1 Samuel 14:17
Then said Saul unto the people that were with him, Number now, and see who is gone from us. And when they had numbered, behold, Jonathan and his armourbearer were not there. Then said Saul unto the people that were with him, Number now, and see who is gone from us. And when they had numbered, behold, Jonathan and his armourbearer were not there.
Saul was still afraid beneath the pomegranate tree with about six hundred men when he gave the order to count the force. He commanded the people with him to number themselves and see who had gone from them and left the camp. The numbering showed that Jonathan and his armourbearer were missing, and they alone, for Saul had not known that they had secretly withdrawn from the camp. They had gone to make a secret attack on the Philistines.
Moved by a divine impulse, Jonathan had proposed the venture in faith that the Lord could save by many or by few, and his armourbearer, a man of faith and prayer, had encouraged the plan. God would not give Saul the honor of vanquishing the Philistines because of Saul's sin in his presumptuous offering, and had chosen Jonathan, a man who feared the Lord, as the instrument to deliver Israel. The discovery came while the battle had already been underway for some time and Israel's deliverance was being accomplished through Jonathan and his armourbearer, with the Lord fighting for them and using the two men. Saul and the people did not yet know this and were perplexed by the absence.
The absence revealed their attack on the Philistines, whose sudden panic and defeat followed.