[410]. 1 Sam. ix. 3. In 1 Sam. x. 14-16, Saul’s uncle takes the place of his father.
[411]. Much has been made of the supposed fact that Saul had never heard of Samuel, and did not know that he was a seer. But the narrative only says that Saul’s slave informed him that a seer was in the town, without mentioning his name; and if Saul had never previously seen Samuel, he would naturally not recognise him in the crowd.
[412]. That the prophets were at Gibeah is shown by the fact that ‘the hill of God,’ where they met Saul, was also where ‘the garrison of the Philistines’ was (1 Sam. x. 5, xiii. 2, 3).
[413]. It has been usually supposed from this verse that ‘Gibeah of Saul’ was the original home of Saul’s family. But as the family burial-place was at Zelah (2 Sam. xxi. 14), this can hardly have been the case. Gibeah was the scene of Jonathan’s first success against the Philistines, and it was here that Saul fixed his residence during the latter years of his life.
[414]. Cp. Judg. xix. 29, where the Levite similarly cuts up his concubine and sends the pieces to the several tribes of Israel.
[415]. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 463-4. When Ahab came to the help of the Syrians against the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, his whole force consisted of only ten thousand men and two thousand chariots, and ‘Assur-natsir-pal thinks it a subject of boasting that he had slain fifty or one hundred and seventy-two of the enemy in battle.’ The whole of the country population of Judah carried into captivity by Sennacherib was only two hundred thousand one hundred and fifty, which would give at most an army of fifty thousand men. The Egyptian armies, with which the victories of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties were gained, were of small size. One of them, in the time of the nineteenth dynasty, contained only three thousand one hundred foreign mercenaries and one thousand nine hundred native troops (Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. tr., p. 542). At the same time, we must not forget that if there were fifty thousand available fighting men in Judah in the time of Hezekiah, there would have been about three hundred and fifty thousand among the other seven tribes a few generations earlier. Consequently the calculation given in the text of 1 Sam. xi. 8 is approximately correct as a mere calculation. Between available and actual fighting men there was, of course, a great difference. In the second year of Saul’s reign, when his authority was established, he was not able to muster more than three thousand fighting men (1 Sam. xiii. 2). A larger body, indeed, had flocked to him, but they were an undisciplined, unarmed multitude, who had to be dismissed to their homes.
[416]. As the Hebrew netsîb signifies a ‘governor’ as well as a ‘fortified post’ or ‘garrison,’ many writers have maintained that the netsîb in ‘the Hill of God’ at Gibeah was the Philistine official. But Jonathan would not have required a thousand men in order to destroy a single official and the few soldiers who might have been with him.
[417]. The Hebrews had, of course, no means of ascertaining the exact numbers of the enemy. The number of chariots is quite impossible, and they would have been useless in the mountainous country. In the great battle in which Meneptah saved Egypt from the combined armies of the Libyans and their northern allies, nine thousand three hundred and seventy-six prisoners in all were taken, while the slain amounted to six thousand three hundred and sixty-five Libyans and two thousand three hundred and seventy of their Mediterranean confederates. To these must be added nine thousand one hundred and eleven Maxyes. And yet it does not seem that any of the invaders escaped from the battle.
[418]. 1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7. For the distinction that is here drawn between ‘the men of Israel’ and ‘the Hebrews,’ see above, p. [6].
[419]. The identification is uncertain, as it depends on the position to be assigned to Gibeah.