Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Samuel 31:1
Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.
Ch. 1Sa 31:1-7. The death of Saul on Mount Gilboa
1. The narrative of this chapter has been inserted by the compiler of Chronicles in his work (1Ch 10:1-12) with only a few verbal variations.
Now the Philistines ] The notices of the Philistine muster in 1Sa 28:4, 1Sa 29:1; 1Sa 29:11 have prepared the way for the account of the battle.
Four battles memorable in the history of Israel were fought in or near the plain of Esdraelon “the great battlefield of Palestine.”
(1) The battle of Kishon, in which Deborah and Barak defeated the host of Sisera (Jdg 4:15; Jdg 5:21).
(2) The battle of Jezreel, in which Gideon’s three hundred routed the vast horde of Midianites (Judges 7).
(3) The disastrous battle of Mount Gilboa recorded here.
(4) The battle of Megiddo, where Josiah lost his life fighting against Pharaoh Necho.
(5) A fifth may be added, the battle of Hattn, on the fifth of July, 1187, “the last struggle of the Crusaders, in which all was staked in the presence of the holiest scenes of Christianity, and all miserably lost.” See Stanley’s Sin. and Pal. p. 335 ff., 369.
the men of Israel fled ] Probably the battle took place in the plain of Jezreel; the men of Israel were driven back on their camp, and finally fled in confusion up the heights of Gilboa, pursued by the Philistines.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
CHAPTER XXXI
A battle in Mount Gilboa between Israel and the Philistines; in
which the former are defeated, and Saul’s three sons slain,
1, 2.
Saul, being mortally wounded, and afraid to fall alive into the
hands of the Philistines, desires his armour-bearer to despatch
him; which he refusing, Saul falls on his sword, and his
armour-bearer does the same, 3, 6.
The Israelites on the other side of the valley forsake their
cities, and the Philistines come and dwell in them, 7.
The Philistines, finding Saul and his three sons among the
slain, strip them of their armour, which they put in the house
of Ashtaroth, cut of their heads, send the news to all the
houses of their idols, and fasten the bodies of Saul and his
three sons to the walls of Beth-shan, 8-10.
Valiant men of Jabesh-gilead go by night, and take away the
bodies; burn them at Jabesh; bury their bones under a tree;
and fast seven days, 11-13.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXXI
Verse 1. Now the Philistines fought] This is the continuation of the account given in 1Sa 29:1-11.
The men of Israel fled] It seems as if they were thrown into confusion at the first onset, and turned their backs upon their enemies.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The Philistines fought against Israel, whilst David was engaged against the Amalekites. So he returns to the history, which had been interrupted to give an account of Davids concerns.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. Now the Philistines foughtagainst IsraelIn a regular engagement, in which the two armiesmet (1Sa 28:1-4), theIsraelites were forced to give way, being annoyed by the arrows ofthe enemy, which, destroying them at a distance before they came toclose combat, threw them into panic and disorder. Taking advantage ofthe heights of Mount Gilboa, [the Israelites] attempted to rally, butin vain. Saul and his sons fought like heroes; but the onset of thePhilistines being at length mainly directed against the quarter wherethey were, Jonathan and two brothers, Abinadab or Ishui (1Sa14:49) and Melchishua, overpowered by numbers, were killed on thespot.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Now the Philistines fought against Israel,…. Being come to Jezreel where Israel pitched, 1Sa 29:1; they fell upon them, began the battle:
and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines; at the first onset, as it should seem:
and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa; which was near, and whither fleeing they were pursued and slain, at least great numbers of them.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The account of the war between the Philistines and Israel, the commencement of which has already been mentioned in 1Sa 28:1, 1Sa 28:4., and 1Sa 29:1, is resumed in 1Sa 31:1 in a circumstantial clause; and to this there is attached a description of the progress and result of the battle, more especially with reference to Saul. Consequently, in 1Ch 10:1, where there had been no previous allusion to the war, the participle is changed into the perfect. The following is the way in which we should express the circumstantial clause: “Now when the Philistines were fighting against Israel, the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and slain men fell in the mountains of Gilboa” (vid., 1Sa 28:4). The principal engagement took place in the plain of Jezreel. But when the Israelites were obliged to yield, they fled up the mountains of Gilboa, and were pursued and slain there.
1Sa 31:2-6 The Philistines followed Saul, smote (i.e., put to death) his three sons (see at 1Sa 14:49), and fought fiercely against Saul himself. When the archers ( is an explanatory apposition to ) hit him, i.e., overtook him, he was greatly alarmed at them ( , from or ),
(Note: The lxx have adopted the rendering , they wounded him in the abdomen, whilst the Vulgate rendering is vulneratus est vehementer a sagittariis . In 1Ch 10:3 the Sept. rendering is , and that of the Vulgate et vulneraverunt jaculis . The translators have therefore derived from = , and then given a free rendering to the other words. But this rendering is overthrown by the word , very, vehemently, to say nothing of the fact that the verb or cannot be proved to be ever used in the sense of wounding. If Saul had been so severely wounded that he could not kill himself, and therefore asked his armour-bearer to slay him, as Thenius supposes, he would not have had the strength to pierce himself with his sword when the armour-bearer refused. The further conjecture of Thenius, that the Hebrew text should be read thus, in accordance with the lxx, , “he was wounded in the region of the gall,” is opposed by the circumstance that is not the gall or region of the gall, but what is under the , or breast cartilage, viz., the abdomen and bowels.)
and called upon his armour-bearer to pierce him with the sword, “ lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and play with me,” i.e., cool their courage upon me by maltreating me. But as the armour-bearer would not do this, because he was very much afraid, since he was supposed to be answerable for the king’s life, Saul inflicted death upon himself with his sword; whereupon the armour-bearer also fell upon his sword and died with his king, so that on that day Saul and this three sons and his armour-bearer all died; also “ all his men ” (for which we have “all his house” in the Chronicles), i.e., not all the warriors who went out with him to battle, but all the king’s servants, or all the members of his house, sc., who had taken part in the battle. Neither Abner nor his son Ishbosheth was included, for the latter was not in the battle; and although the former was Saul’s cousin and commander-in-chief (see 1Sa 14:50-51), he did not belong to his house or servants.
1Sa 31:7 When the men of Israel upon the sides that were opposite to the valley (Jezreel) and the Jordan saw that the Israelites (the Israelitish troop) fled, and Saul and his sons were dead, they took to flight out of the cities, whereupon the Philistines took possession of them. is used here to signify the side opposite to the place of conflict in the valley of Jezreel, which the writer assumed as his standpoint (cf. 1Sa 14:40); so that is the country to the west of the valley of Jezreel, and the country to the west of the Jordan, i.e., between Gilboa and the Jordan. These districts, i.e., the whole of the country round about the valley of Jezreel, the Philistines took possession of, so that the whole of the northern part of the land of Israel, in other words the whole land with the exception of Peraea and the tribe-land of Judah, came into their hands when Saul was slain.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Death of Saul. | B. C. 1055. |
1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa. 2 And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchi-shua, Saul’s sons. 3 And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers. 4 Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it. 5 And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him. 6 So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together. 7 And when the men of Israel that were on the other side of the valley, and they that were on the other side Jordan, saw that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook the cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.
The day of recompence has now come, in which Saul must account for the blood of the Amalekites which he had sinfully spared, and that of the priests which he had more sinfully spilt; that of David too, which he would have spilt, must come into the account. Now his day has come to fall, as David foresaw, when he should descend into battle and perish, ch. xxvi. 10. Come and see the righteous judgments of God.
I. He sees his soldiers fall about him, v. 1. Whether the Philistines were more numerous, better posted, and better led on, or what other advantages they had, we are not told; but it seems they were more vigorous, for they made the onset; they fought against Israel, and the Israelites fled and fell. The best of the troops were put into disorder, and multitudes slain, probably those whom Saul had employed in pursuing David. Thus those who had followed him and served him in his sin went before him in his fall and shared with him in his plagues.
II. He sees his sons fall before him. The victorious Philistines pressed most forcibly upon the king of Israel and those about him. His three sons were next him, it is probable, and they were all three slain before his face, to his great grief (for they were the hopes of his family) and to his great terror, for they were now the guard of his person, and he could conclude no other than that his own turn would come next. His sons are named (v. 2), and it grieves us to find Jonathan among them: that wise, valiant, good man, who was as much David’s friend as Saul was his enemy, yet falls with the rest. Duty to his father would not permit him to stay at home, or to retire when the armies engaged; and Providence so orders it that he falls in the common fate of his family, though he never involved himself in the guilt of it; so that the observation of Eliphaz does not hold (Job iv. 7), Who ever perished being innocent? For here was one. What shall we say to it? 1. God would hereby complete the vexation of Saul in his dying moments, and the judgment that was to be executed upon his house. If the family must fall, Jonathan, that is one of it, must fall with it. 2. He would hereby make David’s way to the crown the more clear and open. For, though Jonathan himself would have cheerfully resigned all his title and interest to him (we have no reason to suspect any other), yet it is very probable that many of the people would have made use of his name for the support of the house of Saul, or at least would have come in but slowly to David. If Ish-bosheth (who was now left at home as one unfit for action, and so escaped) had so many friends, what would Jonathan have had, who had been the darling of the people and had never forfeited their favour? Those that were so anxious to have a king like the nations would be zealous for the right line, especially if that threw the crown upon such a head as Jonathan’s. This would have embarrassed David; and, if Jonathan could have prevailed to bring in all his interest to David, then it would have been said that Jonathan had made him king, whereas God was to have all the glory. This is the Lord’s doing. So that though the death of Jonathan would be a great affliction to David, yet, by making him mindful of his own frailty, as well as by facilitating his accession to the throne, it would be an advantage to him. 3. God would hereby show us that the difference between good and bad is to be made in the other world, not in this. All things come alike to all. We cannot judge of the spiritual or eternal state of any by the manner of their death; for in that there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked.
III. He himself is sorely wounded by the Philistines and then slain by his own hand. The archers hit him (v. 3), so that he could neither fight nor fly, and therefore must inevitably fall into their hands. Thus, to make him the more miserable, destruction comes gradually upon him, and he dies so as to feel himself die. To such an extremity was he now reduced that, 1. He was desirous to die by the hand of his own servant rather than by the hand of the Philistines, lest they should abuse him as they had abused Samson. Miserable man! He finds himself dying, and all his care is to keep his body out of the hands of the Philistines, instead of being solicitous to resign his soul into the hands of God who gave it, Eccl. xii. 7. As he lived, so he died, proud and jealous, and a terror to himself and all about him. Those who rightly understand the matter think it of small account, in comparison, how it is with them in death, so it may but be well with them after death. Those are in a deplorable condition indeed who, being bitter in soul, long for death, but it cometh not (Job 3:20; Job 3:21), especially those who, despairing of the mercy of god, like Judas, leap into a hell before them, to escape a hell within them. 2. When he could not obtain that favour he became his own executioner, thinking hereby to avoid shame, but running upon a heinous sin, and with it entailing upon his own name a mark of perpetual infamy, as felo de se–a self-murderer. Jonathan, who received his death-wound from the hand of the Philistines and bravely yielded to the fate of war, died on the bed of honour; but Saul died as a fool dieth, as a coward dieth–a proud fool, a sneaking coward; he died as a man that had neither the fear of God nor hope in God, neither the reason of a man nor the religion of an Israelite, much less the dignity of a prince or the resolution of a soldier. Let us all pray, Lord, lead us not into temptation, this temptation. His armour-bearer would not run him through, and he did well to refuse it; for no man’s servant ought to be a slave to his master’s lusts or passions of any kind. The reason given is that he was sorely afraid, not of death, for he himself ran wilfully upon that immediately; but, having a profound reverence for the king his master, he could not conquer that so far as to do him any hurt; or perhaps he feared lest his trembling hand should give him but half a blow, and so put him to the greater misery.
IV. His armour-bearer who refused to kill him refused not to die with him, but fell likewise upon his sword, v. 5. This was an aggravating circumstance of the death of Saul, that, by the example of his wickedness in murdering himself, he drew in his servant to be guilty of the same wickedness, and perished not alone in his iniquity. The Jews say that Saul’s armour-bearer was Doeg, whom he preferred to that dignity for killing the priests, and, if so, justly does his violent dealing return on his own head. David had foretold concerning him that God would destroy him for ever, Ps. lii. 5.
V. The country was put into such confusion by the rout of Saul’s army that the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities (on that side Jordan, as it might be read) quitted them, and the Philistines, for a time, had possession of them, till things were settled in Israel (v. 7), to such a sad pass had Saul by his wickedness brought his country, which might have remained in the hands of the uncircumcised if David had not been raised up to repair the breaches of it. See what a king he proved for whom they rejected God and Samuel. They had still done wickedly (it is to be feared) as well as he, and therefore were consumed both they and their king, as the prophet had foretold concerning them, ch. xii. 25. And to this reference is had long after. Hos 13:10; Hos 13:11, “Where are thy saviours in all thy cities, of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and princes? I gave thee a king in my anger, and took him away in my wrath; that is, he was a plague to thee living and dying; thou couldst expect no other.”
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Destruction of Saul and His Army –
1Sa 31:1-6; ALSO SEE 1Ch 10:1-6
With this lesson comes the first parallel section of Samuel and Chronicles. Hereafter, the parallel sections of these books will be considered at the same place in this commentary. Many times the facts will not only be of the same event, but will record it in very near the same words, as in the present case. By having the two accounts side by side the reader can readily compare the two.
While David and his men were returning to Ziklag, finding it desolate and burned, and pursuing after and avenging themselves on the marauding Amalekites the battle between Israel and the Philistines was occurring. Very few of the details of the battle are given, the main purpose being to show the defeat of Israel and the death of the family of Saul.
It has been seen that Saul was very distraught about the things he had heard in his visit to the witch of En-dor. Therefore he must have ventured into battle with a definite dread and defeatist pessimism. Perhaps Heb 10:27 would fit the situation,”… a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” Saul had long been the adversary of the Lord in his opposition to David. When he had known that the Lord had appointed David to succeed him he still refused to abdicate; now his judgment has arrived, and there is no escape.
