No Blacksmith in Israel
16 Saul, and Jonathan his son, and the people who were present with them, stayed in Geba of Benjamin; but the Philistines encamped in Michmash. 17 The raiders came out of the camp of the Philistines in three companies: one company turned to the way that leads to Ophrah, to the land of Shual; 18 another company turned the way to Beth Horon; and another company turned the way of the border that looks down on the valley of Zeboim toward the wilderness. 19 Now there was no blacksmith found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, “Lest the Hebrews make themselves swords or spears”; 20 but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, each man to sharpen his own plowshare, mattock, ax, and sickle. 21 The price was one payim each to sharpen mattocks, plowshares, pitchforks, axes, and goads. 22 So it came to pass in the day of battle that neither sword nor spear was found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan; but Saul and Jonathan his son had them. 23 The garrison of the Philistines went out to the pass of Michmash.
Raiders in three directions and a nation with no smith — the iron monopoly that explains why two men with swords faced an army with farm tools.
Now there was no blacksmith found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, “Lest the Hebrews make themselves swords or spears”;
The narrator pauses the war to explain the balance of power, and the explanation is economic. Philistine control of ironworking is enforced as policy: no smith in Israel, so every plowshare, mattock, ax, and sickle has to be carried down to enemy towns for sharpening, at a price 1 Samuel 13:20–21. A subject people pays its occupier for the privilege of maintaining its own tools, and cannot forge a weapon without permission. This is what late-judges Israel had come to — the era's spiritual collapse showing up as a trade monopoly.
So it came to pass in the day of battle that neither sword nor spear was found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan; but Saul and Jonathan his son had them.
Two swords in the whole army. The detail is the setup for everything that follows: the next chapter's victory belongs to a man with one of them and a boy carrying his kit, and the chapter after that to a shepherd who declines the loan of a sword entirely 1 Samuel 17:39. Israel's problem was never a shortage of iron.
The raiding parties fanning out in three directions 1 Samuel 13:17–18 complete the picture — Ophrah, Beth Horon, the valley of Zeboim — a countryside being systematically stripped while the king sits at Bethel's hill country with six hundred men.
And yet the passage is not despairing. It is an inventory taken before a rescue, and the book takes such inventories deliberately: the odds are counted precisely so that the outcome cannot be credited to the odds. Gideon's army was reduced for the same reason Judges 7:2, and Jonathan is about to state the principle in one line 1 Samuel 14:6. Scripture's habit of listing what God's people do not have is a form of argument.
settled What this mark means