Battle of Michmash

According to the Bible, Saul's army consisted entirely of infantry, about 3,000 soldiers and militia men. Saul kept a standing army of three thousand soldiers after the Battle of Jabesh-Gilead. However, none of the soldiers carried swords or spears with them and had to rely on axes, sickles, mattocks, and plow points as weapons. According to 1 Samuel 13:21, "the price was 2/3 of a shekel for sharpening plow points and mattocks, and 1/3 of a shekel for sharpening forks and axes." Only King Saul and his son Jonathan were said to have carried a spear and a bronze straight sword between them, though it is also possible that Jonathan was armed with a bow and quiver of arrows as well.

The full strength of the Philistine armies at Michmash has been debated. According to Josephus and some versions of the Bible, the Philistines dispatched a force of 30,000 chariots, 6,000 horsemen, and a large number of infantry against King Saul's army, but it is believed that the Philistines supplied way fewer than 30,000 chariots to the battlefield. The actual size and strength of the Philistine army is estimated at over 40,000 men, consisting of 6,000 horsemen and about 3,000 special hamashhith units. Each hamashhith was composed of a chariot carrying 2 men, a charioteer and an archer with javelins, bows, and arrows, and three squads of infantry runners, 4-men each. The infantry runners, also wearing leather breastplates and armed with swords, spears, and round bronze shields, would have numbered more than 30,000 men in total strength. Add in the charioteers and archers mounted in the chariots and the 6,000 horsemen, the Philistines mustered a total of 48,000 soldiers against the Israelites.

As described in 1 Samuel 13, "Saul, and Jonathan his son, and the people that were present with them, abode in Gibeah of Benjamin, but the Philistines encamped in Michmash."[2] Jonathan is recalled to have found a secret path around the Philistines, allowing him to flank them and defeat them.[3]

Jonathan silently approached the Philistine garrison with his armour-bearer, not telling his father of the act, and passed two rocky crags: "there was a sharp rock on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side: and the name of the one was Bozez and the name of the other Seneh."[4] The two single-handedly climbed the ramparts and attacked the garrison "within as it were an half acre of land, which a yoke of oxen might plough." They are said to have killed twenty men together in that single ambush. The remainder of the camp awoke with confusion, and "melted away and they went on beating down one another."[5] During the confusion and chaos, a detachment of Israelite warriors had previously been fighting alongside the Philistines defected over to the army of King Saul, bringing the king's force from six hundred men to several thousand strong. Finally, a miraculous earthquake threw the entire Philistine host into disarray. Drawn by the sounds of combat, Saul approached the garrison with his own force only to find that the army had already torn itself apart in fear, with the majority of survivors fleeing from Saul's army. No account in the Bible tells us how many Philistines fell in the battle, though Josephus numbers the Philistine casualties to as many as 60,000.

• Richard A. Gabriel (2003), The Military History of Ancient Israel, Praeger, ISBN 0-275-97798-6