Jabesh-Gilead Buried the King Who Had Saved Them

What Nahash Wanted From Jabesh-Gilead

The Ammonite king Nahash had a signature demand. When he conquered a city, he put out the right eye of every man in it. The reason was military: a soldier whose left eye was covered by his shield in battle was already half-blind, and a man with only his left eye could not fight at all. Nahash was not simply brutal. He was systematic. He wanted the cities he spared to be permanent reminders of their own incapacity.

When he came to Jabesh-Gilead and made his offer, the men of the city sent messengers through all of Israel. They begged for seven days to find help. Nahash, confident that no army would come, agreed.

Midrash Shmuel gives Nahash's demand a deeper reading. Rabbi Levi said the right eye stood for Israel's slingers and archers, the warriors who were the pride of the nation's fighting force. Rabbi Simon said it represented the Sanhedrin, the high court called the eyes of the congregation. The rabbis who compiled that tradition said the right eye was the Torah scroll itself: Nahash had been demanding written Torahs from the Israelites east of the Jordan, tearing out the portion dealing with the commandments and leaving only the stories. He wanted to blind Israel not just physically but spiritually, removing the part of the text that made any demand on how they lived.

The Night Saul Came in From the Field

Saul was plowing when the messengers arrived. He came home from his oxen and found the city weeping. He asked why. When they told him, the spirit of God came on him in what Josephus, writing in his Antiquities, describes as a divine fury. He slaughtered his oxen, cut them into pieces, and sent the pieces throughout Israel with a message that was not a request. He raised an army. He marched. He broke Nahash's siege before dawn and scattered the Ammonites in every direction.

The people of Jabesh-Gilead had their right eyes. They had their warriors, their court, their Torah scrolls. They had been given all of it back by a man who had been plowing a field the day before.

The Philistines and the Wall

Thirty years later or more, Saul fell at the battle of Gilboa. His sons fell with him. The Philistines found his body and carried it to Beth-shan, where they stripped his armor and nailed him to the city wall. They put the armor in the temple of their god. They put the announcement of his death in the temples of their other gods. His head they may have taken as a trophy. They wanted his defeat to be a permanent public monument, and they wanted every nation that passed through the valley to see it.

The men of Jabesh-Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul. They walked through the night to Beth-shan, all the valiant men of the city, and they took Saul and his sons down from the wall. They brought the bodies back to Jabesh. They burned them, which Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer connects to the treatment of the dead that was considered appropriate given the circumstances of battle and exposure. They buried the bones under the tamarisk tree. They fasted seven days.

What the Rabbis Called What They Did

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer asks, in the passage on Saul's burial, where we learn the obligation to comfort mourners and show kindness to the dead. The answer it gives is Jabesh-Gilead. The text uses the term chesed shel emet, true kindness, for what those men did. It is distinguished from ordinary kindness by its audience. The living who perform acts of kindness might receive gratitude, reciprocation, or public recognition. The dead cannot provide any of those things. Kindness to the dead is kindness without a return address. That is why the tradition calls it true.

David, when he heard what the men of Jabesh-Gilead had done, sent messengers to bless them. He called what they did chesed, loving-kindness, with Saul their lord. He crossed the Jordan later with the elders of Israel to retrieve Saul's bones for burial in the land of his father. The chain of obligation ran from Nahash's demand to Saul's rescue to Jabesh-Gilead's midnight walk to David's blessing to the final burial in Benjamin. What the Ammonite wanted to make permanent was the memory of incapacity. What the men of Jabesh-Gilead made permanent instead was the memory of debt repaid.