1 Samuel 11:1–15

Original Meaning

The Ammonite Threat (11:1–3)

ONE OF THE texts found among the scrolls of the Judean Desert (commonly referred to as the Dead Sea Scrolls) is important for the study of this chapter. 4QSam^a is a large scroll believed to have been copied during the first century B.C. and containing in fragmentary form parts of the books of Samuel. The scroll preserves a paragraph at the beginning of 1 Samuel 11, which is not present in either the Hebrew or Greek traditions of the Bible.2 The missing paragraph provides background information about the Ammonite threat, and most scholars believe it was original to the text. Perhaps future translations of the Bible will follow the lead of the NRSV, NEB, and NAB and include this paragraph at the beginning of chapter 11.3

The Qumran addition informs us that Nahash was “king” of the Ammonites, a detail curiously omitted until he is mentioned again in 12:12. He had oppressed the Transjordanian tribes of Gad and Reuben, gouging out the right eye of captured Israelite soldiers. Mutilation of captives was not uncommon in antiquity, but this may have also been a way of ensuring these troops would never again wage war by impairing their aim in battle.4 The fragment from Qumran also informs us that seven thousand Israelite troops had retreated and escaped to the last Israelite stronghold, the city of Jabesh Gilead. Now, one month later, Nabash was threatening to take the city as well, which would give him uncontested control of much of Israel’s entire eastern border.

During most of the history of the Israelite kingdoms (i.e., twelfth to sixth centuries B.C.), a Semitic people of the Transjordan maintained a rival state with a capital at Rabbath Ammon (modern Amman).5 Occasionally allies but normally enemies, the Ammonites appear to have considered the east bank of the Jordan River as their own territory (Judg. 11:12–13). During the judges period, the Ammonites had threatened Israelite territory more than once (3:13; 10:6–9; 11:4). Claiming Jabesh Gilead, a city strategic in the defense of the east bank of the Jordan, would solidify Nabash’s stranglehold on Gad and Reuben and constitute a further threat to all Israel in general. This comes at a time when Philistia was already a concern on Israel’s western flank. Unable and unwilling to risk open warfare on two fronts, Israel must now deal decisively with this threat to the east before considering the more serious and long-term problem of the Philistines to the west.

The question that plagues the minds of the elders of Jabesh Gilead is whether there is anyone to “deliver” (NIV “rescue”) them. The Qumran piece at the beginning of the chapter states that Nahash mutilated the captive Israelites in order to deny Israel a “deliverer.”6 Thus the text establishes the suspense. Will Israel’s new king be up to the task, or will he fail to deliver, as the troublemakers of 10:27 suspect?

Saul Defeats the Ammonites (11:4–11)

Bridging Contexts

MESSIAH AND DELIVERANCE. We find in 1-2 Samuel many contributions to Israel’s understanding of Yahweh’s “anointed one,” a term that many centuries later will take on technical significance for Christians in the untranslated form “Messiah.” We will see especially in the way these books present King David that these texts are central to the way later Judaism formulated their messianic expectations. This chapter in particular portrays the anointed one of Israel as the individual whom Yahweh has confirmed first by the Spirit of God, then by military victory over the enemy, and finally by the power to change the divine right of judgment into the divine right of grace. “This is the way the messiah looks when he appears in Israel.”12

The chapter’s emphasis on military deliverance is at the core of its contribution to Israel’s messianism. The text opens with the need for deliverance from the Ammonites (11:3). It is the messianic figure of Saul who towers over everyone else, even Samuel, to assure that deliverance will in fact come (11:9). Even though Saul acknowledges that the victory was provided by Yahweh, the victory itself confirms Saul as Yahweh’s anointed (11:13). Thus the passage demonstrates the soteriological function of kingship. Soteriology is the analysis and restatement in contemporary terms of all that salvation means to modern Christian faith.13 Here, for the first time, the king of Israel, the anointed of Yahweh, is the means of salvation for his people (i.e., by means of rescue from hostile, threatening enemies).

