A Class-Book of Biblical History and Geography / with numerous maps

by H. S. Osborn

11. This battle, with its associated geography and incidental history, requires some knowledge of the localities of Shunem, Gilboa, and En-dor.

The Philistines, with whom Saul was soon to contend, had approached the great plain of Esdraelon from their coast on the southwest. They had passed up the plain of Sharon northward along the shore of the Great Sea and entered through the pass of Mt. Carmel, which range limits this plain on the southwest, and thus they had entered the plain which we have already described, page 101.

Saul had gathered his army, and passing northward along the central elevated ridge, had reached the same plain at the town of En-gannim, which is on the edge of the southern border and overlooks the plain. Shunem was ten miles north. Here the Philistines were now gathering in their forces from the west, since the pass is sixteen miles west of Shunem.

It is an interesting fact that Gen. Kleber, under Napoleon I. in his battle with the Turks, 1799, drewup his smaller army of fifteen hundred in a square occupying exactly the same ground which a part of the Philistine army covered at this time,while the Turks with their twenty-five thousand covered more of the same battle-ground on the north.[84]

12. Shunem, now called Solam, is on the west and southern end of the short hill range running east, and supposed to be the hill of Moreh, but the Philistines occupied the plain on the south of this ridge-end, for Saul’s army was across the valley on the west end of Mt. Gilboa and immediately opposite the Philistines. Between the two armies was the valley of Jezreel running down eastward to Beth-shean in the valley of Jordan. The town of Jezreel, which gave name to the valley, was south of Shunem—Shunem on the Philistines’ side, Jezreel on that of Saul.

Just one mile and a half southeast of the valley of Jezreel is the “Fountain of Jezreel,” now a large body of water fed by a spring called Ain Jalud. This is probably both the Fountain of Jezreel of 1 Sam. 29:1, and the “water” referred to in Judg. 7:4. It is also the “well of Harod” of the first verse.

It was just two centuries before this battle that Gideon at this place obtained his great victory over the Midianites, and it was, perhaps, chosen by Saul because of the fountain.

13. As Saul had more than 300,000 warriors in his battle with the Ammonites and was as fullyaware of the seriousness of a conflict with the Philistines as he was there with the Ammonites, it is probable that he brought into the field as many as he then had. The Philistines had a much larger number than Saul, and the total number therefore in conflict could not have been less than 700,000.

The evening before the morning of the battle Saul came fully to the conclusion that the Philistines were too strong for the forces under his command. In his forlorn belief in the spirit world and in the existence of Samuel, although three years dead, he determined upon an interview with the prophet if it were possible by a witch’s power of incantation to obtain it. As soon as it was dark, Saul, disguised, and with two trusty servants, crossed the valley from Gilboa northward to the village of En-dor, where in the caves near at hand there dwelt such a woman as he sought. The distance from the Fountain of Jezreel is about seven miles north. The interview with Samuel, which seems to have been as unlooked for and as terrible to the witch as it was dreadful and disheartening to Saul, is recorded in 1 Sam. 28:3–25.

14. Early the next day the battle began. The place called Aphek, where the main centre or headquarters of the Philistines was located, is not known, but was probably a mile southwest of Shunem, where the left wing of the army extended upon the line of its approach. The Philistines had the army of Saul at terrible disadvantage from the fact that his troopswere drawn up southeast of them against the foot of Gilboa and slightly covering its sides, and thus elevated to the shafts of the archers. It was at about this age that the bow in war was used with terrible fatality by some of the African nations,and the Philistines had added this weapon to their javelins and short arms.[85]