Scripture Daily

Context No. 294 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

Context · Reflection

1 Samuel 14:13-17: in context

13Jonathan climbed up on his hands and on his feet, and his armor bearer after him, and they fell before Jonathan; and his armor bearer killed them after him. 14That first slaughter, which Jonathan and his armor bearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were half a furrow’s length in an acre of land. 15There was a trembling in the camp, in the field, and among all the people; the garrison and the raiders also trembled; and the earth quaked, so there was an exceedingly great trembling. 16The watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked; and behold, the multitude melted away and scattered. 17Then Saul said to the people who were with him, “Count now, and see who is missing from us.” When they had counted, behold, Jonathan and his armor bearer were not there.

This is the middle of a bold, nearly reckless act of faith. Jonathan, the king's son, has slipped away from his father's camp with no one but his armor-bearer, on the conviction that nothing can stop the LORD from saving by many or by few. The two of them have climbed a cliff on their hands and feet to attack a Philistine garrison alone, and this passage is what their two-man assault sets loose.

At first it is just the two of them and their swords. They fall on the outpost and kill about twenty men in a space no bigger than half a plowed furrow. That is a skirmish, not a battle. But then something far larger than their weapons happens. A trembling spreads through the whole Philistine camp, through the garrison and the raiding parties, and the text says even the earth quaked, an exceedingly great trembling. A panic sent from God turns a two-man attack into an army's collapse. And the contrast with the king is pointed. Saul, who has the whole army with him, is sitting elsewhere doing nothing, and only when his watchmen see the enemy melting away does he take a roll call and discover that the two men who started all of it, his own son and the armor-bearer, are not even in camp.

The lesson underneath is the line Jonathan lived by: God can save by many or by few. He multiplied a small, faithful act far past its own size, an avalanche begun by two people willing to move, while the one with the numbers sat still. What small, faithful thing have I held back from doing, waiting for more people or the right permission, that God was ready to multiply well beyond what I could bring to it?

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