Nahash the Ammonite besieges Jabesh-gilead, and the city offers to surrender on ordinary terms. Nahash answers with a demand meant to wound the whole nation: to 2"gouge out all your right eyes" and shame the whole nation. The elders buy seven days and send messengers through the land. When they reach Gibeah, Saul's own town, the response is 4"All the people wept aloud." A newly gathered nation's first instinct in danger is grief.
Saul is not even in the room. 5"Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen." Weeks after his anointing, Israel's king is doing ordinary farm work when the crisis he was raised for arrives. He hears the report, and something happens that did not happen at Mizpah, where he hid among the baggage: 6"the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled." This time the Spirit produces anger aimed at exactly the right target, where before there was reluctance.
What Saul does next is strange to modern ears but legible in his own day. He cuts a yoke of oxen into pieces and sends them through all the territory with a warning that anyone who does not follow him will see his own oxen treated the same way. It echoes a grim summons from the dark days of the judges, when Israel had no king (Judges 19:29-30). Saul, a king, uses the tool of a kingless age to show that the age is ending. 7"The dread of the LORD fell upon the people," and hundreds of thousands answer.
His message to the besieged city has a confidence that was nowhere in him at Mizpah: 9"Tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have salvation." He keeps the promise. By midday the Ammonites are scattered so completely that 11"no two of them were left together."
Then comes the moment the chapter has been building toward. Flush with victory, the people remember who had mocked Saul at Mizpah: 12"Bring the men, that we may put them to death." This is Saul's chance, the hour a lesser man would collect on every insult he had swallowed. Instead he says, 13"Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the LORD has worked salvation in Israel." Saul refuses to let personal vindication share the stage with what God has done. The victory was never his to avenge himself with.
That sentence is the hinge. For one shining day Saul understood what every king after him would be tested on: the throne belongs to the LORD first, and mercy toward enemies is the best proof that anyone believes it.
At Gilgal Samuel renews the kingdom, this time with the nation's full and unforced enthusiasm. What was chosen by lot is confirmed by deliverance. Centuries later another King showed mercy at the moment his enemies expected judgment, toward men who had done far more than doubt him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Saul's mercy lasted one remarkable day. Christ's has never run out.
Ask what grudge you have been saving for the right moment. Today the LORD has worked salvation, and the day is already big enough without it.
Prayer
Father, thank you for the moments you have worked salvation for us when we had no strength of our own. Teach us Saul's restraint on his one good day, the refusal to let old grievances share the room with your victory. Above all, thank you for Christ, who showed mercy to his own executioners and still shows it to us. In Jesus' name, amen.