diff --git a/docs/content/3.manual/manual.yml b/docs/content/3.manual/manual.yml
index d55df30f..7fada7ed 100644
--- a/docs/content/3.manual/manual.yml
+++ b/docs/content/3.manual/manual.yml
@@ -215,9 +215,7 @@ sections:
         value to the jq program as a predefined variable. If you run jq
         with `--argfile foo bar`, then `$foo` is available in the
         program and has the value resulting from parsing the content of
-        the file named `bar`.  The file is slurped.  That means the
-        value loaded will be an array of the top-level JSON values found
-        in the file.
+        the file named `bar`.
 
   - title: Basic filters
     entries:
diff --git a/main.c b/main.c
index 627719b1..9623d2c9 100644
--- a/main.c
+++ b/main.c
@@ -320,6 +320,8 @@ int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
           ret = 2;
           goto out;
         }
+        if (jv_get_kind(data) == JV_KIND_ARRAY && jv_array_length(jv_copy(data)) == 1)
+            data = jv_array_get(data, 0);
         arg = jv_object_set(arg, jv_string("value"), data);
         program_arguments = jv_array_append(program_arguments, arg);
         i += 2; // skip the next two arguments