The battle occurred on mount Gilboa, and the Philistines pressed upon the royal family persistently. The three warrior sons of Saul, Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua all were killed. It is sad that brave Jonathan, who had befriended David and saved his life often, who acknowledged and accepted the anointing of David instead of his father, though himself slated to succeed to the kingship, should die so tragically. However, Jonathan had remained basically loyal to his father, staying by a lost cause to the end. For this he died.
The Philistines archers struck King Saul with their arrows and wounded him severely. In his weakness Saul realized that it was only a matter of a short time until the enemy soldiers caught him. He did not wish to become sport for them before they killed him and therefore begged his armorbearer to draw his sword and thrust him through, or stab him in the heart. The armorbearer was, however, very much afraid and would not slay the king. Consequently Saul set his sword and fell upon it, dying a suicide.
When the armorbearer saw that Saul was dead he also committed suicide by falling on his own sword. Many of the men of Israel were also slaughtered in the battle. It was a sad and disastrous day for Israel, who that day paid a dear sacrifice for their king “like all the nations;” to “go out before us, and fight our battles” (1Sa 8:20).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES
1Sa. 31:1. In Mount Gilboa. Most likely the actual battle took place on the plain, and the Israelites sought refuge on the mountain.
1Sa. 31:3. Sore wounded. Hebrew scholars generally translate here sore afraid, or he was alarmed or trembled greatly.
1Sa. 31:3. He was sore afraid. The armourbearer was responsible for the kings life. Jewish traditions say that this man was Doeg.
1Sa. 31:6. All his men. In 1Ch. 10:6 it is all his house. Certainly Abner, who was no doubt in the battle, had not fallen, but that is not inconsistent with the statement, since he, as Sauls general, belonged strictly speaking neither to the house nor to the men, by which term we must understand the soldiers who were near the kings person, his body-guard, as it were. (Erdmann.)
1Sa. 31:7. The men of Israel on the other side, etc. The plain is the lowland between Mount Gilboa and Little Hermon, the continuation of the plain of Jezreel, into which the battle passed. The Jordan with its west bank terrain formed the border. Those who from the station of the narrator (which we must take with Kiel to be the battlefield) dwelt beyond, that is, opposite him on the mountain terrain beside the plain and in the Jordan flats (Erdmann) were those who fled. Came and dwelt. Not immediately; but this district eventually fell into their hands.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.1Sa. 31:1-7
THE DEFEAT AT GILBOA
I. The culminating calamity of many resulting from the answering of a self-willed prayer. The unanswered request of a child by his parent is often the greatest act of kindness that parent can bestow; unhappy, indeed, would that child be who had all he asked for, and no parent who has any regard for only the bodily life of his offspring ever thinks of granting all their requests. And with parents whose concern for their children extends to their intellectual and moral well-being it is often needful to deny more petitions than they grant. It is exactly so with men and God; if men had at all times received from Him all that their ignorance and wickedness desired the human race would before now have become extinct through its own sin and consequent misery. But as the father of the prodigal did not refuse the request of his wayward son, but let him taste the fruit of having what he demanded, so God sometimes answers the self-willed prayers both of individuals and of nations, that they may know from experience whether they or God know best. As the swine-herding in the far country was the outcome of the answer to Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me, so was this fatal day on Gilboa the outcome of the answer to Nay, but we will have a king. I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath. (Hos. 13:11.) So must it always be with those who will have what God would rather not give.
II. A calamity involving both the innocent and the guilty. One man, at least, who fell at Gilboa was innocent of both the national and individual sin which brought the judgment. The king of Israel had forsaken God, and therefore the once brave man trembled and fled before those whomwith the consciousness of God on his sidehe would have faced and defied, and so the heathen foe triumphed over Gods anointed. And whatever may have been the character of the others who fell, Jonathans fate was not the result of his personal transgression but of his fathers sin, and says to us in plain language that no sinner harms only himself, and that the good often in this world suffer because of the bad. All relationships of life have some influence upon our earthly destiny, but none is so potent for good or ill as that which the parent holds to his child. But if Jonathan is a sad illustration of this truth, he is also a cheering proof that if a son must suffer for his fathers character he need not walk in that fathers footsteps.
III. A calamity which failed to change the heart of the greatest sufferer in it. The last act of Saul is in keeping with the one in which he first openly departed from God. His disobedience in the early part of his reign proclaimed a man who would choose his own method of life rather than the Divine purpose concerning him, and even this last and crushing judgment failed to break his self-will, and he who would not leave the ordering of his life to God would neither let Him ordain the manner of his death. So also as the prominent thought in the matter of the Amalekites was not the sin against God but the disgrace before men, now it is not the retribution which awaited his spirit, but the dishonour which might come to his body. It is the same man who fears now nothing so much as the sword of the uncircumcised, as formerly dreaded most the loss of position among his subjects (1Sa. 15:30).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1Sa. 31:2.
1. God would hereby complete the vexation of Saul in his dying moments and the judgment that was to be executed upon his house. If the family must fall, Jonathan must fall with it.
2. He would hereby make Davids way to the crown more clear and open. For though Jonathan himself would have cheerfully resigned all his title and interest to him, yet it is very probable that many of the people would have made use of his name for the support of the house of Saul
3. God would hereby show us that the difference between good and bad is to be made in the other world, not in this.Henry.
1Sa. 31:4. In this way did Saul shrink from adversity; he went forth glorying in his majesty, the anointed of the Lord, king over the chosen people of God; the battle turns against him, he is sore-wounded of the archers and seeks in death a cure for the anguish of wounds and the shame of defeat. What would the world now have been if it had always been said, because the archers smite me sore, and the battle goes against me, I will die? Alas! man has gained all his joy by his pains; misery, hunger, and nakedness have been his teachers, and goaded him on to the glories of civilised life; take from him his unyielding spirit, and if he had lived at all, he would have lived the most suffering creature of the forest.Sydney Smith.
The evil spirit had said, the evening before, To morrow thou shalt be with me; and now Saul hasteth to make the devil no liar; rather than fail, he gives himself his own mittimus. O the woful extremities of a despairing soul, plunging him ever into a greater mischief, to avoid the less! He might have been a patient in anothers violence, and faultless; now, while he will needs act the Philistines part upon himself, he lived and died a murderer: the case is deadly, when the prisoner breaks the jail, and will not stay for his delivery; and though we may not pass sentence upon such a soul, yet upon the fact we may: the soul may possibly repent in the parting; the act is heinous, and such as, without repentance, kills the soul.Bp. Hall.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Sauls Last Battle, 1Sa. 31:1-13.
Sauls Death. 1Sa. 31:1-6
Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.
2 And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchishua, Sauls sons.
3 And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers.
4 Then said Saul to his armor-bearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armor-bearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.
5 And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him.
6 So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men, that same day together.
1.
Why did Israel fight in the mountains? 1Sa. 31:1
The Israelites seemed to prefer the hill country for their battlefield, They were forced to fight Jaban, the king of Hazor, in the lowlands in the days of Joshua (Jos. 11:1). At that time the Canaanites fought with horses and chariots (Jos. 11:4), equipment which the Israelites did not appear to use in the battle until the later days of the kings of Israel (1Ki. 20:25; 2Ki. 9:16; et al.). Israel evidently held a good reputation for fighting in the hill country, and their enemies thought that they were not able to fight in the valleys (1Ki. 20:23). The chariots of their enemies would be able to roll more freely in the plains and the valleys, so Israel would have every advantage as they went into this final battle under Saul. They would have the physical advantage of the terrain as they went into this final battle against the Philistines. The most important advantage was not theirs. They did not have the blessings of God.
2.
Why were Sauls sons with him? 1Sa. 31:2
In earlier battles Jonathan was the leader of the sons of Saul. On occasions he had been in charge of at least one thousand men. It was his bravery that brought an initial victory as he and his armor-bearers surprised the Philistine garrison. Abinadab and Melchishua may also have been in charge of a detachment of soldiers. Israel needed all her men in this great battle. Her kings sons were not exempt from military duty.
3.
How badly was Saul wounded? 1Sa. 31:3
The Philistines were better equipped in many ways than the Israelites. They used their bowmen with great advantage in the fighting on the mountain slopes. It was these men who finally caught up with Saul and his three sons. Jonathan, Abinadab and Melchishua were evidently mortally wounded by the Philistines themselves. Sauls wounds left him able to converse with his armor-bearers and finally to fall on his own sword, though dying. The Greek translation of the Bible, made some two hundred years before Christ, viewed this situation as one depicting Saul being wounded in the abdomen. He might have expected this wound to be fatal, and it certainly kept him from engaging in further battle. He was not so severely wounded that he could not kill himself. He was wounded so badly that he despaired of living, or else he would have not asked his armor-bearer to slay him. The words used in the various translations as well as in the original text point to his being wounded under the breast cartilage. This would put the wound in his abdomen and bowels and probably would have resulted in his ultimate death.
4.
Why did the armor-bearer refuse to kill Saul? 1Sa. 31:4
Saul wanted his armor-bearer to kill him so that the Philistines could not make sport of him (Jdg. 19:25). Cases such as his and that of Abimelech (Jdg. 9:54) indicate that enemies of the day quite often amused themselves with the helpless but conscious warriors whom they found. Whether the armor-bearer was in a too-distressed state of mind or had too much reverence for his lord cannot be made out with certainty. The latter seems more probable. When the armor-bearer refused to kill Saul, Saul fell on his own sword and died. When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell on his own sword and died with him.
5.
How did Saul die? 1Sa. 31:6
The archers of the Philistines overtook him; and when they got him in range, they wounded him. Saul then called upon his armor-bearer to run him through with his sword, but the armor-bearer would not do this. Saul wanted to die at the hands of a friend rather than at the hands of the Philistines who would cool their courage by maltreating him; but the armor-bearer was afraid, since he was supposed to be answerable for the kings life. Saul then inflicted death upon himself with his sword, and the armor-bearer also fell upon his own sword and died with his king, On that day then Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer all died. It is said that all his house, or all the warriors who went out with him as a part of his house or his household, were slain in this battle. Neither Abner nor Sauls son, Ish-botheth, was included: for the latter did not go out to battle, and although the former was Sauls cousin and commander-in-chief, he did not belong to his house nor was he considered his servant. Sauls taking his own sword and falling upon it is one of the very rare instances of suicide in the Old Testament, In view of it, the older commentators discuss the question of Sauls final salvation, generally with an unfavorable verdict.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
A DIGEST OF CHAPTER 31
1Sa. 31:1-6
Sauls death. Samuel had told Saul that he would die in battle. This came to pass as the armies of Israel and Philistia met in battle on Mt. Gilboa. Saul fell on his sword and killed himself. His sons were killed with him in this fatal battle.
1Sa. 31:7-13
Sauls burial. The Philistines cut off Sauls head and stripped off his armor. They put his armor in the house of their gods the Ashtaroth. They fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan. The men of Jabesh-Gilead heard that Sauls body was hanging on Beth-shan. They came by night and took the body and gave it a decent burial.
LESSONS FOR LEARNING
1.
The word of God is sure. Saul had done everything he could to try to thwart Gods will. Even though he had disobeyed God on at least two outstanding occasions, he evidently thought he could escape the ultimate punishment which was pronounced against him. Samuel had predicted that Saul would die in battle. Saul did die as Samuel said. We may rest well assured that the Word of God cannot be broken. The prophecies of God are sure to be fulfilled.
2.
Faithful friends are priceless. Saul had befriended the men of Jabesh-Gilead by rescuing them out of the hands of Nahash, the king of the Ammonites. The men of Jabesh-Gilead did not forget that Saul had helped them in the early days of his kingship. They did what they could to see that Sauls body was given a fitting burial. At the risk of their own lives they crossed the Jordan river. Traveling by night they came to the wall of Beth-shan and took down the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons. They took these bones back to their town and gave them an honorable burial.
CHAPTER 31 IN REVIEW
1.
On what mountain did Israel fight the Philistines?
_____
2.
What sons of Saul were slain?
_____
3.
Who wounded Saul?
_____
4.
Whom did Saul ask to slay him?
_____
5.
How did Saul die?
_____
6.
Where did the Philistines put Sauls armor?
_____
7.
Where was Sauls body hanged?
_____
8.
What men took down his body?
_____
9.
What did the rescuers do with Sauls body?
_____
10.
How long did they mourn for Saul?
_____
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) Now the Philistines fought against Israel.The narrator here is very abrupt. No doubt a devoted patriot, it was very bitter for him to write the story of the fatal day of Gilboa. Yet there were certain things belonging to that fated day which were necessary for every child of Israel to know. It was right that the punishment of the rejected king should be known; right too that the people should be assured that the remains of the great first king lay in no unknown and unhonoured sepulchre. It was well too that coming generations should honour the devoted loyalty of the grateful men of Jabesh-Gilead. But the narrator hurries over his unwelcome task; very curtly he picks up the dropped threads of 1Sa. 28:1-5; 1Sa. 29:2. The march of the Philistines northward into the valley of Jezreel has been told, and their gallant arrayas under the many banners of their lords they passed on by hundreds and by thousandshas been glanced at. The assembling of the armies of Israel at Shunem, overlooking the Jezreel vale, has been narrated; and there the historian dwelt on the terror of King Saul, which led to the visit to the witch of En-dor. Davids fortunes at this juncture then occupied the writer or compiler of the Book; but now he returns, with evident reluctance, to the battle which rapidly followed the En-dor visit of Saul.
He simply relates that the hosts joined battle. The locality of the fight is not mentioned, but it was most likely somewhere in that long vale which was spread out at the foot of the hills occupied by the hostile camps Israel was defeated, and fled upwards, towards their old position on the slope of Gilboa.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1. The men of Israel fled It was probably whispered among the Israelitish troops that Saul had received a communication from Samuel, and that their defeat and their leader’s death had been foretold. This would unnerve their bravest heroes, and spread terror among all. And after his return from that midnight conference with the witch of Endor Saul himself could have had no spirit to fight.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Death Of Saul And Jonathan On Mount Gilboa ( 1Sa 31:1-7 ).
