1 Samuel 14:31 Commentary and Bible Study

Israel pursued the Philistines from Michmash, where Jonathan had first attacked them, to Aijalaon, which Gill thinks may be twelve miles away. The rout of the Philistines had gone a long way. Now the people were exhausted, ‘very feint’, and what happens next is presented as a further bad effect of Saul’s foolish curse. They are so hungry that when the find animals left behind by the fleeing Philistines, they immediately kill them begin to eat without going through the proper steps required by the law in order to avoid eating the blood of the animals. Saul is told about this and commands a great stone to be rolled into place, where the men can bring their animals and kill them in the way they should, and drain the blood from them before eating. He saw this as sinful, which it was, but he did not connect it with his own foolishness in causing the people to hunger unnecessarily. Jonathan had been completely right in what he said.Saul then built an altar to the Lord. He could do this as a public show of obedience, but he had dithered through lack of faith; he had unncesarily stressed the people; and we are about to read – though this may have taken place earlier – that he ordered the death of his own son for violating his unnecessary strictures. Saul’s religion was all outward for public consumption.