The Battles of Michmash

By Joe Keirouz (San Jose)

Soon after I first started reading the Bible back in the mid-1980s, as probably back then, perhaps due to my religious upbringing, I had a skeptical attitude about its historicity and its trustworthiness.

I got interested in books about the Bible. Among the first ones that I recall I read was "The bible as History," by Werner Keller. If my memory is correct, (it has been a while since I last read it), the book talks favorably about the Bible being a truthful reflection of the time and places it reports on. One of the thrills of reading that book was a story on page 187 that occurred during WWI in Israel that highlighted to me the precision of the biblical account.

Here is a paraphrased version of what it said:

One of the British brigade majors in that region was looking in his Bible for Michmash, a village they were assigned to take and he found it in 1Samuel 14:1-15. In that biblical account, Jonathan and his armorbearer went through a pass surrounded by 2 sharp rocks named Bozez and Seneh, climbed up a cliff on their hand and knees, showing themselves and killing about twenty men of the Philistine garrison within about a half-acre of land. Soon afterwards, there was an earthquake that occurred and that caused a general panic in the Philistine camp in Michmash causing them to flee. 

The British major thought that this narrow pass through the rocks must still be present, and so he talked to his commander about it. They sent patrols to confirm its existence, and so altered the plan of attack to follow what Jonathan and his armorbearer did about 3000 years ago, climbing up the cliffs under the cover of darkness, startling the Turks who panicked just like the Philistines and were either captured or killed.

This passage in the bible may not be very relevant to most us today and probably was not to that army major until that day.  However, by having been familiar with his bible and believing its trustworthiness, I believe he must have saved many British soldiers' lives.

The details of how truthful some of the bible accounts are, including this story from WW1, have been very encouraging to me to trust the truthfulness of the ones for which no evidence has yet been discovered. Let us treasure God's inspired word, investing our time in it, allowing it to be a lamp to our feet and light to our path, and seek God's inspiration to bring to our attention the proper verses that we need as we face the challenges of our Christian journey.