It is noteworthy that in the description of the battle the emphasis is not on the defeat of Israel, even though that is briefly described, but on the death of Saul and its consequences. Nevertheless even in its brevity we do get a vivid picture of the last stages of the battle as it brings about the deaths of Saul and his heirs.
Analysis.
a
b And the Philistines followed hard on Saul and on his sons, and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchi-shua, the sons of Saul (1Sa 31:2).
c And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers overtook him, and he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers. And Saul said to his armourbearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me” (1Sa 31:3-4 a).
d But his armourbearer would not, for he was very much afraid. Therefore Saul took his sword, and fell on it (1Sa 31:4 b).
c And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell on his sword in similar fashion, and died with him (1Sa 31:5).
b So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together (1Sa 31:6).
a And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley, and those who were beyond the Jordan, saw that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook the cities, and fled, and the Philistines came and dwelt in them (1Sa 31:7).
Note than in ‘a’ the Israelites fled before the Philistines, and in the parallel the remainder of Israel did the same. In ‘b’ the Philistines pressed hard on Saul and slew his three sons, and in the parallel Saul and his three sons are described as dead. In ‘c’ Saul calls on his armourbearer to thrust him through, and in the parallel the armourbearer thrusts himself through. Centrally in ‘d’ we have described the death of Saul.
1Sa 31:1
‘ Now the Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.’
What must have been a fiercely fought battle between two totally unmatched armies is told briefly. We are not told where it actually took place, although the assumption must be that it was in the Valley of Jezreel. All that we are told is that the Philistines fought against Israel (for the description compare 1Sa 28:1. This description is picking up the story from there), and that the men of Israel fled over Mount Gilboa where they were systematically slaughtered. The writer is not interested in the details of the battle, only in the consequences of it for Israel.
We are even left in some doubt as to whom ‘the men of Israel’ were. They would undoubtedly include Saul’s standing army, and it may well be that it was mainly these who suffered as they bravely bore the main brunt of the rearguard action, while what was left of the ‘volunteer’ army escaped over the Jordan under the leadership of Abner, the overall general of the army (1Sa 31:7; 2Sa 2:8-9). Saul’s supreme bravery comes out, both in his being an important part of the rearguard action, and in the fact that he fought at all, given the fact of what he had learned from Samuel through the medium of Endor.
1Sa 31:7 would also suggest, either that the full muster of the tribes had not yet arrived. An alternative possibility is that they had been kept in reserve at the other side of the valley in order to intervene when called on. Either way the defeat of Israel’s main army was clearly so conclusive that they played no part in the battle, and then recognised that their only course, with Saul and his sons dead, was to disappear as quickly as possible, leaving the cities of Israel wide open to the Philistine invaders. They knew that further resistance would be useless and would only bring reprisals on those cities.
1Sa 31:2
‘ And the Philistines followed hard on Saul and on his sons, and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchi-shua, the sons of Saul.’
Playing a valiant part in the rearguard action Saul’s three warrior sons, fighting in the forefront, died bravely in action, while Saul also found himself hard pressed. he had not flinched from the battle.
1Sa 31:3-4 a
‘And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers overtook him, and he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers. And Saul said to his armourbearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me.”
Saul was apparently behind the units commanded by his three sons, as a second line of defence, and he and his men now found themselves under heavy bombardment by the missiles of the archers who had been able to come up on them as a result of the destruction of the first line of defence. It was clear to Saul that the situation was lost and that he would be unable to evade capture. It must also be seen as almost certain that he had been wounded by arrows that had found their target. Thus the thought of being overtaken and abused by the uncircumcised Philistines, who would undoubtedly satisfy their blood lusts on him, and would at the same time humiliate him as the king of Israel, was too much for him, and he cried to his armourbearer to thrust him through, rather than allowing the Philistines to do it. He knew that death or worse was inevitable. He preferred therefore to die on a good Israelite blade rather than on a Philistine one. At least he would prevent their enjoying that triumph. YHWH’s anointed would thus not be sullied in his death.
Saul (and the writer) may well have had in mind at this point the example of Abimelech who asked the same of his armourbearer when a woman split his head open with a millstone flung from the walls of Thebez, because he did not want to be thought of as the king who had been slain by a woman (Jdg 9:53-56). That story appears to have been a well known one to Israel’s warriors, and had also been the result of YHWH’s judgment on his previous behaviour (see 2Sa 11:21).
1Sa 31:4 b
‘But his armourbearer would not, for he was very much afraid. Therefore Saul took his sword, and fell on it.’
His armourbearer, however, refused to do it through fear. The fear was probably because he considered that to slay YHWH’s anointed would be a grievous sin. Alternately he may have been afraid of what might happen to him afterwards, for it was his duty to preserve YHWH’s anointed at all costs. Either way he would not do it. Saul therefore took his own sword and fell on it. It is probable that he saw it as a religious act, almost a kind of sacrifice, in defence of YHWH’s honour.
1Sa 31:5
‘ And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell on his sword in similar fashion, and died with him.’
Once the armourbearer saw that Saul was dead by his own hand he followed his example, and thus died with him. This may have simply been out of a kind of loyalty to his master, although it could have included remorse because, as his personal bodyguard, he had failed, through no fault of his own, to preserve his master’s life. The shame may have been too much for him. He may even have feared the later consequences if he survived. The Philistines might have seen Saul’s armourbearer as a good substitute for Saul himself, thus bringing shame on Saul by proxy, while he may have felt that if he survived intact he might equally suffer shame at the hands of the Israelites for failing to keep Saul alive. People had strange ideas about honour.
1Sa 31:6
‘ So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together.’
The slaughter on the Mount was so complete that Saul, his three sons, his armourbearer and all ‘his men’ (his standing army) died there with him on that same day, thereby avenging all the misery that they had brought on David, and destroying any hopes of Israel’s survival as an independent nation. Without this central force Israel could put up little resistance against an enemy like the warlike Philistines. They had been Israel’s mainstay in all the wars with the Philistines through the years.
1Sa 31:7
‘ And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley, and those who were beyond the Jordan, saw that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook the cities, and fled, and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.’
That this means that the forces of Israel, who had been mustered from the most northerly tribes and from Transjordan, in order to assist in the fight against the Philistines, but had not taken part in the battle, fled, must be seen as probable. It is not likely that all the inhabitants of the cities fled. They would simply have submitted to the approaching Philistines, thus hopefully avoiding reprisals by becoming voluntary vassals. (It was the normal for invaders only to take reprisals when cities resisted. Otherwise they simply demanded tribute. It was to their advantage. See Deu 20:10-14). The Philistines would then occupy them and take authority over them, as they had previously done with the Canaanites over whom they ruled. They would become a part of the Philistine empire. (This had apparently not just been a raid with the aim of obtaining tribute, as previously. It was seemingly an attempt to build an empire and occupy the cities permanently).
In view of the brevity of the statement, however, the position is not totally clear, something reinforced by the fact that we are not totally sure what Philistine attitudes were in such a situation. They may have had a policy of slaughtering a good number of men of fighting age when they took over a city. The writer’s main aim, in fact, was simply to explain that the main cities of central Israel were now to be under the rule of the Philistines.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Thorough Defeat Of Israel And The Death Of Saul ( 1Sa 31:1 – 2Sa 1:27 ).
Having initially demonstrated how God’s purposes are moving forward in David, the writer now describes the humiliating defeat and death of Saul, slain by his own hand. It is the darkness before the dawn. But the dawn is clearly in mind. For the following chapters of 2 Samuel were in his eyes simply the continuation of the story. The original writer did not end on a note of anticlimax. That thought simply arises because of the historical accident of the division of the book into two.
SECTION 5. David’s First Taste Of Kingship – The Death Final Disobedience And Of Saul ( 1Sa 27:1 – 2Sa 1:27 ).
A). David Rises To Petty Kingship Over Ziklag And Continually Destroys The Amalekites (YHWH’s Enemies) While Saul Proceeds On In Darkness To His Doom (27:1-30:31).
In this subsection David and his Men flee to Gath, while with Samuel dead Saul falls further into error and confides in a spiritist medium because YHWH too has deserted him. David meanwhile becomes a petty king, continually defeats the Amalekites, YHWH’s enemies, and is spared from having to fight against his own people (1Sa 27:1 to 1Sa 30:31).
Analysis of 1Sa 27:1 to 1Sa 30:31 .
a
b David becomes a petty king under Achish and attacks and defeats the Amalekites, slaughtering them and obtaining great booty (1Sa 27:5-12).
c David swears loyalty to Achish in view of the invasion of Israel (1Sa 28:1-2).
d Saul seeks to consult Samuel through a necromancer and is reminded that he is rejected by YHWH (1Sa 28:3-20).
e Saul shares hospitality with a woman condemned by YHWH and goes out into the night (1Sa 28:21-25).
d David is accompanying the Philistines and is rejected by them (1Sa 29:1-7).
c David swears loyalty to Achish in view of the invasion of Israel and goes out into the day (1Sa 29:8-11).
b David finds his kingdom despoiled and attacks and defeats the Amalekites, slaughtering them and obtaining great booty (1Sa 30:1-25).
a David shows his gratitude to those who had assisted him among the people of Judah when he was escaping from Saul (1Sa 30:26-31).
Note than in ‘a’ David leaves his haunts in Judah and goes over to the Philistines in order to avoid Saul, and in the parallel he send gifts to his friends who had supported him while he was in his haunts in Judah escaping from Saul. In ‘b’ David slaughters the Amalekites, and in the parallel does the same. In ‘c’ David swears loyalty to Achish, and in the parallel does the same. In ‘d’ Saul is with a woman rejected by YHWH and is reminded that he too is rejected by YHWH, and in the parallel David is with the people rejected by YHWH (the Philistines) but is himself rejected by them. In ‘e’ Saul reaches the lowest stage in his fall from YHWH when he enjoys hospitality with a woman rejected by YHWH and goes out into the night.
In some ways the flight of David to Gath appears to conflict with all that has gone before, for up to this point YHWH had always ensured that David remained in Israel/Judah and had protected him there. Indeed when David had previously fled to Gath (1Sa 21:10-15), it had resulted in his being humiliated and driven back into Israel, and this fact, combined with the later words of Gad the Prophet (1Sa 22:5), suggests that being in Israel/Judah was God’s purpose for him at that time even though he was an outlaw. In this regard it has, indeed, been pointed out that in 1Sa 27:1 to 1Sa 28:2 there is no mention of God, with the inference being drawn that his action here was also not of God.
On the other hand it is questionable whether this latter fact can really be emphasised for we must bear in mind that we are only talking about fourteen verses, verses which are on the whole the kind where no mention of God was really required, and this is especially so as there are certainly previous passages elsewhere which have also not included the name of God, even when we might have expected it, without it there being especially significant. See for example, 1Sa 13:15-23; 1Sa 17:1-24; 1Sa 17:55 to 1Sa 18:9; and especially 1Sa 14:47-52. Furthermore we should note that when the account of the stay among the Philistines continues the king of Gath is himself portrayed as swearing by YHWH (1Sa 29:6, see also 1Sa 27:9), something possibly intended to illustrate the influence that David has had on him, and certainly demonstrating that he recognised YHWH as David’s God and that YHWH was with him there. Thus there is no real indication that the writer sees this as a backward move. Rather he seems to portray it as demonstrating a sensible way of escaping from Saul’s prevarications, while immediately stressing that he finally took up refuge in Ziklag which was a Philistine occupied town of Judah in the Negeb (as he emphasises). So he had not permanently left Israel after all. The only question that does possibly spring to mind in this regard is as to why David did not at this stage ‘enquire of YHWH’ through the ephod. Precedent might suggest that he did in fact do so and that the writer simply does not mention the fact.
Certainly we should note that David would see no difficulty in consulting YHWH when he was in Ziklag (1Sa 30:7-8), even though it was outside the current boundaries of Israel (although still in what was part of Israel’s inheritance). On the other hand we might argue that Ziklag had been appropriated from Judah/Simeon (Jos 15:31; Jos 19:5) by the Philistines, and could really therefore be seen as an ‘Israelite’ city. This might be seen as confirmed by the fact that the writer emphasises that from that time on Ziklag was seen as belonging to Judah (1Sa 27:6). Consider also the fact that many fighting men of Israel came to join up with him there at this point, including men from Benjamin, Judah, Gad and Manasseh (1Ch 12:1-7; 1Ch 12:20-22). They too probably saw it as a haven from Saul and a kind of little Israel where they could be freer to behave as they wished, even though it did give them responsibilities towards a Philistine king, which YHWH would overrule.
We might thus argue that having established his popularity at home in Israel/Judah (apart from with the Ziphites), his rule over a semi-independent Ziklag with its surrounding territories was now intended by God to be the next stage in his training for the kingship, for through his time there he would be able to gain experience of ruling a city and its environs before he was finally faced up with the greater task of ruling Judah, and then all Israel. It is a reminder that God educates His people as and where He will.
That God was with him there comes out quite clearly in the narrative. Firstly in that he was given this convenient semi-independent position, in a place where YHWH could be consulted, and secondly in that he was later prevented from having to fight against his own countrymen, something which would surely have hindered his later rise to kingship. So whether his first move was pleasing to YHWH or not, it is clear that YHWH did not see him as having been grossly disobedient. (And all of us know of situations in which we have to make difficult decisions which have to be based on our own judgment at the time, and which might even be ‘wrong’, with God then acting graciously towards us on the basis of what we have done in all honesty, as He continues to lead us forward).
Furthermore there are good grounds for seeing the writer as deliberately wanting us to contrast this triumphant move into Philistia, along with David being given an honoured position there, with the debacle that had taken place on his previous visit to Gath when he had had to publicly humiliate himself and flee. Then it was clearly being portrayed as a move that he should not have made. Here it can be argued that, as a move that brought him honour and prestige and an opportunity to serve God in destroying the Amalekites, it was clearly of God.
