to reign · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
year
בֶּןben-
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine singular construct
reigned
מָלַ֖ךְma.Lakh
H4427
to reign · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
two
וּשְׁתֵּ֣יu.she.Tei
H8147
two · conjunction + noun, common feminine dual construct
years
שָׁנָ֖הsha.Nah
H8141
a year (as a revolution of time) · noun, common feminine singular absolute
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵֽלYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Exodus 12:5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:
Micah 6:6 Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a y…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 13:1-7
We are not told wherein it was that the people of Israel offended God, so as to forfeit his presence and turn his hand against them, as Samuel had threatened (Sa1 12:15); but doubtless they left God, else he would not have left them, as here it appears he did; for,
I. Saul was very weak and impolitic, and did not order his affairs with discretion. Saul was the son of one year (so the first words are in the original), a phrase which we make to signify the date of his reign, but ordinarily it signifies the date of one's birth, and therefore some understand it figuratively - he was as innocent and good as a child of a year old; so the Chaldee paraphrase: he was without fault, like the son of a…
Saul reigned one year - A great deal of learned labor has been employed and lost on this verse, to reconcile it with propriety and common sense. I shall not recount the meanings put on it. I think this clause belongs to the preceding chapter, either as a part of the whole, or a chronological note added afterwards; as if the writer had said, These things (related in 1 Samuel 12:1-25) took place in the first year of Saul's reign: and then he proceeds in the next place to tell us what took place in the second year, the two most remarkable years of Saul's reign. In the first he is appointed, anointed, and twice confirmed, viz., at Mizpeh and at Gilgal; in the second, Israel is brought into the l…
Saul reigned one year,.... "Or the son of a year in his reigning" (s); various are the senses given of these words: some interpret them, Saul had a son of a year old when he began to reign, Ishbosheth, and who was forty years of age when his father died, 2 Samuel 2:10, others, who understand the words of Saul himself, think there is an "ellipsis" or defect of the number, and that it may be supplied, that Saul was the son of thirty or forty years, or whatsoever age he may be supposed to be at when he began his reign; others take the words in a figurative sense, that he was like a child of a year old, for purity and innocence; so the Targum,"as the son of a year, in whom there are no faults, s…
The Church Fathers
Saul was one year old when he began to reign, etc. The sense is this: after Saul was elected, and anointed by the blessed Samuel with holy oil as king, he remained humble and similar to a private person for the whole first year, nor did he care to dress in royal attire and take up the other insignia of the kingdom: which was also proven above at the time of the Ammonite war where he was driving oxen from the field as a rustic, the beginning of which war Josephus reports happened after a month of all his honor. However, in the second and third years, he indeed assumed a royal mindset and ruled the people with royal care. Yet, he did not choose soldiers from the people who would adhere more familiarly to his side until the beginning of the fourth year. Allegorically, the son of one year represents the people of the faithful, whether in the Synagogue or in the Church, when they begin to reign, because anyone becomes associated with the kingdom of faith, and can be incorporated into the members of the eternal king, when they have first learned that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. He reigns for two years and thus chooses three thousand soldiers for himself from Israel: because when he has learned to unite hope and love with the unity of faith, he immediately chooses teachers for himself who diligently teach that same faith, hope, and charity to him and his own, and protect them from the enemy's raid. This is to be understood in two ways; namely, we choose both the ancient teachers of the Church, who reigned with Christ long ago and are now masters to us, whose writings or examples we follow, and we appoint new ones daily in place of those who preceded, whom we deem worthy to defend the believers, the hopeful, and the loving from the enemy.
