C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on 1 Samuel 20:36

1Sa 20:36

To the latter he said, namely as soon as they had come to the field, Run, get the arrows which I shoot. The boy ran, and he shot off the arrows, “to go out beyond him,” i.e., so that the arrows flew farther than the boy had run. The form חצי for חץ only occurs in connection with disjunctive accents; beside the present chapter (1Sa 20:36, 1Sa 20:37, 1Sa 20:38, Chethibh) we find it again in 2Ki 9:24. The singular is used here with indefinite generality, as the historian did not consider it necessary to mention expressly, after what he had previously written, that Jonathan shot off three arrows one after another.