But why should Achish have given Ziklag and its surrounding territories to David? The probable reason must be that it was a part of a suzerainty treaty whereby David was given his own independent city in a spot convenient for raids over the border, on condition that he made such raids and gave to Achish a certain proportion of any booty that he and his men collected. For we must surely recognise that the whole purpose of having David and his army under his umbrella was in order that David might earn his keep by raids over the border, while at the same time being available for any major offensive that had to be made. He would not want to continually provision David and his small tribe while they were idle, and continual raiding was considered to be the sport of kings (2Sa 11:1). There appears little doubt that such border raids constantly took place (e.g. 1Sa 23:1-6, and compare David’s earlier activities against the Philistines, not all of which can have been related to major invasions – 1Sa 18:5; 1Sa 18:27; 1Sa 20:8) as we would in fact expect in those savage days. This certainly also serves to explain David’s subsequent activities.
SECTION 5 (Continued).
The present division of the book into two parts, simply because the Greek text (in contrast with the Hebrew text which did not contain consonants) of the Book of Samuel (the Septuagint – LXX) required two scrolls, to some extent hides the continuity of this subsection which highlights the death of Saul and Jonathan and David’s great distress and nobility with regard to them. While their deaths were to lead to the final establishment of his kingship they brought him no joy. Rather he wept over them both, and especially over that of Jonathan. We must never forget that David had known Saul extremely well personally and had clearly loved him, and had for a time had that feeling at least partly reciprocated, which was why he had undoubtedly been so puzzled by Saul’s later attitude towards him, and had indeed hoped for a time that he might be able to reverse the situation. It was only when that hope had finally gone that he moved to Philistia. Meanwhile with Jonathan he had shared that love and loyalty which can only be known by two comrades-in-arms. Thus he felt the loss of them both very deeply, especially Jonathan.
It is a sign of the deep spirituality of David that while he had known from his youth, through no choice of his own (see 1 Samuel 16), that he was destined for the kingship, and had been thrust by God, and by his own deep regard for God’s honour, into being the Champion of Israel (see 1 Samuel 17), he had made no push to hurry the situation along, even when Saul had played into his hands. Rather he had patiently waited for God’s time. He had been one of Israel’s most successful field commanders, acting only out of loyalty to both YHWH and Saul, and had later weathered all the misfortunes that had been thrust on him by a jealous and suspicious Saul, without once portraying any particular ambition to take over the kingship by force, although at the same time, in the latter stages, he undoubtedly did seek to prepare the way for that kingship, both through his marriages, and through his behaviour towards the people of Israel and the elders of Judah. But that can be seen as because everything pointed to it as being YHWH’s purpose for him. It was as someone who had had it made quite clear to him by then from every source (Samuel – 16:1, 13; Jonathan – 23:17; Saul – 24:20-21) that he was truly destined to be king.
This picture of him as unwilling to act before God’s time has been consistently drawn throughout the narrative, as was the fact that it arose from his great loyalty to YHWH as his God. That was why he would not act against the one whom God had anointed. The picture therefore of him as a clever and 1saless seeker after power is not one that is ever portrayed in the narrative, even though his undoubted later ambition is never hidden. This latter ambition was, however, consistent with the picture that we have of him as a man driven by YHWH who was aware of his call by YHWH to eventual kingship. Given that sense his subsequent restraint up to this point in time must be seen as quite remarkable.
The death of Saul and his three fighting sons, and the circumstances in which it occurred, was a tragedy for Israel. To many he had been a beloved, and often successful king, and the overwhelming defeat now to be described would leave a large part of Israel under Philistine control, and Saul’s remaining and rather inept son cowering in Mahanaim, reigning over what was left of Israel by permission of his uncle Abner, commander of the forces of Israel (such as they now were). It would, however, also open the way for David’s appointment as King of Judah, for the elders of Judah clearly recognised that with the Philistines in control of central Israel, and Eshbaal (Ishbosheth), Saul’s remaining son, being restricted to Mahanaim, only David and his small but powerful army could provide them with any kind of protection, a decision undoubtedly precipitated by David’s own arrival with his men. It had the additional advantage that his position as vassal to the king of Gath made him acceptable to the Philistines. They had no objection to him reigning as their vassal. (This is really the only explanation as to why they took no measures against him after his appointment). He was thus now vassal king over both Ziklag and Judah, Ziklag from this time on always being seen as a part of Judah.
SECTION 5B). The Death Of Saul And Jonathan ( 1Sa 31:1 – 2Sa 1:27 ).
This subsection concentrates on the overwhelming victory of the Philistines over a depleted Saul, and his subsequent death, along with his three fighting sons, on Mount Gilboa, with the concentration undoubtedly on the latter fact. It commences with a very brief description of the battle, and a more detailed description of the deaths of Saul and his sons, and ends with a dirge written by David as he mourns their deaths. Yet even in the midst of the tragedy the writer focuses on two acts of nobility, the first the bravery and loyalty of the men of Jabesh Gilead in daringly rescuing the body of Saul from its ignominious situation of being displayed on the walls of Bethshan (1Sa 31:11-13). Even in defeat the Israelites are seen as gaining a kind of victory over the Philistines, who would have no idea where the body had gone. And the second the genuine grief of David concerning the whole event. There is no reason for doubting the genuineness of this latter. He loved Jonathan like his own soul, and his love for Israel could also have resulted in nothing but grief in the light of all that had happened, while the fact that Saul was YHWH’s anointed would in itself have been sufficient to explain his grief over Saul’s death. Thus he would undoubtedly have shared in the grief of all Israel, even though he did recognise what it meant for him. He also appears to reveal himself as having a genuine appreciation of Saul, as in his dirge he calls to mind his nobler characteristics.
Because this subsection comes where it does we tend to see it as focusing on a tragic end as a kind of summary of the book. But that is to misunderstand the situation. The writer did not see it as coming at the end of anything. He saw this final disposal of Saul as bringing about the upward move of David from being petty king of Ziklag and victor over the Amalekites, to being king of Judah, and then of all Israel, and final victor over the Philistines. It was thus a further stepping stone in the onward triumph of YHWH. And even in this defeat YHWH would emphasise that He could not be overlooked (1Sa 31:11-13)
Analysis Of The Section.
a
b The Tidings Concerning Saul’s Death And Defeat Are Spread Among The Philistines (1Sa 31:8-10).
c The Men Of Jabesh Gilead Arrange For A Decent Burial For Saul’s Body (1Sa 31:11-13).
b The Tidings Concerning The Death Of Saul Are Brought To David (2Sa 1:1-16).
a David Commemorates The Death Of Saul And Jonathan On Mount Gilboa In A Dirge (2Sa 1:17-27).
The centrality in the chiasmus of the deed of the men of Jabesh Gilead will be noted. It was not just added in as an afterthought. It was an indication that while Israel might be down, they were not out.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
1Sa 31:1-13 Saul and His Sons are Killed in Battle 1Sa 31:1-13 records the tragic death of Saul and his sons Saul in battle against the Philistines. King Saul reigned in Israel for about forty years (Act 13:21).
Act 13:21, “And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years.”
1Sa 31:1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.
1Sa 31:1
1Sa 31:13 And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.
1Sa 31:13
1Sa 31:11-13 Comments – The Men of Jabeshgilead Recover the Body of Saul and His Sons – Note in 1Sa 11:1-15 Saul rescued this city from the Ammonites. Now these inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead see that it is time to repay this favour.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Death of Saul and his Sons
v. 1. Now, the Philistines, v. 2. And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons, v. 3. And the battle went sore against Saul, v. 4. Then said Saul unto his armor-bearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith, lest these uncircumcised, v. 5. And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword and died with him.
v. 6. So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
DEFEAT AND DEATH OF SAUL (1Sa 31:1-13.).
EXPOSITION
SAUL AND HIS SONS SLAIN (1Sa 31:1-7).
1Sa 31:1, 1Sa 31:2
The Philistines fought. Literally it is a participle present, “the Philistines are warring,” as if it were a mere resumption of 1Sa 28:1. In the battle fought on the day following Saul’s visit to the witch the Israelites were defeated, and fell in large numbers slain in Mount Gilboa, either because the Philistines had attacked them there, or because, after fighting in the valley of Jezreel, they had made on its steep ridges their last defence. Among those thus slain were the three sons of Saul mentioned in 1Sa 14:49, where see note.
1Sa 31:3, 1Sa 31:4
The archers. Literally, as in the margin, “shooters, men with bows.” As the first word would equally apply to men who threw javelins, the explanation is added to make the meaning clear. Hit him. Literally, “found him, i.e. found out his position, and came up to where he was. He was sore wounded. Rather, “he was sore distressed.” In Deu 2:25 the verb is rendered “be in anguish.” The meaning is that Saul, finding himself surrounded by these archers, and that he could neither escape nor come to close quarters with them, and die fighting, ordered his armour bearer to kill him, that he might be spared the degradation of being slain by “uncircumcised” heathen. Abuse me. This verb is translated mock in Jer 38:19. “Maltreat” would be a better rendering in both places, and also in Jdg 19:25, where, too, the word occurs. Its exact meaning is to practise upon another all that passion, lust, anger, or malice dictate. Probably Saul thought that they would treat him as they had previously treated Samson (Jdg 16:21-25).
1Sa 31:5, 1Sa 31:6
His armour bearer. The Jewish tradition says that he was Doeg the Edomite, and that the sword on which Saul fell was that with which he had massacred the priests. This is not very probable; but whoever he was, his horror on being asked to slay his master, and his devotion to him, are deserving of admiration. All his men. In 1Ch 10:6” all his house.” But Ishbosheth and Abner survived, and the meaning probably is not that his whole army, but that his personal attendants, all those posted round him, fell to a man, fighting bravely for their king, as the Scots fought round King James V. at Flodden Field. As suicide was very rare among the Israelites, the death of Saul is made more intensely tragic by the anguish which drove him thus to die by his own hand.
POLITICAL RESULT OF THE BATTLE (verse 7).
1Sa 31:7
The men of Israel. The term is here applied to non-combatants, while in 1Sa 31:1 it meant those following Saul in arms. On the other side of the valley. I.e. of Jezreel, and so all the Israelites inhabiting the tribes of Issachar, Zabulon, and Naphthali, and the region generally to the north. In 1Ch 10:7 this flight is confined to the inhabitants of the valley, one of the most fertile districts of Palestine; but probably the statement made here, that a very large extent of country was the prize of victory, is the more correct. On the other side Jordan. This phrase constantly means the eastern side of the Jordan, nor need we doubt but that the people living near it abandoned their homes and fled; for the river would form but a slight protection for them in this northerly part of its course. Still the conquests on the eastern bank of the Jordan must have been confined to a small district near the lake of Tiberias, as Abner was able to place Ishbosheth as king at Mahanaim, a town about twenty miles to the east of the river, and not far from Jabez-Gilead. South of Jezreel the Philistines made no conquests, and thus Ephraim, Benjamin, and Judah remained free, and of course Gilead, and the most part of the region beyond Jordan (see 2Sa 2:8-11).
MALTREATMENT OF THE BODIES OF SAUL AND HIS SONS (1Ch 10:8-10).
1Sa 31:8
It came to pass on the morrow. The previous verse gave us the results of the victory as they were in course of time developed. We now return to the narrative of the battle and its immediate consequences. As the spoiling was deferred till the morrow, the struggle must have been obstinately contested, and decided only just before nightfall.
1Sa 31:9, 1Sa 31:10
They cut off his head. This was probably done not simply in retaliation for what had happened to their champion Goliath, but in accordance with the customs of ancient warfare. The fierce joy of the Philistines over the fallen Saul proves how great had been their fear of him, and how successful he had been in breaking their yoke off Israel’s neck. Had he still had David with him the victory would assuredly have remained on his side. They put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth. Hebrew, “of the Ashtaroth.” Whether it was divided among the various shrines of Astarte, or whether it was all placed in her famous temple at Askelon, described by Herodotus (1:105) as the most ancient of the fanes of the Syrian Venus, is uncertain. The former view agrees best with the Hebrew text and with what is said in 1Ch 10:10, where we have the additional information that they suspended Saul’s head in the temple of Dagon. They fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan, as also the bodies of his sons (1Ch 10:12). Beth-shan or Scythopolis lies about four miles from the Jordan on the west, and twelve miles south of the lake of Tiberias. It is almost in a straight line to the west of Mahanaim, and must have been at once occupied by the Philistines, and as they hung the bodies of the fallen king and his sons on its wall, they evidently intended to retain it.
RECOVERY OF THE BODIES OF SAUL AND HIS SONS (1Ch 10:11-13).
1Sa 31:11
Jabesh-Gilead. Eusebius describes this place as situated on the road from Pella to Gerasa, and therefore it would be much nearer the Jordan than Mahanaim, and probably was not more than twelve or fourteen miles distant from Beth-shan. The people there had not forgotten how bravely Saul had saved them, and now showed their gratitude by rescuing his remains from disgrace.
1Sa 31:12, 1Sa 31:13
They burnt them. Cremation, though highly honourable among classical nations, is here mentioned for the first time in Holy Scripture, and was probably resorted to on this occasion to insure the bodies of Saul and his sons against further maltreatment, as, if buried, the Philistines might have made the attempt to get them again into their power. Some suppose that the burning of the dead was afterwards practised by the Jews, and quote in its favour 2Ch 16:14; Isa 33:12; Jer 31:40; Jer 34:5; Amo 6:10, but these passages bear a different interpretation. After the exile, interment was the sole method of disposing of the dead among the Jews, and in the Talmud cremation is condemned as a heathen practice. The burial of the bones of Saul and his sons proves that their bodies here were really burnt. Under a tree. Hebrew, “under the tamarisk,” the famous tree of that species at Jabesh. It was under one tamarisk that Saul commanded the massacre of the priests (1Sa 22:6), and now his bones are placed in rest beneath another. Perhaps the people remembered the king’s fondness for trees. For the final fate of these relics see 2Sa 21:12-14. They fasted seven days (see Gen 1:10). The time of mourning was thirty days for Aaron (Num 20:29) and for Moses (Deu 34:8). The Talmudic rule is strict mourning for seven days, less strict for the next twenty-three, in all thirty; and for a father or mother mourning was continued for a year. The fasting was mourning of the strictest kind, and proves that the people of Jabesh-Gilead honored to the utmost their deliverer.
