Bible Synapse
Was Jonathan’s attack at Michmash his “first slaughter”, when he had already struck the garrison at Geba?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba”, and the Philistines heard of it.
And Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, Let the Hebrews hear.
Jonathan and his armour-bearer climbed to the Philistine outpost; “that first slaughter” was about twenty men within about half an acre.
And Jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon his feet, and his armourbearer after him: and they fell before Jonathan; and his armourbearer slew after him. And that first slaughter, which Jonathan and his armourbearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were an half acre of land, which a yoke of oxen might plow.
The objection
1 Samuel 13:3 tells how Jonathan struck the Philistine garrison at Geba. Yet 1 Samuel 14:14 calls the twenty men Jonathan killed later, at the pass of Michmash, “that first slaughter”. Critics ask how a later attack can be his first.
The answer
‘First’ in 14:14 refers to the first stage of that day’s battle, not to the first fight of Jonathan’s life. The Hebrew is hammakkah harishonah, ‘the first blow’ or ‘the first slaughter’; Gill notes that the Targum renders it ‘the first blow they struck’, and the BSB has “In that first assault”. Chapter 14 tells the story of one day’s fighting in stages. Jonathan and his armour-bearer climbed to the Philistine outpost and killed about twenty men in a small space (14:13–14). That opening blow set off a panic in the Philistine camp: the earth shook, and the Philistines turned their swords on one another (14:15–20). Then Saul’s army, Hebrews who had gone over to the Philistines, and men who had hidden in the hills all joined the pursuit, and “they smote the Philistines that day from Michmash to Aijalon” (14:21–23, 31). The ‘first slaughter’ is first in that sequence.
The verse makes no comparison with the attack on Geba in chapter 13, which came earlier, before the Philistines gathered their army at Michmash (13:3–5). A report of ‘the first assault’ of one battle does not deny that the same soldier had fought before.
From the classic commentators
The first stroke that Jonathan and his armour-bearer struck was (amounted to) about twenty menKeil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 1 Samuel 14
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 1 Samuel 14, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: 1 Samuel 14 (1746–1763), at Bible Hub