Welcome Jonathan - 1 Samuel 13:1-8

Since Israel’s victory over the Ammonites and Samuel’s “farewell” address, Saul has risen in prominence but he still struggled with political support throughout the kingdom. Maybe it’s because the war with the Ammonites was so effective in uniting all the tribes behind him, but TB implies that Saul was seeking a war again to hopefully solidify his popularity and since he just brutally defeated the Ammonites, Saul seems to turn his attention to the Philistines. Saul doesn’t hear from God or Samuel about starting a war with the Philistines, that we know of anyway, but we know that God wants to severe the relationship with Israel has with the Philistines so it seems like Go dis in favor of a war between them and Israel and probably for the same purpose as Saul such as unifying Israel as a whole and getting Philistine influence out of the country, though Saul and God want this for different reasons.

Chapter 13 starts by saying “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel,” which is similar to what the Book of Mormon says when it is recounting time that has passed, such as “and the forty and second year past away and even the forty and third year” or something like that. TB says that other translations say something like “when Saul was 40 years old” instead of what our verse 1 says and he says that this is an inserted verse into the text that wasn’t present before 250 B.C. because it’s not included in the Septuagint copy. He says that it was probably insert to mark the passage of time but referring to Saul’s age, he is at least 40 at this time because he has a grown son, Jonathan. Just because it’s inserted afterward doesn’t invalidate it being similar to Book of Mormon language because Hebrew scholars were the ones who would have inserted it and the men who wrote the Book of Mormon were Hebrew trained scholars as well, so it tracks.

Saul took 3,000 soldiers and kept 2,000 with him and sent the other thousand with his son Jonathan to the area of Geba where Jonathan killed the Philistine leader of that area. After the killing Saul sent word throughout the land saying, “Let the Hebrews hear,” as an attempt to unite the people in fighting the Philistines who were obviously coming. Israel instigated it, but was it ordained by God? Who knows because no one asked Him. The Philistines gathered to fight Israel and Saul was at Gilgal, the place where the ark of the covenant was, waiting for Samuel to make a sacrifice to invoke God’s blessing upon their fighting the Philistines. Samuel said that he would be there in 7 days, but he wasn’t there when Saul expected him, maybe it took longer than 7 days, maybe it was the 7th day and Saul was impatient. The biggest problem though was that his soldiers were beginning to leave him and go home because they were losing morale and the will to fight. The people were very scared and for good reason. The Philistines had a large professional, technologically advanced army and Israel was just a bunch of farmers. So they start to leave and Saul sees his opprtunity to win support from his people fading. What does Saul do about that? We’ll see tomorrow.