HOMILETICS.
1Sa 31:1-6
Judgment at last.
The facts are
1. In the battle at Gilboa the men of Israel suffer a defeat from the Philistines.
2. His sons being slain, the conflict presses hard on Saul.
3. Dreading to fall by the hand of a Philistine, and failing to find death through the hand of his armour bearer, he falls on his own sword, his example being followed by his armour bearer. Here we have the closing scene in the tragedy of Saul’s life, verifying the prediction of Samuel. Our heart mourns over an end so sad, and as we read the narrative we are sensible of a strange pity for this once promising but now ruined man. Notice
I. THE PRESSURE OF EVENTS WORKING OUT A RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT. Connecting this defeat and death of Saul with the early prediction of Samuel (1Sa 15:23, 1Sa 15:28, 1Sa 15:29) and the recent solemn declaration in the cave at Endor (1Sa 28:16-20), we see how, as by an unseen hand, Saul was urged on to his doom. For instead of making terms with the enemy, or fleeing from the scene of conflict, he, knowing his doom, drew up his men, pressed on to the thickest battle, became a conspicuous mark for archers, and drew around himself and heirs to the throne the fiercest of the assault. We cannot but observe how the Philistine force was unrestrained by the power which checked Pharaoh s army at the Red Sea, weakened Amalek when the hands of Moses were raised (Exo 17:11-13), inspired terror in the army opposed to Jonathan (1Sa 14:15-23), and generally put fear in the hearts of Israel’s foes. Samuel’s words make clear to us that Providence was leaving Saul to the impulses which led him to death, and withholding from the Philistines all that would otherwise have impeded their way to victory. It is a fearful thing thus to fall into the hands of the living God. The truth brought out here is, that though judgment is often for unrevealed reasons long deferred, yet events are so disposed as to concentrate irresistibly on the enforcement of the penalty of sin. Men pursue a crooked and unholy course for years, during which time justice seems to linger; but the time comes on when, as by infatuation, they go straight into the concurrences of events which Providence has permitted for their downfall. So also fell Babylon, Rome, and other nations, made drunk with the wine of the wrath of God (Isa 63:6). So likewise, under the pressure of Providence, will the sea give up its dead, and all that are in their graves come forth, to receive according to the deeds done in the body (Joh 5:28, Joh 5:29; 2Co 5:10; Rev 20:13).
II. THE SINS OF PARENTS CUT OFF THE HOPES OF SONS. We feel deep sympathy with Jonathan that he, the brightest and best of Israel’s manhood, should perish in the calamity brought on by his father’s persistent impenitence. Brave, gallant son, knowing and lamenting the failings of his parent, and the woes his conduct was bringing on the kingdom, with true filial piety he stands by him and the kingdom to the end! It was better to die, if so God willed it, than to live and share in the joys of even a David’s friendship. The fond hopes of seeing David enthroned over a happy and prosperous people after his father’s natural decease (1Sa 20:12-17; 1Sa 23:16-18) were rudely blighted. It is the old sad story of the sin of one bringing sorrow and suffering to many innocent. The fearful havoc made by sin! The awful responsibility of our conduct! Millions die before their proper time, and a wail of woe rises daily from myriads of hearts because of the transgression of parents.
III. A SAD END OF LIFE IN KEEPING WITH ITS ORDINARY COURSE. There is a singular blending of diverse thought and motive in the last utterances and acts of Saul. He knew his doom was at hand; and yet, partly under a sense of utter wretchedness which made him willing to die, and partly from the patriotic feeling that his unwillingness to face his country’s foe should not be added to his crimes, he goes forth to battle. Then, also, when pressed in battle and in great straits, was there not a sense of misery, a consciousness of Divine abandonment, which made the continuance of life a burden no longer to be endured, blended with the thought precious to the Hebrew, that he was one of the chosen race, allied by nationality with the great Messianic purpose, and that, as such, it must never be said that Israel’s king was abused by the touch of the “uncircumcised” alien? In this commingling of light and darkness, moral quickenings and mad infatuation, we have an analogue to his conduct all through his sad career. It is not for us to say whether there was not in those last sad moments, as he lay on the earth, a melting of that heart which had so long striven against God. As in many other instances, there is no light thrown on the inner experience of the soul in its most sacred relations to God. The case of the thief on the cross may suggest the possibility of a cry from the heart to which the mercy that endureth forever responds. But it is for us to stand in awe, and take to ourselves the solemn lesson of this sad and perverted life.
IV. A QUESTION AS TO THE MORAL CHARACTER OF SUICIDE. Willet, in his ‘Harmonie upon the first Booke of Samuel,’ quotes authorities pro and con on the general question and on Saul’s act; but without entering on a wide subject, it may suffice to note that moral cowardice is ordinarily the cause of suicide, and that it is a violation of the prerogatives of God. As we have indicated, there may have been considerations of a semi-religious character which influenced Saul in desiring not to be slain by the “uncircumcised,” and to him it was certain that death was at hand. Nevertheless, no private feeling, no relief from dishonour, can justify a forestalling, in the matter of life and death, of the course of Providence. The principle involved is most vital, and when once the door for its violation is opened, the whole fabric of society is sapped at its foundation.
General lessons:
1. It is instructive to contrast the beginning and end of lives, and note how by the action of a deceitful heart the fatal turn is taken toward disgrace and despair.
2. Although some parents ruin their sons by their sins, yet we all do them wrong and damage in so far as sin taints our life.
3. Although God cuts off the hopes of the good by the calamities which come through the sins of others, yet in his mercy he raises them to a purer and safer joy.
4. Whatever judgments God brings should be submitted to with resignation.
1Sa 31:7-13
The final issues of life a criterion of worth.
The facts are
1. The defeat of Saul is followed by the general flight of the men of Israel from the neigbbouring cities, and the occupation of these by the Philistines.
2. The bodies of Saul and of his sons being found, the Philistines strip the king’s of his armour, publish the fact in the houses of idols, and dishonour him on the wall of Beth-shan.
3. The men of Jabesh-Gilead, hearing of this, rescue the bodies and bury them at Jabesh amidst much mourning. The historian closes the narrative concerning Saul’s reign by a reference to the immediate result of the defeat on the adjacent cities, and to the barbarous treatment of Saul’s body. The people who had demanded a king, and who were proud of his powerful bodily presence, were now to learn in saddest form how much better it is to wait the time of God, and to trust rather to righteousness of national life than to physical force and martial display. The people and the king were at fault, and the judgment falls on both. We here see
I. THAT LIFE‘S WORTH IS TESTED BY ITS FINAL RESULT. The public life of Saul at one time promised well for himself and Israel. Every aid which wise advice and holy influence could render had been freely bestowed by Samuel, the man of God, and the promise of Divine help was given on condition of obedience to the Divine voice. Although troubles came in consequence of disobedience, and thus indicated that his life was proving a failure, there were doubtless men so blind to the signs of the times as to refer the troubles to accidents and unforeseen circumstances, and to hope still that there would be a turn in the tide of affairs which would insure a prosperous reign. But the panic which came on Israel on Saul’s death and the occupation of cities by the detested Philistine must have made clear to the most prejudiced that his public career was disastrous and unrighteous. The issue of a monarch’s reign should be the moral and material elevation of the people, the improved administration of law, the greater security of life and property, a prevalence of the blessings of internal peace and freedom from foreign oppression, and a higher degree of national influence. The reverse of this was the outcome of Saul’s life. By thus looking at the result of life’s labours we may form an estimate of the worth of monarchs, statesmen, merchants, and professed Christians. Have men blessed their fellow creatures with permanent good? Is the great enemy, sin, more in occupation of country, home, and the soul at the end than at the beginning? The day is coming when every man’s work will be tried of “what sort it is” (1Co 3:13). Can we face that test? Will the end be better than the beginning? Dare some men try to answer this question in relation to their spiritual condition and the spiritual effect of their personal influence.
II. THAT THE APPARENT TRIUMPH OF THE WICKED IS ONE OF THE SADDEST CONSEQUENCES OF THE SINS OF GOD‘S PEOPLE. The triumph of the “uncircumcised” was complete when, stripping the body of Israel’s king, they carried his head in savage delight to the house of Dagon (1Ch 10:10), nailed his corpse to the wall of Beth-shan, and proclaimed their victory in honour of their gods. It was this result following on the death of Saul and defeat of Israel that seemed to be an occasion of so much sorrow and dread to David (2Sa 1:20). The fond hopes cherished by the pious on the solemn day of repentance and consecration at Mizpeh and Ebenezer (1Sa 7:9-12) were now rudely destroyed. Heathenism gloried in its strength; while Israel, smitten with fear, mourned in bitterness of soul. Ignorance, barbarity, idolatry took a new lease of power, and Jehovah’s name was dishonoured in the eyes of the nations. The death of a king is comparatively a small matter, the wasting sweep of war over fair fields and flourishing cities is a material calamity; but for irreligion to flourish, debasing religious rites to manifest all their vileness, and the cause of purity, truth, and righteousness to be made.to suffer even apparent defeat, this was the most fearful consequence of Saul’s unhappy reign. All actions in public and private individuals are to be judged by their bearing on the honour of God’s name and the extension of the kingdom of Christ. Does a monarch’s or a statesman’s policy give greater scope for whatever is alien to the supremacy of Christ in heart, conduct, and home? If so it is very criminal. Does our private life give occasion for the enemies of the cross to blaspheme? He who so lives and dies as to strengthen the hold of ignorance, superstition, immorality, and anti-Christian principles on the world is the enemy of his country and of God. When men professedly in the Church of God, as Saul was in Israel, so become unfaithful to their privileges as to give an apparent triumph to the irreligious and profane, they, in whatever degree this is true, perpetrate an injury, the spiritual issues of which are beyond all calculation.
III. THAT THE MOST TERRIBLE TRIALS MAY GIVE RISE TO OCCASIONAL DEEDS OF HEROISM. Various were the effects of Saul’s death on Israel. On all there must have come that inexpressible anguish which in some degree David sought to express in his beautiful “song of the bow” (2Sa 1:18-27). But there were faithful men who could not yield to inaction while God’s name was being dishonoured and Israel, in the person of the king, covered with ignominy. The men of Jabesh-Gilead had not forgotten the day when, in the prime of his strength, and bidding fair to defend his country in the fear of God, Saul had come to their rescue and had aroused the patriotism of the nation (1Sa 11:4-11). To them he was more than king; he was hero and friend, and doubtless their children had used his name as a household word. And now dead, forsaken, mutilated, the tall, majestic form exposed to heathen scornshould they suffer it? Never! “All the valiant men arose.” With set purpose, at risk of life, they bring away the mangled remains, and sorrowfully lay them low in the place that witnessed his early heroism. Thus do we see how misfortune, sorrow, and death call forth the nobler qualities of men, and bring to light hidden sympathies and secret friends. There was some hope for Israel yet. The terrible disasters of life stir up the energies of the faithful few, and though they cannot at once redeem all that others have lost, they can reassert the supremacy of love and the nobler sentiments of life, and so pave the way for a better order of things. Men in Israel revived a little from despair when they heard of this heroism and affection. Was there not a darker night and more complete apparent defeat of Israel’s high purpose in the world when another and more sacred body was exposed “a spectacle to angels and to men”? Then also one was found who dared to identify his reputation and all that was dear with respect and love for that holy body. Joseph of Arimathea was morally more heroic than the men of Jabesh-Gilead. In similar ways the disasters of life have drawn forth the heroism of many who could not endure to see the “uncircumcised” triumph. Thus light shines forth in darkness, assuring us that in the long conflict with evil the morning of an endless day full of the joy of the ransomed will dawn on the sorrowful earth.
General lessons:
1. To form a just estimate of our life we should not regard our personal enjoyments as pain. but have chief respect to the ultimate effect of it on our home and country.
2. Wicked men find encouragement to believe in their false principles when men professing opposite principles are untrue to them.
3. We ought to consider how much of the power of irreligious principles and practices over men is due to our want of consistency.
4. It will be blessed for us and our survivors if friends are able to commit our body to the grave with affection and gratitude unalloyed with painful memories.
HOMILIES BY B. DALE
1Sa 31:1-6. (GILBOA.)
The death of Saul.
“So Saul died” (1Sa 31:6; 2Sa 1:1-16; 1Ch 10:1-14.). While the events mentioned in the preceding chapter were taking place in the south, and even before their occurrence, “the great drama so closely connected with them was being played out” in the north. On the morrow of Saul’s consultation of “the witch of Endor” the Philistines marched across the plain, with their archers, chariots, and horsemen (2Sa 1:6), and attacked the army of Israel. The issue appears to have been soon decided. “The men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in Gilboa,” up the slopes of which they had been pursued. “And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and his sons,” who fell fighting around him. Hard pressed and found by the archers, he trembled (“was sore wounded,” A.V.) before them, seeing no way to escape falling into their hands; and (as the night set in), with the reckless courage of despair with which he had fought, his armour bearer having refused to slay him, he “took the sword and fell upon it.” His armour bearer followed his example. “At that moment a wild Amalekite, lured probably to the field by the hope of spoil, came up and finished the work which the arrows of the Philistines and the sword of Saul him self had all but accomplished” (Stanley). “A remarkable dispensation. As the curse on Amalek was accomplished by Saul, so that on Saul was accomplished by Amalek” (Hengstenberg). Or, perhaps, the story of the Amalekite was false, and told to ingratiate himself with David and obtain a reward for the diadem and bracelet of which he had stripped the fallen king. In either case, self-willed to the last, scorning “these uncircumcised,” and more concerned about his own honour than the honour of God, he rushed upon his own destruction.
“O Saul!
How ghastly didst thou look, on thine own sword
Expiring in Gilboa, from that hour
Ne’er visited with rain from heaven nor dew”
(Dante, ‘Purg.’ 12.).
Observe that –
I. RETRIBUTION SURELY OVERTAKES THE IMPENITENT TRANSGRESSOR.
1. The full desert Of sin might be justly inflicted immediately on its commission. But in a state of probation space is allowed for repentance and motives afforded to induce it. Yet, if sin be persisted in, guilt increases and judgment becomes more inevitable and severe. “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Pro 29:1). “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). “The wages may be deferred or may not be consciously received, but they are paid without stint sooner or later; the fatal consequences may not always equally appear, but they never fail in some form or other.”
