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[95]
NOW Saul chose out of the multitude about three thousand men, and
he took two thousand of them to be the guards of his own body, and abode
in the city Bethel, but he gave the rest of them to Jonathan his son, to
be the guards of his body; and sent him to Gibeah, where he besieged and
took a certain garrison of the Philistines, not far from Gilgal; for the
Philistines of Gibeah had beaten the Jews, and taken their weapons away,
and had put garrisons into the strongest places of the country, and had
forbidden them to carry any instrument of iron, or at all to make use of
any iron in any case whatsoever. And on account of this prohibition it
was that the husbandmen, if they had occasion to sharpen any of their tools,
whether it were the coulter or the spade, or any instrument of husbandry,
they came to the Philistines to do it. Now as soon as the Philistines heard
of this slaughter of their garrison, they were in a rage about it, and,
looking on this contempt as a terrible affront offered them, they made
war against the Jews, with three hundred thousand footmen, and thirty thousand
chariots, and six thousand horses; and they pitched their camp at the city
Michmash. When Saul, the king of the Hebrews, was informed of this, he
went down to the city Gilgal, and made proclamation over all the country,
that they should try to regain their liberty; and called them to the war
against the Philistines, diminishing their forces, and despising them as
not very considerable, and as not so great but they might hazard a battle
with them. But when the people about Saul observed how numerous the Philistines
were, they were under a great consternation; and some of them hid themselves
in caves and in dens under ground, but the greater part fled into the land
beyond Jordan, which belonged to Gad and Reuben.
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