The Israelite kingship was defined from the outset as an institution intended to provide deliverance. The elders of Israel understood it this way in their earliest requests for a king (8:20). Particularly important for this victory over the Ammonites is the way it functions between Saul’s anointing and consecration in 9:1–10:27 and the renewal of the kingship in 11:14–15.14 Without doubt the expectation, or at least the desperate hope, on the part of the people of Israel is that the king will provide military deliverance from their enemies. This is not outside Yahweh’s plan for the king as well, though it will become clear later that he has a larger picture for the nature and function of the king.

Moved by God’s Spirit. Of particular interest in this text is the spectacular success of Saul’s new kingship and the manner in which it is accomplished. This, in fact, is Saul’s one shining moment in history. Here he functions like the judges of old, like the charismatic leadership used of Yahweh to bring salvation and peace to Israel. When he turns his attention, however, to the Philistines in the west, things do not go so well. The key difference may be seen in the event described in 11:6. When Saul hears of the Ammonite threat, he is touched by the Spirit of God and is moved into action by God’s initiative and in God’s timing. Sadly, this is not what we will read of Saul in the future.

The Bible contains other examples of people moved at times by Yahweh to accomplish his purposes. We do not always have the same type of “Spirit language,” and not all are messianic-type kings, but the implications are the same. When God’s servants attempt to minister and serve in their own strength or in their own timing, the results are mixed at best. But when they are open to the prodding and inspiration of God, the results are uniformly effective.

For example, when Moses struck the Egyptian taskmaster and killed him, I believe he was attempting to achieve naturally the mission God had for him and for which God had prepared him from the beginning. He had been miraculously delivered at birth and raised in the pharaoh’s court, yet nursed by his own mother and given the best education available in those ancient times (Ex. 2:1–10; Acts 7:22). In unique fashion, his childhood combined the best the world had to offer with the kind of religious training only his mother could provide. Unlike any other person alive, Moses was prepared to lead God’s people out of Egypt and bring them into the Promised Land. He was being groomed from the beginning to function as Israel’s “savior.” But then he killed the Egyptian taskmaster and hid him in the sand. The next day he attempted to intervene in a fight between two Hebrew workers. This, too, ended in failure, though again Moses was attempting a good work—one that no doubt fit his calling and preparation. As a desperate failure he fled to Midian and tried to escape by changing everything about his life. He ran from the calling God had placed on his life (Ex. 2:11–22). As everyone knows, life for Moses after God met him in the burning bush was much different. From that point he functioned as God’s messenger, accomplishing God’s task in God’s timing.

Similar problems arose for Jacob and his life in Haran with Laban prior to his encounter with the angel of Yahweh at Jabbok (Gen. 32). Some scholars suspect that Isaiah’s ministry changed once he saw Yahweh “high and exalted … [in] the temple” (Isa. 6:1).15 This same pattern is, of course, evident in the life of the Messiah. The parallel is incomplete since we cannot argue that Jesus attempted to serve in his own strength and failed. Rather, he dared not begin his ministry until he was confident he was working in the right time and the right manner. Once he was baptized by John and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove, Jesus immediately went to the desert to challenge Satan and then began his ministry by calling his disciples (Matt. 3:13–4:1; Mark 1:9–12).

Of course, you and I are not Jesus, and there are many differences here. But this simple spiritual truth is apparent even in his life and ministry. Effective ministry (even effective living!) requires the help of God, which he graciously bestows through his Holy Spirit on those who are sensitive and patient. If Jesus was open to the Holy Spirit and patient for God’s timing and anointing, certainly today’s Christians need the same openness and patience.

The simple truth of 1 Samuel 11 is that God’s people need to be completely dependent on him for resources and strength and that he will miraculously multiply skills and talents in order to use them for his own purposes. The rest of the Saul narrative will unfortunately illustrate what happens when those who are prepared and called by God decide they no longer need to serve under the inspiration of God.