1. Above, when the matter of ordaining a king was being discussed, it was said of him who by divine judgment was to be preferred over the rest, that he was chosen and good. Likewise, concerning him already chosen for the kingdom and set in the midst of the people, Samuel said: "Surely you see whom the Lord has chosen, for there is none like him among all the people" (1 Sam. 9:24). Of this same king it is now said: "Saul was a son of one year"; so that while he is attentively praised, it may be understood that he was chosen by the Lord as good. Why then is he said to have been one year old when he began to reign, unless to proclaim his innocence? For taken literally, how could he have been a son of one year, he who stood above the entire people from the shoulder upward? What therefore cannot be understood according to the letter must be understood through the reasoning of interior understanding. The king is thus described as being one year old, so that the gift of childhood in the person of the king might signify the good of innocence. Hence it is also commanded to the children of the eternal kingdom: "Do not become children in understanding, but in malice be little ones" (1 Cor. 14:20). And certainly the Truth itself warns this to the pastors of the churches, saying: "Unless you are converted and become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18:3). Of the king, therefore, who was first good and afterward became wicked, it is said that he was one year old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years. For although he reigned many years, he is said to have reigned only in those years in which he is reported to have been innocent and humble. For afterward, proud and disobedient, he heard: "Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord has rejected you from being king" (1 Sam. 15:26). He knew indeed that he had been cast from the kingdom, and yet, cast out, he did not fear to reign. How many things he did boldly afterward! But behold, all those times were not reckoned to him as his reign. Let us therefore rejoice that we have lived only in that time in which we lived innocently and humbly. For those times that we consumed in the vanity of the world and the fleeting life of the flesh are scarcely remembered, as though lost. There are moreover still those who thrust themselves forward to seize the summit of holy…
Dictionary and topics
Mattock — (1.) Heb. ma’eder, an instrument for dressing or pruning a vineyard (Isa. 7:25); a weeding-hoe. (2.) Heb. mahareshah (1 Sam. 13:1), perhaps the ploughshare or coulter. (3.) Heb. herebh, marg. of text…
Michmas Or Michmash — (hidden), a town which is known to us almost solely by its connection with the Philistine war of Saul and Jonathan. (1 Samuel 13:1; 1 Samuel 14:1) ... It has been identified with great probability in…
Samuel — Heard of God. The peculiar circumstances connected with his birth are recorded in 1 Sam. 1:20. Hannah, one of the two wives of Elkanah, who came up to Shiloh to worship before the Lord, earnestly…
Saul — Asked for. (1.) A king of Edom (Gen. 36:37, 38); called Shaul in 1 Chr. 1:48. (2.) The son of Kish (probably his only son, and a child of prayer, “asked for”), of the tribe of Benjamin, the first…
Armies Of Israel, The · Part of, retained in times of peace by the kings — Part of, retained in times of peace by the kings
Time · Part of a period of, usually counted as the whole — Part of a period of, usually counted as the whole
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The history of the reign of Saul commences with this chapter;
(Note: The connection of Sa1 13:8-11 of this chapter with Sa1 10:8 is adduced in support of the hypothesis that 1 Samuel 13 forms a direct continuation of the account that was broken off in Sa1 10:16. This connection must be admitted; but it by no means follows that in the source from which the books before us were derived, 1 Samuel 13 was directly attached to Sa1 8:16, and that Samuel intended to introduce Saul publicly as king here in Gilgal immediately before the attack upon the Philistines, to consecrate him by the solemn presentation of sacrifices, and to connect with this the religious consecration of the approaching campaig…
Saul’s fall from power involved a threefold sequence, as had his rise to power (see study note on 9:1–11:15): (1) He offered the sacrifices himself and did not wait for Samuel (13:1-14); (2) he made a rash oath that put Jonathan’s life in danger (14:1-46); and (3) he failed to obey God by eliminating the Amalekites and their belongings (15:1-35).
13:1 For the kings of Israel and Judah, Scripture normally records the age of ascension and the length of reign (e.g., 2 Sam 5:4-5; 1 Kgs 14:21). • thirty years old: The number represents a plausible age for Saul’s ascension. The Hebrew text and most Greek manuscripts omit the number , making it difficult to know the original wording. • reigned for…
One year was Shaul in his reign. Our Rabbis, of sainted memory, said,1 Maseches Yoma 22b. [Shaul was] like a one year old, who did not experience the taste of sin. It may also be interpreted, "Shaul was a year in his reign," i.e., in the first year in which he was made king, though he actually ruled over Yisroel two years, in the first year, immediately, "Shaul chose for himself three thousand [men]."
