“When Saul set out with the troops, he said, ‘Allah will test you by means of a river. Whoever drinks from it is not of me, while whoever does not taste it is of me—except one who scoops up a handful with his hand.’ Yet they drank from it, except for a few of them. Then, when he and those who believed with him had crossed it, they said, ‘We have no strength today to face Goliath and his troops.’ But those who were certain that they would meet Allah said, ‘How often has a small company overcome a large company by Allah’s permission! And Allah is with the steadfast.’” (249)
“When Saul set out with the troops”: that is, he departed with them. The basic sense of faṣl is cutting off; that is, he left his dwelling behind, heading for another place. Saul therefore set out from Jerusalem with the troops, who numbered seventy thousand fighting men at that time. It is also said that they numbered eighty thousand. None stayed behind except an elderly man on account of his old age, a sick man on account of his illness, or one excused by a valid excuse. This was because, when they saw the Ark, they no longer doubted victory and hastened to fight.
Saul said, “I have no need of all those whom I see. No man who has built a house but has not finished it is to go forth with me; nor a merchant occupied with his trade; nor a man burdened by debt; nor a man who has married a woman but has not consummated the marriage with her. I seek only energetic young men free of such obligations.” Thus, eighty thousand who met his conditions gathered for him. They were in severe heat and complained of the scarcity of water on the route between them and their enemy. They said, “The water is scarce and will not suffice us, so pray to Allah to make a river flow for us.”
Saul said, “Allah will test you”—that is, examine you in order to see whether you obey, though He knows best—“by means of a river.” Ibn Abbas and al-Suddi said that it was the river of Palestine. Qatadah said: it was a fresh river between the Jordan and Palestine. “Whoever drinks from it is not of me”: that is, he is not among those who follow my religion and obey me. “Whoever does not taste it”—that is, does not drink from it—“is of me, except one who scoops up a handful with his hand.”
The readers of the Hijaz and Abu Amr recited gharfa with the vowel a on the letter ghayn, while the others recited ghurfa with the vowel u; both are valid linguistic forms. Al-Kisa’i said: ghurfa, with the vowel u, denotes the amount of water that is held in the palm after it has been scooped up, whereas gharfa, with the vowel a, denotes the act of scooping. Thus, the former is a noun, while the latter is a verbal noun.
“Yet they drank from it, except for a few of them”: “except for a few of them” is in the accusative as an exception. They differed concerning the few who did not drink from it; one report states: