The threat at Jabesh-gilead

Blind people among the crowd and at the table. The blinding was prevented. 1 Samuel 11:1-11.

What led up to it

Saul has just been chosen as Israel's first king, and not everyone accepts him. An Ammonite king, Nahash, besieges the town of Jabesh-gilead.

What happens

The town offers to surrender. Nahash agrees on one condition: that he put out the right eye of every man, to bring shame on all Israel. They ask for seven days. When Saul hears, he raises an army and destroys the Ammonite camp before the sentence can be carried out.

In their shoes

Like Zedekiah's story, this shows blinding used deliberately as humiliation. All Israel weeps at the news. The threat is what first moves Saul to act as king.

The place and the time

What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.

Jabesh-gilead lay east of the Jordan in the hills of Gilead; Smith's reports an ancient writer placing it six miles from Pella on the road to Gerasa, where the name survives in a valley called Wady Yabes. The exact site is still uncertain. Saul's first act as king was to rescue it.

Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Jabesh"; International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Jabesh-gilead."

Josephus explains the threat as military policy: Nahash put out the right eyes of those he conquered so that, with the left eye covered by a shield, they would be useless in battle. The Bible gives no reason beyond disgrace. Either way, the point was to make a whole town helpless and ashamed.

Source: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation), Book VI, chapter 5; 1 Samuel 11:2.

Smith's lists this threat with the blinding of Zedekiah as the two places where Scripture alludes to blinding on purpose for political ends.

Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Blindness."

The passage

1 Samuel 11:1-11

1 Then Nahash the Ammonite came up and laid siege to Jabesh-gilead. All the men of Jabesh said to him, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.”

2 But Nahash the Ammonite replied, “I will make a treaty with you on one condition, that I may put out everyone’s right eye and bring reproach upon all Israel.”

3 “Hold off for seven days,” replied the elders of Jabesh, “and let us send messengers throughout Israel. If there is no one to save us, we will surrender to you.”

4 When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul and relayed these words in the hearing of the people, they all wept aloud.

5 Just then Saul was returning from the field, behind his oxen. “What troubles the people?” asked Saul. “Why are they weeping?” And they relayed to him the words of the men from Jabesh.

6 When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and he burned with great anger.

7 He took a pair of oxen, cut them into pieces, and sent them by messengers throughout the land of Israel, proclaiming, “This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not march behind Saul and Samuel.” Then the terror of the LORD fell upon the people, and they came out together as one man.

8 And when Saul numbered them at Bezek, there were 300,000 Israelites and 30,000 men of Judah.

9 So they said to the messengers who had come, “Tell the men of Jabesh-gilead: ‘Deliverance will be yours tomorrow by the time the sun is hot.’” And when the messengers relayed this to the men of Jabesh, they rejoiced.

10 Then the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Tomorrow we will come out, and you can do with us whatever seems good to you.”

11 The next day Saul organized the troops into three divisions, and during the morning watch they invaded the camp of the Ammonites and slaughtered them, until the hottest part of the day. And the survivors were so scattered that no two of them were left together.