Contemporary Significance

OPEN TO THE SPIRIT’S LEADING. I am sure all of us could illustrate from personal experience times of failure, when we were attempting to accomplish something worthy or noble but were working in our own power and relying on our own skills and talents. The hard truth, however, is that it is not always easy to know whether we are definitely moved by God’s Spirit or by our natural instincts. It is easy to be confused about what we are supposed to do and when we are supposed to do it. In this text, we are presented with an Old Testament example of a chosen servant of God, prepared in many ways to fulfill God’s mission for his life and also open and responsive to God’s prodding, direction, and timing. We can learn much from such examples.

The denominational context in which I serve had its origins in the life and work of John Wesley. He and his brother, Charles, along with a colleague from their Oxford days, George Whitefield, were fervent in evangelism, Christian publishing and education, and social reform. Together they effectively reformed English society of the eighteenth century. Wesley himself was incredibly energetic. Excluded from the churches of his day because of his insistence on the Reformation theme of salvation by grace through faith, he was driven to open-air preaching. It has been estimated that during his ministry, he traveled approximately 250,000 miles on horseback through England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, preaching some forty thousand sermons.16 He worked with fifteen languages, producing some six hundred pieces of written literature.

His work was remarkably effective. At the age of eighty-two in 1785, Wesley claimed that the number of those brought to God in the revival was perhaps greater than in any other age since the time of the apostles.17 At his death in 1791, there were 72,000 members in his Methodist societies in Great Britain alone, not including those in North America and elsewhere.18 The impact of the Wesleyan revival was dramatic in eighteenth-century England. The first half of the century witnessed a nation on the brink of moral disintegration. Many lost interest in the claims of the Christian faith, the social ills of the nation were becoming intolerable, and the nature of eighteenth-century Anglicanism made it weak and powerless to effect change.19 Some historians and theologians believe the spiritual awakening led by the Wesleys and Whitefield was the single most important impetus in reforming the nation and saved England from the same bloody revolution witnessed in France during the same period.20

John Wesley’s legacy is remarkable, and his mark on the history of Christianity is undeniable. He remained fiercely loyal to the Anglican Church all his life. After much reluctance, he ordained several of his preachers for the work in America, and Methodism was officially organized in Baltimore at the Christmas Conference of 1784. Soon after his death, Methodism became a separate denomination in England as well. But Wesley’s significance transcends the reform of England and the birth of Methodism. His extraordinary accomplishments place him among other giants in Christian history. One historian has concluded that Wesley belongs to the whole church because the last of the major denominational bodies to develop in Christianity originated with him.21

But it was not always so clear for Mr. Wesley that he was being used of God in so mighty a fashion. In fact, at one point in his life, he considered himself an utter failure and incapable of sustaining a life of devotion. Having experienced what he would later call a “religious” conversion, he was ordained in 1725. After serving for a brief time as his father’s curate and being elected Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, Wesley felt called to mission service in a new colony in America. Thus, in 1735, he arrived in Savannah, Georgia, to evangelize the Native Americans. Throughout this mission, Wesley proved an abysmal failure. He was appointed first chaplain to the governor of the new colony, General James Oglethorpe, and he managed to serve as priest to the colony’s settlers. But his motives were all wrong: “My chief motive, to which all the rest are subordinate, is the hope of saving my own soul.”22

His highly romantic notions about the Native Americans of Georgia would soon be shattered by the harsh realism of a failed mission. The few times he was actually able to make contact with Native Americans, they proved unresponsive to his ministry. Among the settlers, Wesley exercised an unyielding ecclesiastical discipline that was utterly out of place on the frontier. He withheld the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to one saintly pastor because the pastor had not been baptized by an episcopally ordained priest.23 In another case, he was actually faced with legal proceedings. In 1738, he simply abandoned his responsibilities in Georgia and fled back to England as quickly as he could go. To make matters worse, he discovered on his trips across the Atlantic that he had a morbid fear of death.