2. Although inflicted by the free act of man, it is not less the result of the operation of retributive justice. “Saul took the sword and fell upon it;” but he “died for his transgression which he committed against the Lord; therefore the Lord slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David, the son of Jesse” (1Ch 10:14).
3. The operation of the law of retribution, so manifest in history and to observation, shows the evil of sin in the sight of God, and is a solemn warning against its indulgence. Even repentance may come too late to avert its consequences in this life.
“Look to thyself then, deal with sin no more,
Lest he that saves, against thee shuts the door” (Bunyan).
II. SELF–WILL NATURALLY CULMINATES IN SELF–DESTRUCTION. All self-will, in opposition to the will of God, is a self-injury (Pro 8:36); and not less so because the sinner seeks what he falsely imagines to be for his good. Its tendency is ever towards destruction, and, unless checked in its course, it infallibly conducts to that end. It is a special and aggravated form of it when, in order to escape the misery and shame which are experienced or expected, he directly and voluntarily takes away his own life. Suicide is
1. Contrary to the natural instinct of self-preservation and a properly enlightened and regulated self-love.
2. An act of unfaithfulness to the trust that is committed to man by God in the bestowment of life, and of refusal to fulfil the duties that he has ordained in life, which cannot be rightly surrendered or left without his consent nor until the time he has appointed. “Pythagoras forbids us to abandon the station or post of life without the orders of our commander, that is, of God” (Cicero). “‘Why do I tarry on earth, and not hasten hence to come to you?’ ‘Not so, my son,’ he replied; ‘unless that God, whose temple is all this which you behold, shall liberate you from the imprisonment of the body, you can have no admission to this place'” (‘Scipio’s Dream’).
3. An act of cowardice in the presence of real or imaginary evils, whatever reckless bravery it may exhibit with respect to death and that which lies beyond. “To die and thus avoid poverty, or love, or anything painful is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble; and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honourable, but in order to avoid evil” (Aristotle, ‘Ethics,’ book 7. 1Sa 7:1-17). In Saul it was “the act of completed despair.”
4. Expressly prohibited by the Divine command: “Thou shalt not kill. In accordance with this Paul said to the Philippian gaoler, when “he would have killed himself,” “Do thyself no harm” (Act 16:28).
5. Virtually forbidden by all the exhortations of the New Testament to endure affliction with patience and submission to the will of God. “Suicide is the result of impatience” (see Paley, ‘Mor. Philippians,’ book 4. Php 3:1-21).
6. Injurious to others in many ways: inflicting much distress, teaching pernicious lessons, setting a bad example. It is “as unfavourable to human talents and resources as it is to human virtues. We should never have dreamt of the latent power and energy of our nature but for the struggle of great minds with great afflictions, nor known the limits of ourselves nor man’s dominion over fortune. What would the world now have been if it had always been said, Because the archers smite me sore, and the battle goeth against me, I will die?” (Sydney Smith).
7. Condemned by the example of good men, who have borne the heaviest calamities with holy courage, and sanctioned only by evil men, like Ahithophel and Judas. How far, indeed, Saul was in full possession of his faculties and responsible for his act, or what was his final destiny, is not stated. “It is evident that more arguments may be gathered of his condemnation than of his salvation; yet because nothing is expressly set down touching his state before God, it is better to leave it” (Willet).
“O mortal men! be wary how ye judge:
For we, who see our Maker, know not yet
The number of the chosen” (‘Par.’ 20.).
“There appears to be but one efficient means by which the mind can be armed against the temptations to suicide, because there is but one that can support it against every evil of lifepractical religion, belief in the providence of God, confidence in his wisdom, hope in his goodness” (Dymond, ‘Essays’).
“Nor love thy life, nor bate; but what thou liv’st
Live well, how long or short, permit to Heaven”
(‘Par. Lost,’ bk. 10.).
III. THE EVIL EXAMPLE OF MEN IN HIGH STATION IS ONLY TOO FAITHFULLY IMITATED. “And when his armour bearer,” etc. (1Sa 31:5). He had faithfully fought by his side to the last, and feared to take away his life (of which he was appointed guardian); perhaps out of reverence for his sacred person; doubtless, also, he dreaded to fall alive into the hands of the Philistines and to be put to a shameful death by them; and now, incited by his example, “dares to do that to himself which to his king he durst not.” Example is proverbially powerful. No one, especially if he occupy a position of power and influence, can do wrong without thereby inducing others to follow, who thus share his guilt and may not have equal excuse for their transgression. According to Jewish tradition the armour bearer was Doeg the Edomite (1Sa 22:18, 1Sa 22:19), “a partner before of his master’s crimes, and now of his punishment.” “That Saul and his armour bearer died by the same sword is, I think, sufficiently evident. ‘Draw thy sword,’ says he to him, ‘and thrust me through;’ which when he refused, ‘Saul took the sword and fell upon it.’ What sword? (Not his own, for then the text would have said so.) Why, in the plain, natural, grammatical construction, the sword before mentioned must be the sword now referred to, that is, the armour bearer’s. Saul and his executioner both fell by that very weapon with which they had before massacred the priests of God” (Delany).
IV. THE INNOCENT OFTEN SUFFER ALONG WITH THE GUILTY. “And the Philistines slew Jonathan,” etc. (1Sa 31:2-6). It is impossible not to lament the untimely fate of the friend of David and of God. The sins of the father were visited upon the son. But let it be considered that
1. God is the supreme Proprietor of every human life, and has a right to dispose of it as it pleases him. Moreover, “death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom 5:12).
2. He has united men to each other in relations more or less intimate, whereby they necessarily affect each other for good as well as for evil.
3. The sufferings of the godly, in consequence of their connection with the wicked, serve many beneficent purposes. The death of Jonathan would deepen the impression of the severity of the Divine judgment on the house of Saul for disobedience, and be a perpetual warning. It also made David’s accession to the throne clearer and more indisputable.
4. The godly cannot experi ence the Worst sufferings of the wickedremorse, fearfulness, despair; and if some are called to an early death in the path of duty, they are only called a little earlier than others to their inheritance in “a better country, that is, a heavenly,” an eternal kingdom.
“Joy past compare.; gladness unutterable;
Imperishable life of peace and love;
Exhaustless riches and unmeasured bliss.”D.
1Sa 31:7-10. (GILBOA.)
The chastisement of Israel.
The thunderstorm of which they were long ago warned (1Sa 12:18, 1Sa 12:25) had now burst upon the people of Israel. Since the capture of the ark they had not experienced so great a calamity, and in it the fatal results of their demand for a king were made manifest. Although the demand was evil, it contained an element of good, and was complied with by God in judgment mingled with mercy. “As no people can show a visible theocracy, so no monarchy can be accused, simply as such, of usurping the Divine prerogative. But still the transaction does involve a moral lesson, which lies at the foundation of all sound policy, condemning the abandonment of principle on the plea of expediency, and pointing by the example of Israel the doom of every nation that seeks safety and power in a course known to be wrong” (P. Smith, ‘Ancient History’). They had their own way, yet the purpose of God was not defeated, but accomplished less directly, and in such a manner as to convince them of the folly of their devices, and exhibit his overruling wisdom and power. Whilst they pursued their course under a king “according to the will of man,” their Divine King was preparing “a man after his own heart to be captain over his people” (1Sa 13:14, Act 12:22). When the end came David stood ready to occupy the throne, and, after a brief period of conflict and confusion, the whole nation, taught by experience, gladly received him as its ruler. This is the theocratic “argument” of the greater portion of the Book. In the terrible defeat of Israel we see
I. THEIR IDOL BROKEN IN PIECES. “So Saul died,” etc. “The men of Israel fled, and Saul and his sons were dead,” etc. (1Sa 31:6, 1Sa 31:7). Men are apt to imagine that something else beyond what God has ordained is necessary to their welfare, to be impatient of his time, to attach an undue value to the expedients which in their imperfect knowledge and sinful desires they devise, to set their hearts upon earthly and visible objects, and depend upon them rather than upon “him who is invisible.” This tendency finds expression in many ways, and embodies itself in many forms. And although God may permit such idols to continue for a time, he always overthrows them. When Israel made an idol of the ark it was given into the hands of the Philistines, and when they made an idol of “a king” (1Sa 8:5) he was slain. Their hope in him was bitterly disappointed, and inasmuch as he yeas (according to Divine prescience, though not by absolute necessity nor without personal guilt) a representation and reflection of their sin (worldliness, formalism, self-will), they were severely punished in him and by his instrumentality. How little did they gain, how much did they lose, by having their own way! “I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath” (Hos 13:11). “Cease ye from man,” etc.
II. THEIR CITIES FORSAKEN. “And when the men of Israel that were by the side of the plain” (west of the central branch of the valley of Jezreel, “opposite to the place of conflict, which the writer assumed as his standpoint”Keil), “and by the side of the Jordan” (east of the plain, between Gilboa and the Jordan), “saw that the men of Israel” (who were engaged in the battle) “fled,” etc. “they forsook the cities; and the Philistines came” (from that time onward) “and dwelt in them” (so that the whole of the northern part of the land fell into their hands). Instead of overcoming their enemies, they were overcome by them, driven from their homes, reduced to the most abject condition, and without any prospect of regaining by their own strength their lost possessions. “Your country is desolate,” etc. (Isa 1:7). The peaceful government of Samuel gave them prosperity (1Sa 7:13, 1Sa 7:14); but the warlike rule of Saul, which they preferred, ended in their overthrow. “Sore distressed,” like him (1Sa 28:15), whither should they turn for help? Men are deprived of all hope in themselves that they may “set their hope in God.”
III. THEIR ENEMIES TRIUMPHANT. “And it came to pass on the morrow” (after the battle, which ended at nightfall) “when the Philistines came,” etc. “And they cut off his head (as in the case of Goliath of Gath, and afterwards deposited it in the temple of Dagon, in Ashdod, 1Ch 10:10; 1Sa 5:1), and sent (messengers bearing his head and armour) into the land of the Philistines round about, to proclaim the good tidings in their idol temples (to their idols) and among the people (2Sa 1:20). And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth (in Askelon), and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan” (Jdg 1:27). It has been remarked of the Philistines that “so implacable was their enmity to the Israelites, that one would be almost tempted to think that they bad been created on purpose to be a thorn in their sides” (Russell, ‘Connection,’ History of the Philistines). Their victory was the victory of their gods; the defeat of Israel the dishonour of Jehovah. Rather than sanction sin in his people, God not only suffers them to be overthrown by their enemies, but even his own name to be for a while despised and “blasphemed among the heathen.” But the triumph of the wicked is short (2Sa 5:17-25).
IV. THEIR TRUE STRENGTH UNDESTROYED. It consisted in the presence and power of their Divine and invisible King; his benevolent and unchangeable purpose concerning them (1Sa 12:22); his faithful, praying, obedient subjects in their midst, who had been long looking to David as his chosen “servant,” and were now rallying round him daily until his following became “a great host like the host of God” (1Ch 12:22). There was an “Israel after the flesh” (constituting the State), and there was an Israel “after the spirit” (constituting the Church); and in the latter lay “the power of an endless life.” Judgment might sweep over the nation like a destroying hailstorm, and leave it like a tree bereft of all its leaves, and even “cut it down” to the ground. But its true life would be spared, would be tried and purified by affliction, and become a source of renewed power and greater glory. “As a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof “(Isa 6:13; Isa 1:9; Isa 65:8).
Observations:
1. That which is wrongly desired as an instrument of good becomes when obtained an instrument of evil.
2. Men may have their own Way apparently in opposition to the way of God, but his purpose does not change, and he knows how to carry it into effect.
3. The people who sanction the sins of their rulers justly share their punishment.
4. When the people of God expect to prevail against their enemies by adopting their sinful policy (1Sa 8:20), they are certain to be ultimately defeated.
5. The suffering and humiliation that follow sin are the most effectual means of its correction.
6. The hope of a nation in the day of trouble lies in its praying, believing, godly men.
7. God overrules all things, including the sins and sorrows of his people, for the establishment of his kingdom upon earth (1Sa 2:10).D.
1Sa 31:11-13. (BETHSHAN, JABESH-GILEAD.)
Gratitude.
The first victory of Saul (1Sa 11:1-15.) is connected with his death by the noble exploit of the men of Jabesh. It was due partly to loyalty and patriotism; chiefly to gratitude for benefits formerly conferred upon them. It is seldom that any one closes his earthly course without some token of grateful remembrance. Of one of the worst tyrants that ever held the reins of power in Rome (Nero), it is recorded that on the morning after he was buried amidst general execration fresh flowers were found strewn by an unknown hand upon his grave. Saul had done many generous deeds, and they were not forgotten. The gratitude of the men of Jabesh was marked by many admirable features. It was
1. Unexpected. Who would have thought that the city which was so faithless and cowardly as to say to Nahash, “Make a covenant with us, and we will serve thee,” could have furnished such an instance of devotion? The noblest qualities sometimes appear in association with the meanest, and where men expect to find no good thing. Let us not despise our nature, nor think that at its worst it is wholly incapable of generous acts.
2. Long cherished. It was many years previously that Jabesh had been saved by Saul; but its grateful feeling had not (as is sometimes the case) grown cold with the lapse of time. When a philosopher was asked, “what doth soonest grow cold?” he replied, “Thanks.”
3. Spontaneous. No special appeal was made to them; but perceiving that they could do something to testify their gratitude to their benefactor by rescuing his remains from the indignity to which they were subjected, “all the valiant men arose” of their own accord, “and went all night” (a distance of ten miles, across the Jordan) and accomplished it. Gratitude loses its proper character and ceases to be gratitude when it requires to be solicited and urged.
4. Disinterested. Saul and his sons were dead, and no reward for their daring effort might be expected. It was performed in somewhat of the same spirit as that with which Saul himself formerly acted; what was best in his life was remembered and admired by them (as it was by David, 2Sa 1:23), and it served to stir them to similar excellence. Disinterested conduct begets its like.
