the most confident belief that the Lord would deliver and preserve His people. Such faith as this God would not put to shame.
Verses 11-13
When the two showed themselves to the garrison of the Philistines, they said, “Behold, Hebrews come forth out of the holes in which they have hidden themselves.” And the men of the garrison cried out to Jonathan and his armour-bearer, “Come up to us, and we will tell you a word,” i.e., we will communicate something to you. This was ridicule at the daring of the two men, whilst for all that they had not courage enough to meet them bravely and drive them back. In this Jonathan received the desired sign that the Lord had given the Philistines into the hand of the Israelites: he therefore clambered up the rock on his hands and feet, and his armour-bearer after him; and “they (the Philistines) fell before Jonathan,” i.e., were smitten down by him, “and his armour-bearer was slaying behind him.”
Verse 14
The first stroke that Jonathan and his armour-bearer struck was (amounted to) about twenty men “on about half a furrow of an acre of field.” מענה, a furrow, as in Psa 129:3, is in the absolute state instead of the construct, because several nouns follow in the construct state (cf. Ewald, §291, a.). צמד, lit. things bound together, then a pair; here it signifies a pair or yoke of oxen, but in the transferred sense of a piece of land that could be ploughed in one morning with a yoke of oxen, like the Latin jugum, jugerum. It is called the furrow of an acre of land, because the length only of half an acre of land was to be given, and not the breadth or the entire circumference. The Philistines, that is to say, took to flight in alarm as soon as the brave heroes really ascended, so that the twenty men were smitten one after another in the distance of half a rood of land. Their terror and flight are perfectly conceivable, if we consider that the outpost of the Philistines was so stationed upon the top of the ridge of the steep mountain wall, that they would not see how many were following, and the Philistines could not imagine it possible that two Hebrews would have ventured to climb the rock alone and make an attack upon them. Sallust relates a similar occurrence in connection with the scaling of a castle in the Numidian war (Bell. Jugurth. c. 89, 90).
Verse 15
And there arose a terror in the camp upon the field (i.e., in the principal camp) as well as among all the people (of the advanced outpost of the Philistines);
