What Does I Samuel 14:20 Mean?

Finally rousing himself from his terrified paralysis, Saul hastily rallies his remaining six hundred men and enters the battlefield, only to discover a surreal reality. The Philistines are not standing in disciplined formation; infected by the supernatural panic and the divine earthquake, they are fundamentally destroying themselves "striking each other with their swords in very great confusion." The significant armed, uncircumcised empire that easily suffocated Israel is committing mass suicide under the blinding judgment of Yahweh, utterly doing the agonizing work of the executioner fully upon themselves.

One of the most majestic realities of the biblical war is that God frequently judges the arrogant, highly organized systems of the world fully by releasing them into the devastating terror of their own darkness. When demonic ideologies, corrupt human governments, or violent, anti-Christian philosophies systematically establish arrogant strongholds, the Holy Spirit regularly turns their own armed weapons against them, causing them to consume and massacre their own fragile alliances in total confusion. The church must trust the sovereignty of God, recognizing that the Lord is capable of crushing an empire fully from the inside out.

The violent, self-destructive panic of the Philistine army beautifully illustrates the ultimate, eternal confusion and catastrophic failure inflicted upon the demonic realm by the supreme victory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews forcefully declares that through His agonizing, perfect death, the Savior directly broke the power of him who holds the actual power of death - the devil - freeing those who were held in crippling slavery by their own terror (Hebrews 2:14-15). Christ used the total weapon of death itself to smash the lord of death, orchestrating the most stunning, total reversal in the history of the cosmos.