Why does the king of the Ammonites make war against a city of Israel at this time? Perhaps to avenge the victory that Jephthah, of Jabesh Gilead, won against the Ammonites in Judges 11. We can't say for sure why Nahash feels this is an opportune time to attack an Israelite city but it's going to turn out to be an unwise decision. At first, though, it looks to him as if his assault will be successful. When he surrounds and lays siege to the city, the men of Jabesh Gilead know they are outnumbered and they don't want to incur mass casualties. In order to protect themselves and their families they offer to surrender and become subjects of the Ammonites. This normally meant being assessed an annual amount of tribute to pay to a foreign government.
But Nahash wants to humiliate these men of Israel. It's not enough for him to levy heavy taxes upon them. He wants to disfigure them and render them incapable of ever being effective soldiers . "But Nahash the Ammonite replied, 'I will make a treaty with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of you and so bring disgrace on all Israel.'" (1 Samuel 11:2) These men will still be able to maintain their everyday occupations with only one eye but will no longer be to fight battles with only one eye because it will leave them too vulnerable to attack from the right side. Nahash's main objective in disabling them for battle is not because he's afraid of their military prowess though; it's clear that there aren't enough men at Jabesh Gilead to mount an effective defense of the city. I don't think Nahash fears a future revolt by the men of Jabesh Gilead either. His main objective in blinding all the men in their right eye is to bring shame on them. We know this because he say he wants to "bring disgrace on all Israel".
The men of the city know they can't fight off Nahash and his soldiers on their own. The most they can hope to do is hold the city long enough to give help a chance to arrive. They wisely tell Nahash they will take seven days to consider his terms for surrender while they wait to see if anyone will come to their aid. "The elders of Jabesh said to him, 'Give us seven days so we can send messengers throughout Israel; if no one comes to rescue us, we will surrender to you.'" (1 Samuel 11:3)
Nahash is going to agree to their request. But why does he allow messengers to leave the city he has surrounded with his troops? Does he believe no one will come to the aid of Jabesh Gilead because doing so will be a declaration of war between Israel and Ammon? Does he think soldiers will come to help but that his army can easily defeat them? Does he see this victory as an opportunity of gaining great renown for his name so that no city or nation will dare stand against him? Whatever his reasoning is, it's clear he does not fear the army of Israel. I think that's because he does not fear the God of Israel, which is a disastrous miscalculation on his part.
"When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul and reported these terms to the people, they all wept aloud. Just then Saul was returning from the fields, behind his oxen, and said, 'What is wrong with everyone? Why are they weeping?' Then they repeated to him what the men of Jabesh had said." (1 Samuel 11:4-5) After declaring Saul king of Israel at the assembly in Mizpah, Samuel dismissed the crowd and told them all to go home. Saul did as instructed. That's why we find him working the fields as he has always done. He hasn't built a palace for himself or set up any type of government bureaucracy. He's just going about his business, for in Chapter 10 Samuel ordered him to "do whatever your hand finds to do", and he's working at what his hands find to do while waiting for further instructions.
Upon hearing of the predicament of the men at Jabesh Gilead, Saul receives those further instructions from the Holy Spirit. "When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he burned with anger. He took a pair of oxen, cut them into pieces, and sent the pieces by messengers throughout Israel, proclaiming, 'This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not follow Saul and Samuel.' Then the terror of the Lord fell on the people, and they came out together as one. When Saul mustered them at Bezek, the men of Israel numbered three hundred thousand and those of Judah thirty thousand." (1 Samuel 11:6-8) His message to the people of Israel is that they need not fear the Ammonites; they need to fear King Saul and they need to fear the Lord. They need to stand up for their fellow citizens and not allow the city of Jabesh Gilead to fall to the enemy. In defending that city and preventing its men from being put to shame they are defending the honorable name of all Israel. If they allow Jabesh Gilead to fall and its men to be put to shame, the Ammonites won't stop there. They will be emboldened to attack more cities of Israel. Other enemies will be emboldened to attack Israel. The security of the entire nation is at stake.
After the men are mustered at Bezek, welcome news is sent to Jabesh Gilead. "They told the messengers who had come, 'Say to the men of Jabesh Gilead, 'By the time the sun is hot tomorrow, you will be rescued.' When the messengers went and reported this to the men of Jabesh, they were elated. They said to the Ammonites, 'Tomorrow we will surrender to you, and you can do to us whatever you like.'" (1 Samuel 11:9-10) They trick the Ammonites into thinking the news brought by the messengers is bad. When they say, "Tomorrow we will surrender to you," Nahash believes the fighting men of Israel have declined coming to the aid of the people of Jabesh Gilead.
