1 Samuel 13:21 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

So the sense is, They allowed them some small helps to make their mattocks, and in some sort to serve their present use. But these words may be otherwise translated, and are so by some learned, both ancient and modern, translators: thus, Therefore the mouths or edges of the mattocks a coulters, &. were dull or blunt. Or rather thus, When (Heb. and put for when, as the particle and is sometimes rendered, as Mark 15:25) the mouths or edges of the mattocks, &c. were blunt. So this passage very well agrees both with the foregoing and following words; and the whole sense of the place is entirely thus, They went to the Philistines to sharpen their shares, and mattocks, and coulters, and axes, when they were blunt, and (which was more strange, they were forced to go to them even) to sharpen their goads.