“Good deeds immortal arethey cannot die;
Unscathed by envious blight or withering frost,
They live, and bud, and bloom; and men partake
Still of their freshness, and are strong thereby”
(Aytoun).
5. Heroic and self-sacrificing; exhibited practically and at the risk of life, and displaying great energy and valour. “The pillars of fire of genuine human heroism are the noble lights of history, which make us feel at ease while sojourning among spectres, and horrors, and graves” (Lange).
6. Complete. It did not stop short of doing its best. “They took their bones, and buried them under the tamarisk at Jabesh, and fasted seven days” (1Sa 31:13; 2Sa 21:14). They could do no more; and what they did was done tenderly, mournfully, reverently, and in fulfilment of a sacred custom and religious duty.
Exhortation:
1. Endeavour so to live that when you are gone you may be remembered with gratitude, and leave behind the recollection of good deeds which may incite others to the like.
2. Fail not to render gratitude to every one who has conferred a benefit upon you in the best way you can; be thankful, especially to God, for all his benefits towards you. “Nothing more detestable, does the earth produce than an ungrateful man” (Ausonius).
3. Seek above all things to obtain in life and death the honour that comes from God. “This Book began with Samuel’s birth, and now ends with Saul’s burial, the comparing of which together will teach us to prefer the honour which comes from God before any honours of which this world pretends to dispose” (M. Henry).D.
1Sa 31:1-13.-Saul of Gibeah, and Saul of Tarsus.
It is instructive to compare the characters of different men with each other. This is done by Plutarch in his Lives of celebrated Greeks and Romans; and it may be done with advantage in the case of some of the characters described in the Scriptures. There was an interval of a thousand years between Saul of Gibeah and Saul of Tarsus) “who also is called Paul” (Act 13:9). But if we look at them attentively, “and examine the several parts of their lives distinctly, as we do a poem or a picture” (Plutarch), we shall find in these two illustrious Hebrews, the one under the Old Covenant, the other under the New
I. RESEMBLANCE in their
1. Ancestral relation, religious privileges, and outward circumstances. Both belonged to “the tribe of Benjamin” (Act 13:21; Php 3:5), received the name of Saul when “circumcised the eighth day,” were brought up “under the law,” after early years of obscure diligence held important public posi tions,the one as first king of Israel, the other as a “chosen vessel” unto the Lord, to bear his name “before the Gentiles, and kings, and the people of Israel” (Act 9:15),lived a long life (over sixty years), and died a sudden and violent death.
2. Natural qualities: passionate, impulsive, warlike, zealous, daring even to rash ness, resolute, persistent; inherited from their common ancestor, of whom it was said, “Benjamin as a wolf shall ravin,” etc. (Gen 49:27); and characteristic of their tribe, as appears in Ehud (Jdg 3:15). The Apostle of the Gentiles, “in the prompt audacities of his apostolic career, does not allow us to forget of what tribe he was.”
3. Sudden conversion: the one on the way to Gibeah, on beholding “a company of the prophets” (Heb 10:1-39.); the other on the way to Damascus, overcome by the glorious revelation of the Lord (Act 9:1-43.), whose followers he was persecuting; a startling surprise to all, and the commencement of a different course of life. “Is Saul also among the prophets? They were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.”
4. Energetic enterprises, to which they were called by the Divine Spirit, on behalf of the kingdom of God against its adversaries; in the one case with the sword, in the other with the word (Heb 11:1-40.; Act 12:25; Act 13:1-3).
II. CONTRAST in still more numerous particulars. They were the opposite of each other; as in physical appearance and mental culture, so also in their
1. Extraordinary change, which in the one was partial, superficial, and temporary; in the other complete, deep, and enduring.
2. Real character. The one lived unto himself, and did not freely and fully surrender himself to the Divine will; the other lived unto the Lord, not being disobedient to the heavenly vision (Act 26:19; Gal 1:16; Php 1:21).
3. Gradual progress: in the one case, after brilliant promise, downward, in “pride, caprice, jealousy, cruelty, excusive avenging of himself, and at last open contempt and defiance of God;” in the other upward, in heavenly mindedness, spiritual power, and higher usefulness.
4. Fierce persecution. “The second Saul for a while followed only too faithfully in the footsteps of the first. If the one persecuted David, the other, with an energy of hate that did not fall short of his, David’s greater Son. Presently, however, their lives divide, and one is the Saul of reprobation, the other of election” (Trench). The latter began where the former ended (Gal 1:23), and became himself an object of the persecution in which he once shared.
5. Representative relation. The one represented, embodied, and pro moted what was worst in his tribe and nation, the other what was best.
6. Tragical end: the one in despair by his own hand, the other in glorious hope as a martyr of Christ (2Ti 4:6-8).
7. Lasting memorial: the one is a warning, the other is a pattern (1Ti 1:16; Php 3:17). The second Saul was “the likeness in the Christian Church” not so much of what the first was as of “what he might have beenthe true David, restorer and enlarger of the true kingdom of God upon earth” (Stanley).
III. INSTRUCTION.
1. Religious advantages and eminent positions are of no real benefit unless they be rightly used.
2. The natural qualities which make one man a power for evil, make another, when sanctified, a power for good.
3. The heart must be right with God in order to a proper use of his gifts and a worthy course of life. “If the heart be not upright, whatever favourable beginnings there may be, there cannot be a uniform perseverance in goodness or any happy conclusion” (Robinson).
4. Divine grace when persistently resisted is withdrawn, leaving the soul a prey to the “evil spirit;” when humbly and faithfully received, is followed by more grace.
5. In proportion as a man lives to himself or to God he becomes weak, sinful, and miserable, or strong, holy, and happy.
6. There is no standing still in moral life; if men do not become better they infallibly become worse.
7. As a man lives so he dies. “Think of the end of Saul of Gibeah, and learn in time to be wise.” Think of the end of Saul of Tarsus, and “be faithful unto death.”D.
HOMILIES BY D. FRASER
1Sa 31:3-6
The bitter end.
The tragic element, so conspicuous in this history, is intense in the last scene of all.
I. SAUL‘S DEATH.
1. His despair. When the battle went against him, and the Philistines, keeping beyond reach of his long arm and terrible sword, hit him from a distance with their arrows, the king’s spirit suddenly failed and died within him. “He trembled sore because of the archers.” Always fitful in his moods, liable to sudden elation and sudden depression, he gave up all for lost. He would not flee, but he would fight no more. Probably the horrible recollection of the words spoken to him by the spectre at Endor increased his despair, and he thought only how to die.
2. His pride. Saul had never shown much regard for the sacredness of human life, but he cherished a most exalted sense of the sacredness of his own person as the Lord’s anointed. No descendant of a long line of so styled Christian or Catholic sovereigns has held a loftier claim of personal inviolability. So he resolved that no heathen should cut him down in battle. Anything rather than this. If his armour bearer would not kill him, he would kill himself.
3. His suicide. With all his horror of being slain by a heathen, Saul died like a heathendismissed himself from life after the manner of the pagan heroes; not with any sanction from the word of God or the history of his servants. (Illustrate from the stories of Brutus and Cassius and the younger Cato.) The only instance of what can be called self-destruction among the men of Israel prior to the days of Saul was that of Samson, and his was a self-devotion for the destruction of his country’s enemies which ranks with the heroism of one dying in battle rather than with cases of despairing suicide. There is a case after the days of Saul, viz; that of Ahithophel, who, in a fit of deep chagrin, deliberately hanged himself. To the servants of God suicide must always appear as a form of murder, and one that implies more cowardice than courage. English law regards it as a very grave crime, and to mark this our old statutes, unable to punish the self-murderer, assigned to his body ignominious burial It is, however, the charitable custom of our times to assume that one who kills himself must be bereft of reason, and so to hold him morally irresponsible. Apology of this kind may be pleaded for King Saul, and pity for his disordered brain takes away the sharpness from our censure. Still we must not overlook
4. The admonition which his death conveys. Saul had really prepared for himself this wretched death. He had disregarded the prophet, and so was without consolation. He had killed the priests, and so was without sacrifice or intercession. He had driven away David, and so was without the help of the best soldier in the nation, a leader of 600 men inured to service and familiar with danger. He had lived, in his later years at least, like a madman; and, like a madman, he threw himself on his sword and died. Here lies admonition for us. As a man sows he reaps. As a life is shaped, so is the death determined. We speak of the penalty on evil doers, but it is no mere arbitrary infliction; it is the natural fruit and necessary result of the misconduct. One leads a sensual life, and the penalty on him is that of exhaustion, disease, and premature decay. One leads a selfish life, hardening his heart against appeal or reproach, and his doom is to lose all power and experience of sympathy, to pass through the world winning no love, and pass out of the world drawing after him no regret.
II. JONATHAN‘S DEATH.
1. Its innocence. Look at the pious, generous prince, as well as the proud and wilful king, slain on that woeful day. A man who loves God and whom God loves may be innocently involved in a cause which is bound to fail. It may be by ties of family, or by official position which he cannot renounce; and, unable to check the fatal course of his comrades, he is dragged down in the common catastrophe. Jonathan died in the same battle with his father, but not as his father died. Let us remember that men are so involved with one another in the world, in ways quite defensible, sometimes unavoidable, that as one may share the success of another without deserving any part of the praise, so also may one share the downfall of others without being at all to blame for the courses or transactions which brought about the disastrous issue.
2. Its timeliness. The death of Jonathan: occurring when it did, brought more advantage to the nation than his continued life could possibly have rendered. It opened the way for David’s succession to the throne. Had Jonathan survived his father, be might have been willing to cede the succession to David, but it is not at all probable that the people would have allowed his obvious claim to be set aside, and any conflict between the partisans of two such devoted friends would have been most painful to both. So it was well ordered and well timed that Jonathan died as a brave soldier in the field. He missed an earthly throne indeed, but he gained all the sooner a heavenly home. So is it with many a death which seems to be sad and untimely. A man of God cannot lose by dying. To die is gain. But he may by dying advance the cause of God more than he could by living. His departure may clear the ground for other arrangements under Divine providence, for which the time is ripe, or open the way for some one who is chosen and called to do a work for God and man that must no longer be delayed.F.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
1Sa 31:1. Now the Philistines fought against Israel That is, as most interpreters understand it, began to fight against, or attacked, the Israelites. The word nilchamim, as Dr. Delaney observes, might as properly have been rendered assaulted. He is of opinion, not only that the Philistines attacked Saul in his camp, but that they did so soon after his return from Endor, and that, probably, they were encouraged to this attempt by some secret information of Saul’s having stolen out of the camp the evening before with his general (for Abner is supposed to have been one of his attendants) and another person: and if this was the case, then his applying to the Pythoness was the immediate cause of his destruction; now this gives light to 1Ch 10:13 and at the same time receives light from it.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
IV. Death and Burial of Saul and his Sons
1Sa 31:1-13. [Comp. 1 Chronicles 10]
1Now [And] the Philistines fought1 against Israel, and the men of Israel fled 2from before the Philistines and fell down slain2 in mount Gilboa. And the Philistines followed hard3 upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan 3and Abinadab and Melchishua,4 Sauls sons. And the battle went sore against Saul and the archers5 hit him, and he was sore wounded [sore afraid] of 4the archers. Then said Saul [And Saul said] unto his armour-bearer, Draw thy sword and thrust me through therewith, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through6 and abuse me. But his armour-bearer would not, for he was sore 5afraid. Therefore [And] Saul took a [the] sword and fell upon it. And when his armour-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise [he also fell] upon his 6sword and died with him. So Saul died, and his three sons and his armour-bearer 7and7 all his men that same day together. And when the men of Israel that were on the other side of [beyond]8 the valley [plain] and they that were on the other side [beyond] Jordan saw that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook the cities and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.
8And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, 9that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in Mount Gilboa. And they cut off his head and stripped off his armour, and sent9 into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the house [houses]10 of their idols and among the people. 10And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth, and they fastened11 his body to the wall of Bethshan.12
11And when [om. when] the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead heard of that which the 12Philistines had done to Saul, All [And all] the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul, and the bodies of his sons from the well of Bethshan, 13and came to Jabesh and burnt them there. And they took their bones and buried them under a tree [the tamarisk] at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Sa 31:1-7. The battle lost. Death of Saul and his sons.
1Sa 31:1 is connected with 1Sa 29:1 (comp. 1Sa 28:1; 1Sa 28:4 sq.). The partcp. were fighting [so the Heb.] presupposes the account given in 1Sa 28:1; 1Sa 28:4 and 1Sa 29:1 of the preparations for the battle, and thence forms an adjectival sentence, which is to be understood thus: When now the Philistines, etc., the men of Israel fled, etc. Driven from the place the men of Israel took refuge in mount Gilboa (see 1Sa 28:4), and were thither followed by the Philistines and slain. [Or, less probably, the mountain itself may have been the scene of battle.Tr.]
1Sa 31:2. Sept. renders: the Philistines press closely on, come up with (); it does not, however, thence follow that they read Impf. Qal (of ) with , for the Hiph. with Acc. (so 1Ch 10:2 it is used with the Prep. after, comp. 1Sa 14:22; Jdg 20:45), also means to hang closely at ones feet, overtake him (comp. Jdg 18:22).On the three sons of Saul see on 1Sa 14:49.