The men of Jabesh Gilead essentially tell a lie to Nahash. Lying is a sin but several times in the Bible we find someone telling a lie in order to preserve the life of a person or persons and on those occasions we find the lie being overlooked. For example, the harlot Rahab lied to protect the lives of the two Israelite spies whom she hid at her house in Jericho. She is not disciplined by the Lord for her lie but instead is treated as a great heroine of the Bible. We will see some further examples as we move through the Bible of people engaging in deceptive actions in order to save their lives or the lives of their fellow Israelites. In times of extreme circumstances such as this, the sin of lying evidently brings no disciplinary action if it is being done to serve the greater good of preserving a life. Because we live in a fallen world, there are situations in the Bible in which there is no other way of dealing with heathen sinners other than deceiving them. I think the principle at work here is the same one we find in the New Testament when Jesus is met with a condemnatory attitude by the Pharisees for healing on the Sabbath. They accuse Him of working on the Sabbath but Jesus points out that a greater good is being accomplished. He also shines a spotlight on their hypocrisy by stating that if their child or their ox fell into a pit on the Sabbath they wouldn't wait until the next day to rescue them. They would perform the "work" of getting their child or ox out of the pit, Sabbath or not. Why then should He wait until the next day to rescue someone from sickness, pain, mental illness, or demon possession? Besides that, Jesus was not breaking the Sabbath since He is Lord of the Sabbath, but His point was that if they saw someone they loved in mortal danger or if their livelihood (the ox) was at stake, they'd take action immediately even if it meant breaking the Sabbath. And no one would blame them for it, not even God.
We don't find God blaming the men of Jabesh Gilead for deceiving their heathen enemy. They are buying time the only way they know how. The lie allows time for help to arrive. "The next day Saul separated his men into three divisions; during the last watch of the night they broke into the camp of the Ammonites and slaughtered them until the heat of the day. Those who survived were scattered, so that no two of them were left together." (1 Samuel 11:11) Saul and his soldiers strike far ahead of the appointed time when the men of Jabesh Gilead pretended they were going to surrender to the Ammonites. The last watch of the night, which is between about 3am and daybreak, is the time of night when exhaustion is most likely to overcome even those who are supposed to be keeping watch. It's the time of night when those who are sleeping will be sleeping the deepest. It's the time of night when the Israelite attack is guaranteed to produce the most confusion and panic. The battle rages on until midday when the few remaining Ammonite soldiers head for the hills as fast as their weary and trembling legs can carry them. They are so disoriented they can't even stick together to maintain strength in numbers.
It was very wise of the men of Jabesh Gilead not to surrender when the Ammonites first surrounded their city. They left room for God (and for their brothers in the Lord) to act on their behalf. They didn't immediately fall into a panic, conclude their situation was hopeless, and give up.
Whenever God is part of the equation, nothing is hopeless. Sometimes we see alarming things in this world. Sometimes we receive upsetting news. Before making any decisions we must take the problem to God and wait for further instructions. Sometimes He has us participate in the victory and other times He fights the whole battle for us, but taking our problem to Him before doing anything else will help us to avoid making any rash decisions we might regret later. If the men of Jabesh Gilead hadn't given the Lord and their fellow citizens time to come to their aid, they might have made a rash decision. Out of fear that the Ammonites would pour into the city and slaughter everyone, they might have been panicked enough to think that surrendering and submitting to becoming blind in one eye was the only way to save their lives and their families' lives. But they held out the hope that God would either perform a miracle on their behalf or that He would stir the hearts of their fellow Israelites to fight for them. I think the Lord did both! I don't know how many soldiers Nahash had with him but I think his soldiers outnumbered Saul's soldiers, hence the need for the surprise nighttime attack carried out by Saul and his men. It was necessary to catch them off guard in the night in order to have a fighting chance, humanly speaking. But I believe the Lord fought on behalf of Israel too. He gave the Israelite soldiers the physical strength to fight through the final hours of the night and through the hours from 6am until noon. He put the fear of Israel and the fear of Himself into the Ammonites.
He also used this victory to get the people of Israel behind Saul. We learned yesterday that not everyone was happy when he was made king. But after his victory over the Ammonites there will be fewer people who are unhappy about having Saul as their king. The nation will be able to present more of a united front now that a great battle has been won under the leadership of their new king. Unity is very important among believers, for as the Lord Jesus said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." (Matthew 12:25)
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