Ep. 80 - Jonathan Defeats the Philistines (Part 1)

Last we left our story, King Saul was in a bad spot. His son Jonathan had attacked a Philistine garrison, and the Philistines didn’t take that lightly. And in response, the Philistines marched a ginormous army into Israel – so ginormous that the Bible says they couldn’t even be counted. King Saul tried to get an army together too. But once the Israelites saw how big the Philistine army was, they were like, ‘We’re not fighting that!” and they ran for the hills – hiding in every nook and cranny that they could find. When Saul saw that not only was his army not big enough, but that it was getting smaller and smaller, Saul panicked. Instead of waiting for Samuel like God had told him to do, Saul took matters into his own hands and ended up offering a sacrifice himself—which was against God’s law. And this only made things worse. Because when Samuel arrived and caught Saul doing this, Samuel, whom everyone in Israel loved, left. And when the few Israelite holdouts who hadn’t already run saw their beloved prophet leaving, well they hightailed it out of there too. And when everyone who was going to leave had left, Saul had only 600 men. 600 men against a massive Philistine army. What was Saul going to do?

Well, realizing that help just wasn’t coming, Saul and his 600 men got out of the exposed plains of Gilgal and moved to Gibeah…Saul’s hometown…and holed themselves up in the old Philistine garrison at Geba. While he didn’t have many men, from this fortified garrison Saul could at least keep an eye on the Philistine army. And Saul didn’t have to wait long for the Philistines to do something…because huge armies like that couldn’t sit still for very long. They needed food, water, and supplies. And guess where all the food, water, and supplies were going to come from? Yah…the poor Israelites who happened to live in the area. And as Saul and his small army helplessly watched, the Bible says that “raiders came out of the camp of the Philistines in three companies.” (1 Sam. 13:17) The Philistines sent out three raiding parties – one to the north, one to the west, and one to the east – to find the stuff that they needed. Of course, King Saul and his men were horrified to see this…because in ancient times these raiding parties wouldn’t just take your stuff, but they would treat anyone they ran into very badly…sometimes even killing people.

So, what was King Saul going to do? Well, this was of course when Saul got on his knees, asked for forgiveness for his disobedience, and asked God what to do next…right? Well, no…not exactly. This would be when Saul panicked again! And while scrambling to figure out what to do, Saul got another not-so-bright idea - let’s get the Ark of the Covenant and bring it to the garrison! Yah that’s right. Saul, knowing full well what happened the last time that Ark was used like some kind of good luck charm in a military campaign, called for the Ark to be brought from Shiloh to Gibea. I mean what was Saul thinking! First, he breaks God’s law by performing a sacrifice himself, and now he’s going to bring the Ark of the Covenant to a battle? Knowing that the last time the Israelites had done this that the ark had been captured by the Philistines? It’s hard to understand what King Saul is doing here. But I guess when you’re not depending on God’s leading, and your desperate, well then you end up doing strange things, right kidzos?

But while Saul was busy making remaking known mistakes, Jonathan had something entirely different in mind. And Jonathan decided…ya know what…I’m just going to leave the crazy talk alone for a little bit and think I’m just going to head over to the closest Philistine garrison and uh…see what’s what. So, Jonathan turned to his armour-bearer, and in a low voice said, “Come, let us go over to the Philistines’ garrison that is on the other side.” (14:1) And so, Jonathan and the young armour-bearer, without telling Saul or anyone else, snuck out of the Israelite camp. (Now, I guess an armour-bearer is something that we haven’t talked about yet…and armour-bearers are going to come up a few more times in future stories…so what is an armour-bearer? Well, an armour-bearer was kinda like a soldier in training. The armour-bearer would be paired up with an experienced solider, and would help the experienced soldier carry around all their armour (hence the name “amour-bearer”) as well as spare weapons and probably other random things like water and food and things like that. All that stuff was pretty heavy, and to make sure that experienced soldier made it to the battle without being tired, the armour-bearer would help them carry all that stuff. But the job didn’t quite stop there. The armour-bearer would actually go into battle with the experienced soldier and right in the middle of the battle provide the solider with an extra weapon or an extra shield if something got dropped or broken, they’d watch their back, and they’d even finish off enemies after they’d been wounded by the experienced solider. This was a way of training younger soldiers in the ways of war. And Jonathan, being the king’s son, of course had an armour-bearer.)

Now the Israelite army (if you could call it that) and the Philistine army were separated by a deep gorge. And in order to get to the Philistines, Jonathan and his armourbearer would have to cross the gorge. So, they carefully climbed down to a spot just opposite of the closest Philistine garrison. When Jonathan and his armourbearer got within sight of the garrison, brave Jonathan got excited. I mean…the Philistines are right there! Why not just attack the right now? What were they waiting for? And so Jonathan turned to his armourbearer and said, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised; it may be that the Lord will work for us. For nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few.” (14:6) It was a bold move. There would have been at least 20 men in that garrison. Twenty men against two? And one of those two being just an armourbearer? It didn’t seem like they had much of a chance. But Jonathan knew his Bible just like you kidzos do…he knew the story of Gideon and his 300 men…he knew the story of Samson defeating an entire Philistine army with just a donkey’s jawbone…and he knew that God didn’t need lots of people to do big things. And the young armourbearer, inspired by Jonathan’s faith and bravery, replied to Jonathan and said, “Do all that is in your heart. Go then; here I am with you, according to your heart.” (14:7)

