1 Samuel 14 Bible study: By many or by few

Saul is sitting "under the pomegranate tree which is in Migron" with "about six hundred men" (14:2), and a priest of Eli's family is with him, "wearing an ephod" (14:3) (tap ephod). Jonathan goes without telling his father: "he didn’t tell his father" (14:1), and "The people didn’t know that Jonathan was gone" (14:3). Between the passes are two rocky crags, Bozez and Seneh (14:4), one "in front of Michmash" and the other "in front of Geba" (14:5). Then Jonathan says to his armor bearer: "It may be that the LORD will work for us, for there is no restraint on the LORD to save by many or by few" (14:6) (tap restraint and save). He doesn't claim to know; he says "It may be". His armor bearer answers, "Do all that is in your heart. Go, and behold, I am with you according to your heart" (14:7). In Hebrew, many in 14:6 is the word of "too many" in Judges 7:2, where the LORD told Gideon that his people were too many, "lest Israel brag against me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me’" (Judges 7:2); saved there is this chapter's verb save.

1 Samuel 14:28→leads toMatthew 15:32

Saul bound the people with an oath: "Cursed is the man who eats any food until it is evening" (14:24). "So the people were faint" (14:28), and Jonathan said, "My father has troubled the land" (14:29), and "How much more, if perhaps the people had eaten freely today of the plunder of their enemies which they found?" (14:30). When a multitude had been with Jesus three days, he said, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have continued with me now three days and have nothing to eat. I don’t want to send them away fasting, or they might faint on the way" (Matthew 15:32). No New Testament passage cites 1 Samuel 14, so setting the two side by side is a reading, and it rests on what happens in each, not on a shared word (1 Samuel is Hebrew, Matthew Greek). Some see a contrast: the king's oath kept food from people who grew faint, and Jesus would not send hungry people away without food. Others read each in its own setting: Saul's oath was made in battle, "and I am avenged of my enemies" (14:24), and the chapter's concern is the oath and the LORD's silence (14:37-45), while Matthew 15 tells how Jesus fed the multitude (Matthew 15:36-37) in "a deserted place" (Matthew 15:33).

יָשַׁעyasha'say ya-SHA

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "deliver, save". The chapter uses the verb three times. Jonathan: "there is no restraint on the LORD to save by many or by few" (14:6). The narrator: "So the LORD saved Israel that day" (14:23). And Saul, in the oath that puts his son's life at stake: "For as the LORD lives, who saves Israel, though it is in Jonathan my son, he shall surely die" (14:39). The LORD had said of Saul, "He will save my people out of the hand of the Philistines" (9:16); in this chapter the verb's subject is the LORD. David will say it to Goliath: "the LORD doesn’t save with sword and spear" (17:47).