1 Samuel 11:2

On this condition. — The horrible cruelty of this scornful proposal gives us an insight into the barbarous customs of this imperfectly civilised age. Indeed, many of the crimes we read of in these books — crimes which, to modern ears, justly sound shocking and scarcely credible — are referable to the fact that civilisation and its humanizing influences had made but little way as yet among the nations of the world.

The object of Nahash’s cruelty was to incapacitate the inhabitants of Jabesh from ever further assisting his enemies in war; they would henceforth be blinded in the right eye, while the left eye would be concealed by the shield which fighting-men were in the habit of holding before them.