1 Samuel 13:3 Commentary and Bible Study

So Saul had this great bodyguard: this is not an army; it is a bodyguard. Jonathan had the smallest force, and it was really a very small force. But this is the difference between them: although Saul regards it as a bodyguard, as far as Jonathan is concerned it a unit with which he can strike the Philistines. He thinks: ‘Look here; we are here to get rid of these Philistines. We are supposed to be doing something. The Lord has commanded us to drive them out of our territory, and that is precisely what I aim to do.’ So here is a man of faith, who hasn't lost sight of the command given to Joshua and God’s vision for Israel; and as soon as he gets get a thousand men in his hands you can't hold him back, and he is away. Jonathan is made of different stuff. He thinks quite differently from his father. He certainly seems to be a man of faith, we learn later, and he started straight away. He makes up his mind – perhaps God directed him; perhaps it was his conclusion – to stir things up, so that his father has no choice but to fulfil his God-given function. Perhaps there was some provocation from the Philistine garrison, but he gets pitched in, and he disturbs them. ‘And Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it.’ So Jonathan smites the local garrison of Philistines at Geba, and that caused fury among the Philistines. How much damage he did, we don't know, but it really caused a tremendous reaction. They were lords over Israel; they trod them down; they savaged them; they took their crops and their precious things. Israel was in complete subjugation.‘And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, Let the Hebrews hear.’ The message to the nation is, stand by everybody: there is now going to be serious trouble. Jonathan has gone and done it. He has smitten a Philistine garrison, and there is now going to be real trouble, which of course there was. But Saul didn’t provoke it; it was Jonathan, and he was only doing what was right. All Israel heard say – this was the message Saul sent out – that Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines. He hadn't; his son had, but Saul was quick to take the credit, and to claim it as his own work, and that consequently Israel was an abomination with the Philistines, and the people were called together after Saul to Gilgal. ‘And they heard that Israel also was had an abomination with the Philistines.’ Some people have suggested that there was a pact in existence, and that Jonathan broke that pact and therefore brought reprisals upon Israel, but there's no evidence or hint of that. What is more likely is that the Philistines who dominated the region for so long, regarded the Israelites as pathetic, and an abomination. Now they had had the audacity to hit back in some way, and so they were going to be very severely dealt with. So the people were called together by Saul to Gilgal.