Saul offers a burnt offering, and is rebuked
13
📚✭Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, 2 📚Saul chose for himself three thousand men of Israel. Of these two thousand were with Saul in Michmash and in Bethel mountain, and a thousand were with Jonathan✭ in Gibeah of Benjamin. And he sent the rest of the people away, each one to his tent.3 📚And Jonathan struck the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet✭ throughout the whole land, saying, “Let the Hebrews✭ hear”. 4 📚And all Israel heard it said that Saul had struck a garrison of the Philistines, and also that Israel had become odious✭ to the Philistines. And the people were called together after Saul to Gilgal.
5 📚And the Philistines gathered together to fight with Israel, thirty✭ thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen and people as numerous as the sand on the seashore, and they came up and camped at Michmash, east of Beth-Aven✭. 6 📚✭When the men of Israel saw that they were in a tight place (for the people were hard pressed), then the people hid themselves in caves and in thickets and in rocks and in high places and in pits. 7 📚And some of the Hebrews went over the Jordan to the region of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.
8 And he waited seven days in accordance with the time that Samuel had set, but Samuel✭ did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him. 9 📚✭And Saul said, “Bring a burnt offering here to me, and peace offerings”. And he offered the burnt offering. 10 📚And it came about that as soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, suddenly Samuel came, and Saul went out to meet him to greet him.
11 📚And Samuel said, “What have you done?” And Saul said, “Because I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the appointed days, and that the Philistines had gathered together at Michmash, 12 📚therefore I said, Now the Philistines will come down on me to Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD’s favour✭. So I forced myself✭ and offered a burnt offering”.
13 📚✭And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God, which he commanded you✭. If you had, now the LORD would have established your kingdom in Israel forever✭. 14 📚✭But now your kingdom will not continue. The LORD has sought for himself a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be the leader over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you”.
15 📚✭And Samuel arose and went up from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. And Saul counted the people who were present with him, about six hundred men.
Soldiers without swords and spears
16 📚And Saul and his son Jonathan and the people who were present with them, stayed in Gibeah of Benjamin, but the Philistines were camping at Michmash. 17 📚And the raiders came out of the camp of the Philistines in three groups; one group turned toward the road that goes to Ophrah, to the region of Shual, 18 📚and another group turned toward Beth-Horon, and another group turned toward the border that overlooks the valley of Zeboim toward the wilderness.
19 📚✭Now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout the whole land of Israel, for the Philistines said, “So that the Hebrews cannot make swords or spears for themselves”. 20 But all the Israelites would go down to the Philistines, so that each one could sharpen his plowshare and his sickle and his axe and his mattock. 21 And there was a sharpening charge for the mattocks and for the sickles and for the forks and for the axes and to set the points of the goads.