But while Jonathan and the armourbearer seemed to be on the same page, Jonathan wanted to see if God was on the same page too. So, Jonathan said to the armourbearer, “Very well, let us cross over to these men, and we will show ourselves to them. If they say thus to us, ‘Wait until we come to you,’ then we will stand still in our place and not go up to them. But if they say thus, ‘Come up to us,’ then we will go up. For the Lord has delivered them into our hand, and this will be a sign to us.” (14:8-10) So basically what Jonathan was saying was, once the Philistines saw them, if they told them to sit still so the Philistines could come out and attack them…well God wasn’t with them and probably things weren’t going to go well. But if instead the Philistines tried to get Jonathan and the armour-bearer to attack the garrison, well then that meant that God was with them, and they would defeat the garrison.

And so, Jonthan and the armourbearer carefully came out of hiding and showed themselves to the Philistines. Once the Philistines saw them, the Philistines said to themselves, “Look, the Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have hidden.” (14:11) And then they yelled over the walls of their garrison and said to Jonathan and the armourbearer, “Come up to us, and we will show you something.” (14:11-12) Well OK then…that was the sign they were looking for. And Jonathan excitedly turned to the armourbearer and said, “Come after me, for the Lord has delivered them into the hand of Israel.” (14:12) And with Jonathan leading, they crossed the bottom of the gorge and climbed up the other side. It was so steep that they had to climb up on their hands and knees. But once Jonathan and the armourbearer actually got up to the garrison, the Bible says that the Philistines “fell before Jonathan.” (14:13) With God helping him, Jonathan charged the twenty-man garrison…and quickly defeated them. Jonathan and the armourbearer worked as a team. Jonathan would attack one man after another, defeat them, and then the armourbearer came after him and finished them off. And by the time that Jonathan had gone a few hundred feet (or as the Bible says…about half an acre), all twenty of the Philistine soldiers in the garrison were dead.

But Jonathan’s victory didn’t end there. Very quickly the rest of the Philistine army found out what had happened at the garrison - that one Israelite man and his armourbearer had defeated an entire garrison of Philistines. Now even though the Philistines knew that they had overwhelming numbers, even though they knew that they had better weapons and military tactics…they also knew the same Bible stories that Jonathan did – that knew that their god Dagon had been desecrated in his own temple when the Ark had been placed there, they knew that the Israelite God had sent a powerful thunderstorm to defeat them at Mizpah, oh yah and that one time a single Israelite had defeated an entire Philistine army with just a donkey’s jawbone. So, while the Philistines were confident about their numbers, their confidence was very fragile…they knew that they could defeat the Israelites as long as nothing crazy happened. And so, when the Philistine army heard something crazy had happened at the garrison, in the blink of an eye, terror spread all throughout the Philistine camp. And just exactly when the Philistine army’s confidence was resting on a knife’s edge, God came through and gave it a huge push. Because right at that moment, God caused an earthquake. Not a big earthquake…but just big enough that it kinda sounded like a huge army of horsemen and chariots was attacking the Philistine camp. And with the Philistine army being so big, it’s not like all those soldiers always easily recognized each other. So, when they heard the sounds of an attack, and with everyone on edge, the Philistines began attacking anyone they didn’t recognize right away…which at that moment happened to be other Philistines. And so, while an amazed Jonathan and his armourbearer looked on from the garrison, the huge Philistine army began fighting itself!

Now of course over in Gibeah, King Saul and his men, along with the high priest and the Ark, had no idea that Jonathan had snuck out of the camp, or that he’d defeated the garrison, or about the earthquake. And while they were still scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do, all of a sudden, a watchman came running to Saul telling them that the Philistine army had gone crazy! They couldn’t quite tell what was going on…but the huge Philistine army seemed to be going here and there. But whatever was going on, it seemed that the Philistines were starting to run away. Immediately, King Saul wondered…had someone attacked the Philistines? And so, he did a roll call in the camp, and wouldn’t you know it…the only people missing were Jonathan and his armourbearer. Could it be that Jonathan had attacked the Philistines…again? Just the two of them? It didn’t make any sense. But regardless, as you kidzos already know from many stories by now, an army was at its weakest when it was running away. And so, Saul wanted to attack the Philistines as soon as possible. Of course, as you kidzos also know, the Israelites wouldn’t attack without a sacrifice first. But just as they were getting ready to do the sacrifice, the noise from the Philistine camp got louder and louder and louder. To the point where Saul just couldn’t take it anymore, told the priest to just stop what he was doing, and as the Bible says, “Saul and all the people who were with him assembled, and they went to the battle.” (14:20) Saul and his army left immediately to attack the Philistines.

So what was going to happen? Would Saul’s tiny army be enough to push the confused Philistines out of Israel? Would the Philistines manage to defeat themselves? Or would the Philistines get their act together enough to defeat Saul’s tiny army? Well, we will find out all about it…next time.