Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer (the Stone of Help), saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”  He next attacked the Tyrians and the Amorites, and won back from them all the territory they had conquered.* One passage, in which Samuel is not mentioned, tells us how heavily the Philistine yoke had weighed upon the people, and explains their long patience by the fact that their enemies had taken away all their weapons.  “Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel:  for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears;” and whoever needed to buy or repair the most ordinary agricultural implements was forced to address himself to the Philistine blacksmiths.** The very extremity of the evil worked its own cure.  The fear of the Midian-ites had already been the occasion of the ephemeral rule of Jerubbaal and Abimelech; the Philistine tyranny forced first the tribes of Central and then those of Southern Canaan to unite under the leadership of one man.  In face of so redoubtable an enemy and so grave a peril a greater effort was required, and the result was proportionate to their increased activity.

* This manner of retaliating against the Philistines for the disaster they had formerly inflicted on Israel, is supposed by some critics to be an addition of a later date, either belonging to the time of the prophets, or to the period when the Jews, without any king or settled government, rallied at Mizpah.  According to these scholars, 1 Sam. vii. 2-14 forms part of a biography, written at a time when the foundation of the Benjamite monarchy had not as yet been attributed to Saul.

     ** 1 Sam. xiii. 20, 21.

The Manassite rule extended at most over two or three clans, but that of Saul and David embraced the Israelite nation.* Benjamin at that time reckoned among its most powerful chiefs a man of ancient and noble family—­Saul, the son of Kish—­who possessed extensive flocks and considerable property, and was noted for his personal beauty, for “there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he:  from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people."** He had already reached mature manhood, and had several children, the eldest of whom, Jonathan, was well known as a skilful and brave soldier, while Saul’s reputation was such that his kinsmen beyond Jordan had recourse to his aid as to a hero whose presence would secure victory.  The Ammonites had laid siege to Jabesh-Gilead, and the town was on the point of surrendering; Saul came to their help, forced the enemy to raise the siege, and inflicted such a severe lesson upon them, that during the whole of his lifetime they did not again attempt hostilities.  He was soon after proclaimed king by the Benjamites, as Jerubbaal had been raised to authority by the Manassites on the morrow of his victory.***