[420]. Ahimelech (1 Sam. xxii. 9, 11, 20) is here called Ahiah, perhaps out of reluctance to apply the term Melech, ‘King,’ with its heathen associations, to Yahveh.
[421]. Here called by its old name of Beth-On, which the Massoretic punctuation has transformed into Beth-Aven.
[422]. Some of the literary critics have started the gratuitous supposition that a prisoner was substituted for Jonathan, though the fact was suppressed by the later Hebrew historian. It is perhaps natural that those who re-write history should have a poor opinion of the trustworthiness of their predecessors.
[423]. 1 Sam. xii.
[424]. 1 Sam. x. 8, compared with xiii. 8-15.
[425]. 1 Sam. xiii. 14. Though Saul’s kingdom did ‘not continue,’ it nevertheless lasted some time, and was not overthrown at Michmash, as those who heard Samuel’s words must have expected. As David was not anointed until some years later, he cannot be ‘the man’ after Yahveh’s ‘heart,’ whom the seer had in his mind at the time.
[426]. The nakhal (A.V. ‘valley’) is probably the Wadi el-Arîsh, which lay on the way to the Shur or line of fortifications that protected the eastern side of the Delta. Havilah, the ‘sandy’ desert, corresponds with the Melukhkha or ‘Salt’ desert of the Babylonian inscriptions. The ‘city of Amalek’ may have been El-Arîsh, if this were not in Egyptian hands at the time.
[427]. The Israelites had been stirred to vengeance by the murderous raids of the Bedâwin at a time when the Philistine invasion had made them too weak to defend themselves (1 Sam. xv. 33).
[428]. For ‘Edom’ we should probably read ‘Aram,’ as is demanded by the geographical order of the list of countries which runs from south to north. In 2 Sam. viii. 13, ‘Aram’ has been substituted for ‘Edom,’ which was still read by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 12), and the marriage of David with the daughter of the king of Aram-Geshur (2 Sam. iii. 3) implies hostility between Saul and the Geshurites.
[429]. The ‘critics’ have decided that the list of Saul’s wars has been ‘borrowed’ from the history of David. In this case, however, we should have heard of ‘the king’ of Zobah, not of ‘the kings.’ We happen to know that Saul fought against Ammon. Had the fact not been mentioned, the ‘critics’ would have maintained, as in the case of Moab and Zobah, that such a war never took place. The argument from silence may simplify the process of reconstructing history, but from a historical point of view it is worthless.