumcised males who had gone through the desert, after which the people celebrated their first Pesah since the one they had observed in the desert. Following that Pesah, at Gilgal, the man stopped and the Jews began to eat the produce of the Land. Each of these events mark ways in which the Jews are entering into their possession of the Land, and their setting up a proper Torah society there. Seeing Shaul’s second coronation going there marks this event as part of setting up the proper Jewish society in the Land. The first time, he was just being crowned as a piece of national business; now, he is being crowned to mark another stage in the Jews’ full possession of the Land God had given them. Shabbat Shalom.