1Sa 14:14 | KD | STEP | The first stroke that Jonathan and his armour-bearer struck was (amounted to) about twenty men “ on about half a furrow of an acre of field .” מענה, a furrow , as in , is in the absolute state instead of the construct, because several nouns follow in the construct state (cf. Ewald , §291, a .). צמד, lit . things bound together, then a pair; here it signifies a pair or yoke of oxen , but in the transferred sense of a piece of land that could be ploughed in one morning with a yoke of oxen, like the Latin jugum , jugerum . It is called the furrow of an acre of land, because the length only of half an acre of land was to be given, and not the breadth or the entire circumference. The Philistines, that is to say, took to flight in alarm as soon as the brave heroes really ascended, so that the twenty men were smitten one after another in the distance of half a rood of land. Their terror and flight are perfectly conceivable, if we consider that the outpost of the Philistines was so stationed upon the top of the ridge of the steep mountain wall, that they would not see how many were following, and the Philistines could not imagine it possible that two Hebrews would have ventured to climb the rock alone and make an attack upon them. Sallust relates a similar occurrence in connection with the scaling of a castle in the Numidian war ( Bell. Jugurth . c. 89, 90).

‏ 1 Samuel 14:14

The first stroke that Jonathan and his armour-bearer struck was (amounted to) about twenty men “on about half a furrow of an acre of field.” מענה, a furrow, as in Psa 129:3, is in the absolute state instead of the construct, because several nouns follow in the construct state (cf. Ewald, §291, a.). צמד, lit. things bound together, then a pair; here it signifies a pair or yoke of oxen, but in the transferred sense of a piece of land that could be ploughed in one morning with a yoke of oxen, like the Latin jugum, jugerum. It is called the furrow of an acre of land, because the length only of half an acre of land was to be given, and not the breadth or the entire circumference. The Philistines, that is to say, took to flight in alarm as soon as the brave heroes really ascended, so that the twenty men were smitten one after another in the distance of half a rood of land. Their terror and flight are perfectly conceivable, if we consider that the outpost of the Philistines was so stationed upon the top of the ridge of the steep mountain wall, that they would not see how many were following, and the Philistines could not imagine it possible that two Hebrews would have ventured to climb the rock alone and make an attack upon them. Sallust relates a similar occurrence in connection with the scaling of a castle in the Numidian war (Bell. Jugurth. c. 89, 90).