He felt hopelessly defeated by these revelations and found himself forlorn and spiritually despondent: “I went to America to convert the Indians; but, oh, who shall convert me?”24 He later confessed that up until this time, his entire spiritual journey had been a “refined way of trusting to my own works.”25

This could easily have been the end of Mr. Wesley’s ministry, and we would be all the poorer. But on the night of May 24, 1738, he went “unwillingly” to a meeting of Moravian Christians at Aldersgate Street in London. While listening to a reading from Luther’s preface to his Romans commentary, Wesley felt his “heart strangely warmed.”26 Mere words now became realities. This singular doctrine of the Protestant Reformation, “the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ,” seized Wesley’s formidable mind and heart and transformed him from a self-absorbed and ill-tempered clergyman into a flaming evangelist. The “religious” conversion of his youth had become a genuine “evangelical” conversion.27 He immediately launched a preaching, teaching, and writing ministry that occupied his next fifty years. His call to missionary service, which he took to mean ministry in Georgia, was now being fulfilled in his native country.

Not unlike King Saul, Wesley had learned that no amount of preparation or calling can substitute for an openness to the leading and empowerment of God’s Spirit.

Original Meaning

Saul Defeats the Ammonites (11:4–11)

SAUL’S MILITARY VICTORY over the Ammonites is an important part of the extended narrative about his accession to royal authority. It follows the divine designation of 9:1–10:27 and precedes the confirmation of 11:15.7 The account contains parallels with judges from Israel’s premonarchic period and portrays Saul as a continuation of those who receive the Spirit of God, are roused into activity, and are used mightily to accomplish deliverance for God’s people.

This passage is especially reminiscent of Judges 19–21.8 In the earlier tragic episode, the Levite’s concubine had been killed while he was spending the night in Gibeah of Benjamin. Out of desperation, he brought the crime to the attention of the Israelite tribes by dismembering her body and sending the pieces to the tribes for judicial decision. Saul appears to have intentionally mimicked this method when he kills the team of oxen and sends the pieces throughout Israel as a call to arms. When the tribes joined to take action against Benjamin for the crimes against the Levite’s concubine, the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead had not participated in the battles (Judg. 21:8). Reprisals were swift and severe (21:10–14). As a result, the inhabitants of the city probably have little reason now to hope that the tribes on the western side of the Jordan River will join together in order to defend them from the Ammonites. Their plea for seven days to find out if they have the support of their kindred tribes is not a ruse but a genuine question of concern (1 Sam. 11:3). Saul’s ability to unite the tribes and lead them against the Ammonites in defense of a cause that is in doubt is an impressive beginning.

As in the previous passage, the “Spirit of God” comes on Saul to empower him (11:6; cf. 10:10). In chapter 10, the coming of the Spirit was a temporary blessing intended to confirm Saul as the anointed of Yahweh. He temporarily rejoiced with a local band of prophets. But in this passage, the text uses nearly identical phraseology as in Judges (Othniel, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson). The Spirit fills the judge with divine indignation and empowers him for military service. The earlier Spirit-empowerment of Saul was temporary, but this one is apparently more permanent, continuing until Samuel anoints David as Saul’s replacement.9 God’s Spirit in the Old Testament empowers the recipient for leadership as prophet, king, or army general.

Saul’s victory over the Ammonites follows immediately after the anointing and public acclamation of 9:1–10:27. Some interpreters assume this military victory in chapter 11 is the historical episode anticipated in the previous unit and that it stands in a certain degree of tension with the earlier narrative, both historically and literarily. But as noted earlier, we appear to have in chapters 8–12 a composite tapestry, which weaves together a number of different strands in order to portray the Israelite kingship in contrasting ways. If we assume this to be the case, then the Ammonite victory in chapter 11 functions as the “testing stage” for Saul’s kingship.10 In the overarching narrative of his rise to power, this victory is not the one pictured in his anointing and commissioning, which speaks instead of the Philistine threat (9:16; 10:5). Rather, this victory was Saul’s first “test” and prepares for his final coronation at Gilgal.

Saul’s victory over the Ammonites also endears him in the hearts of the eastern tribes, particularly the people of Jabesh Gilead long after his reign. We will see later how the city remains loyal to Saul until the bitter end (1 Sam. 31:11–13), and even after his death David must be concerned about incorporating the previous strongholds of Saul’s support (2 Sam. 2:4–7).

Saul’s Kingship Renewed (11:12–15)