11
Saul’s soldiers rescued lots of people at Jabesh
1 After that, the big boss of the mob called Ammon went to the town called Jabesh, in the Gilead country. His name was Nahash, and he came with big mobs of soldiers. They all stood in a circle around Jabesh. Nobody in the town could go outside.
Then the Jabesh mob sent a messenger to that boss. He said, “Don’t kill us dead. We will let you be our boss. We will be your workers. Let’s all agree about that. You promise not to kill us dead, and we will promise to be your workers.”
2 Nahash sent the messenger back to say, “All right. I will not kill you mob dead. I will just take out your eyes. I will take out the right eye from every one of you. That’s the way I will shame you Israel mob. Whenever people from other places look at you mob, you will feel ashamed.”
3 The elders from that place sent the messenger back. They told him to tell Nahash, “First let us wait for 7 days. We will send messengers to every place in Israel. Maybe somebody will come to help us, maybe not. If not, we will give ourselves to you. Then you can take out our eyes.”
4 So the messengers went around to every place in Israel. They arrived at Saul’s camp at Gibeah with the bad news. The people there heard it, and they cried out loud.
5 Saul was out in the garden. As he came back with 2 bulls, he heard them crying and asked, “What’s happening? Why is everybody crying?” They told him the story the messengers said.
6 Saul heard that message, and then the spirit of God came to him and gave him special power. He got wild with that boss from Ammon.
7 He killed his 2 bulls, and he cut them into bits. Then he gathered lots of messengers together, and he gave a bit of meat to each one. He sent them to every place in Israel to say, “Look at this bit of meat. Every man has to follow Saul and Samuel, to fight the Ammon mob. If any man stays behind, Saul will cut up his bulls into little bits, like this meat.” God made Saul so strong that he made everybody frightened. So all the men came together.
8 Saul gathered them all together at a place called Bezek. 300,000 men came from the Israel mob and 30,000 came from the Judah mob.
9 Those men told the messengers from Jabesh, “Tell that Jabesh mob, ‘Tomorrow morning we will hunt away that Ammon mob and then rescue you mob before the middle of the day.’ ”
The Jabesh mob heard that, and they were very happy.
10 So they sent a messenger back to the boss from Ammon, to tell him a lie, and say, “Tomorrow we will give ourselves to you. You can do whatever you like to us then.”
11 Before the sun came up Saul divided his fighting men into 3 groups. At day-light they ran into the Ammon mob’s camp and killed lots of them dead. They kept on killing them until the middle of the day. Only a few Ammon men were left, and they ran away in all directions.
(We have not yet translated 11:12—14:52.)