1Sa 31:3. The battle went sore to () Saul. It is unnecessary to read against () instead of to, since the phrase describes the movement of the battle towards Saul; the battle was sore towards Saul, after his three sons had fallen. [Vulg.: the whole weight of the battle turned against [or towards] Saul.Tr.] The archers especially harassed him. Men with the bow is in apposition with shooters (). Render: They hit him (taken absolutely), not hit him with the bow, the verb not being elsewhere so used.13 And he was sore afraid (from or ), not, as Sept. and Vulg., was sore wounded, this signification for the verb (= ) being not proved (Keil). [The signification wounded would be permissible but for the masoretic pointing and the following Prep.Tr.] He trembled, was frightened at the archers, because, the battle going hard against him, he saw no way of escaping them, or of resisting the enemys superior force, especially as, since the death of his sons, he was alone with his armor-bearer. And even if we suppose that it was not despairing fear that he felt (which, however, after the scene at Endor, might well get control of him, notwithstanding his old heroism of character), but only failure of resources (Thenius), yet his fear and trembling at the shame that threatened him (1Sa 31:4) may be easily explained. Thenius thinks that his request to his armor-bearer to kill him is intelligible only on the supposition that he was badly wounded, and so unfit for resistance, and properly also for self-destruction. But, as he finally killed himself, he could not have been too badly wounded for this. It is quite in keeping with Sauls condition of soul (abandoned to despair) that, at the mere possibility of being slain by the Philistines he sought death at the hands of his attendant. Clearly in favor of this view, and against the other, is Sauls address to his armor-bearer: Draw thy sword and pierce me therewith, lest these un-circumcised come and pierce me and abuse me. Saul had a strong consciousness of the sacredness of his person as the Anointed of the Lord, and must therefore have held it a great shame to be slain by the idolatrous, unclean heathen. The armor-bearer would not, for he was sore afraid; he had, indeed, to defend the kings life, and was responsible for its preservation. And Saul took the sword and fell on it; that is, having set the hilt on the ground, he threw the weight of his body on the point, and thus killed himself. The scene is clearly and vividly portrayed with a few admirable strokes. [For the meaning of the contrary account 2Sa 1:10 see notes on that passage.Tr.]
1Sa 31:5. The armor-bearers fear, here again brought forward, was based, no doubt, on the above-named consideration; he was answerable for the kings person, and might also be apprehensive that he would be regarded as his murderer. He followed his lords example, and slew himself. At the same time also all his men were slain. 1Ch 10:6 has all his house instead of all his men. Certainly Abner, who was no doubt in the battle, had not fallen, 2Sa 11:8 (Then.), but that is not inconsistent with the statement, since he, as Sauls General (1Sa 14:50 sq.) belonged, strictly speaking, neither to the house nor to the men, by which term we must understand the soldiers who were near the kings person, his body-guard, as it were.
1Sa 31:7. A distinction is here made between the men of Israel who were non-combatants and dwelt east of the field of battle, and the men of Israel who formed the army. The former are described as those who dwelt on the side of the plain and on the side of the Jordan.14 The plain is the lowland between mount Gilboa on the south and little Hermon on the north, the continuation of the plain of Jezreel, into which the battle passed, so that the Israelites fled to mount Gilboa and were there slain. The Jordan with its western bank-terrain formed the border. Those who, from the station of the narrator (which we must take with Keil to be the battle-field in the plain of Jezreel) dwelt beyond, that is, opposite him on the mountain-terrain beside the plain and in the Jordan-flats, fled from their abodes when they saw the total defeat of the Israelitish army in the plain. They left the cities; Sept., Vulg., Syr., Chron. read their cities, a correct interpretation, but not proof of a different original text here (Then.). And the Philistines came and dwelt in them, not immediately, before the occurrence of what is next related (Then. against Bertheau), but from now on they took possession of the district with all its cities, settled themselves on the whole north and thence seized the rest of the country, so that they held the whole land except Perea on the east [beyond Jordan] and Judah in the south.
1Sa 31:8-10. The Philistines cruel and abusive treatment of the corpses of Saul and his three sons.
1Sa 31:8. After the anticipatory ethnographic statement in 1Sa 31:7 the narrative returns to the field of battle. And it came to pass on the morrow.On the day after the battle, which had therefore probably lasted till evening, the darkness preventing plundering. On mount Gilboa they found Saul and his sons fallen (comp. 1Sa 31:1), the Israelitish army, and with it Saul and his sons, having fallen back thither from the plain before the victorious Philistines.
1Sa 31:9. Comp. 1Ch 10:9 : And they stripped him and took his head and his armor and sent . Here it reads: And they cut off his head and stripped off his armor.The And they sent is not to be connected with the to publish it (Then.), as if the Philistines had beforehand published the victory around, meantime retaining Sauls head and armor, in order to carry them in triumph on their return, but according to the contrast we must supply head and armor, which they sent around to announce the good news to their idol-templesthat is, to the priests serving in the templesand to the people.Sauls head and armor were the signs of victory for priests and people. Instead of idol-temples15 Chron. and Sept. have idols in accordance with the idea that the power of their idols was manifested in this victory.
1Sa 31:10. The Ashtaroth-houses16 are identical with these idol-temples. Instead of Ashtaroth Chron. has their gods [the general for the particularTr.]. And they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan.The Chronicler has: And they fastened his head on the temple of Dagon; that is, he omits the statement about the corpse and adds this about the head. According to 1Sa 31:12 the Philistines act in the same way with the corpses of Sauls sons. Our narrator, being occupied from this point of view chiefly with Sauls fate, was concerned to relate first what was done with Sauls body. As Bethshan (the present Beisan, Rob. III., I., 408 [Am. ed. II. 320, 328, 354; III. 326332]), according to this, was in the hands] of the Philistines (so 1Sa 31:7), they held the country as far as the Jordan [Bethshan is four miles west of the Jordan and twelve miles south of the sea of GalileeTr.]. The corpses were fastened on without the heads, the latter, with the armor, being fixed on the temples as trophies of victory.
1Sa 31:11-13. The interment of the corpses by the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead.
1Sa 31:11. When the Jabeshites heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, they thought of what Saul had once done for them (1 Samuel 11.)[Bib. Com.: a touching and rare example of national gratitude.Tr.]
1Sa 31:12. They went the whole night and took (under cover of darkness) the corpses from the wall and brought them to Jabesh-Gilead and burnt them.The bodies were burned (a practice peculiar to heathendom, allowed in Israel only in the case of the worst criminals, Leviticus 20)17 instead of being buried, as was usual, not because the Jabeshites feared further insult to the corpses if the Philistines should take their city (Then. [Philipps.]), but probably because their mutilation rendered them unfit for ordinary burial. The Chaldee, in contradiction with the text, understands the burning to refer to the solemn burning of spices, which was afterwards customary at the burial of kings.
1Sa 31:13. They took their bones and buried them; only the flesh, therefore, was burned, perhaps because it had already putrefied. They buried the bones under the tamarisk at Jabesh; the Chronicler: under the oak at Jabesh. The Art. indicates a well-known tree. The Chronicler, omitting the night-march, does not mention the taking of the bodies from the wall, as he had not mentioned their being fastened there, and also omits the burning of the corpses because it was contrary to the prevailing custom (Then.), not because he could not reconcile it with the burial of the bones (Keil). With grateful remembrance of Sauls rescue of Jabesh, a public mourning with a seven days fast was made for him. David afterwards caused the bones to be interred in Sauls family burial place at Zelah in Benjamin (2Sa 21:11-14).
HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
1. The deepest and the real ground of Sauls last dark act of self-destruction is not the extremity of the moment nor fear of insult from the enemy (Wuttcke, Eth. II. 171), though his words make this the immediate occasion of his suicide, but the decay of his inner life, which we have traced step by step, through unchecked self-will and unbending pride towards the living God, and through the complete severance of his heart from God. The straitened and disgraceful position to which the Philistines had brought him, whence there was no escape with life, was the result of his persistent, stubborn disobedience to God, and of the inward judicial infliction of self-hardening. As self-willed lord of his life, unbending, haughty controller of his fate over against God, he will put an end to his life; this is the end of the insoluble contradiction in which he had placed himself towards the holy and just God; this is the act of completed despair, in which Gods judgment is exhausted, and he himself must be its instrument.
2. In consequence of Sauls misgovernment and his last unfortunate war with the Philistines, the kingdom of Israel had become disorganized. The latter part of his reign was a time of disintegration of the people, which had lost its proper unity under the theocratic king, and fallen into a disorganized condition like that of the Period of the Judges. A glimpse into this state of confusion is given us not merely by the indication in the First Book of Samuel of the support that David found during his persecution by Saul, but also by the additional statements in First Chronicles of the adhesion of fighting men to him and his cause. 1) 1Ch 12:8-18 mentions not merely men of Judah, but also Gadites and Benjaminites, who came to him in the wilderness of Judah, comp. 1 Sam. 22:24-2) 1Ch 12:1-7 relates the coming of the brave Benjaminites while David was in Ziklag, 1Sa 27:1 to 1Sa 7:3) 1Ch 12:19-22 tells of the Manassites who joined him after his return to Ziklag before Sauls last battle with the Philistines, 1Sa 29:3 sq. Thus David had an army in Ziklag (comp. 1Ch 12:21), composed of fighting men from various tribes, who had gradually gathered around him, with which he was able immediately after Sauls death to establish (first in Judah, in Hebron) the theocratic kingdom that had been delivered to him by divine calling and choice (comp. 2Sa 2:1-11).Ewald: The city became in fact the foundation of Davids whole kingdom.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1Sa 31:1. Osiander: For the sake of an ungodly ruler sometimes a whole people or land is punished.Starke: They who share the sin are justly made to share the punishment also. Even Gods people do not always carry off the victory, and their sins are commonly to blame for it.
1Sa 31:2. Cramer: In common punishments pious people must often suffer along with the ungodly (Eze 21:3; Ecc 9:2). But let no one take offence at this, let him rather believe that to them that love God, even such things must work together for good (Rom 8:28).[Henry: Jonathan falls with the rest. 1. God would hereby complete the judgment that was to be executed upon Sauls house. 2. He would hereby make Davids way to the crown clear and open. Jonathan himself would have cheerfully resigned all his title and interest to him; but his friends would probably have been zealous for the right line of succession. 3. God would hereby show us that the difference between good and bad is to be made in the other world, not in this.Tr.]Tueb. Bible: God bears long with sinners, especially the revengeful; but at last His judgments break in so that they can no longer be kept back.
1Sa 31:3. Berl. Bib.: Sauls death is a mournful picture of the dreadful death of a soul that forsakes the tranquillity and the way of God, in which through the goodness of God it had been led, and falls from one sin into another.From what the Scriptures relate of Saul it can be seen how in souls that have swerved from the right path one sin is wont always to follow upon another.
1Sa 31:4. Hedinger [from Hall]: Wicked men care more for the shame of the world than the danger of their souls (Jdg 9:54).Schlier: So ends the man who formerly began well. How frightful it is to die in ones sins, to depart impenitent, to go uncalled before the judgment-seat of God! How terrible it is to have nothing to show but a wasted time of grace![Hall: Evil examples, especially of the great, never escaped imitation; the armor-bearer of Saul follows his master, and dares do that to himself which to his king he durst not.Tr.]
1Sa 31:6. Cramer: When Gods wrath blazes out, there is no ceasing. And it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:31).S. Schmid: The judgments of God, which befall the pious and the ungodly alike, are rather to be wondered at than curiously investigated.Schlier: A fearful end is only the conclusion of a foregoing life; sin begins little and invisible, hardening goes on step by step. Sin is a frightful power: first man commits sin, and when he has long continued to commit it, he is at length unable to cease from it, and the end is that he no longer wishes to cease from it. Think of Sauls end and learn in time to be wise.
1Sa 31:7. Berl. Bib.: So finely has Saul presided over the kingdom of Israel through his perverse ways, that even so many cities have been lost. O how there does arise even in temporal things nothing but injury through perverse ways, especially those of the shepherds and leaders of the people!Starke: When God designs to punish His people, He takes away their courage, so that even at a rustling leaf they fear and flee (Lev 26:36).Cramer: No one sits too high for God; He can easily cast down even the mighty to the ground (Luk 1:52; Eze 21:6; Sir 10:5).[1Sa 31:9-10. Henry: Thus did they ascribe the honor of their victory, not, as they ought to have done, to the real justice of the true God, but to the imaginary power of their false gods; and by this respect paid to pretended deities, shame those who give not the praise of their achievements to the living God.Tr.]
[1Sa 31:4. Suicide, as illustrated by the case of Saul: I. Causes: 1) Not merely accumulated misfortunes, but long-continued wrong-doing; 2) Cowardly fear of suffering (1Sa 31:3), even in a man formerly brave; 3) Caring more for disgrace than for sin; 4) Abandonment of trust in God, as to this life and the future life. II. Effects: 1) Others led by the example into the same folly and sin (1Sa 31:5); 2) Personal dishonor not really prevented (1Sa 31:4; 1Sa 31:9-10); 3) A crowning and lasting reproach to the mans memory.
[1Sa 31:11-13. The exploit of the men of Jabesh-Gilead: 1) It was a brave deed; 2) A patriotic deed; 3) A grateful deed (chap. 11); 4) But the bravery, patriotism and gratitude had been better shown before Sauls death by helping him (which they do not appear to have done). Honors after death make poor amends for neglect and unfaithfulness during life; 5) And care of the poor remains could avail little for the mans reputation in this world, and nothing for his repose in eternity.Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][1Sa 31:1. The Partcp. is found also in the Syr. and Chald. (the Phil. were breaking out in war). The parallel passage, 1Ch 10:1, has the Perf., which Wellh. prefers here on the ground that the statement is too important to be made in the form of an adjectival sentence; but the principal thought in the mind of the writer was Sauls death, not the fact of the battle.Tr.]
[2][1Sa 31:1. Erdmann: And there fell down slain men, which is so far better, as the Eng. A. V. seems to represent all the men of Israel as falling down slain. But this general, indefinite phrase, would not be strange in Heb.Tr.]
[3][1Sa 31:2. On the form of the verb omission of the i in the Hiph. Impf. see Ew. 232) c 2. Ges. 53.3, Rem. 4. Green 94 c. The other examples of this shortening (which is regular in Aramaic) are 1Sa 14:22; Jer 9:2Tr.]
[4][1Sa 31:2. Sept. writes these names Aminadab and Melchisa, which are misreadings of the text. The difference of pronunciation in the second name (e instead of our masoretic a) is to be noticed.Tr.]
[5][1Sa 31:3. Fully: The archers (or, throwers), men with the bow, in which the (omitted in 1Ch 10:3) makes a grammatical difficulty. But, as its harshness will account for its omission in Chron., and we could not well account for its presence here by clerical error, it is better to retain it as a phrase explanatory of , which Chron. also explains by the word bow = throwers with the bow.Wellh. conjectures that is not connected with , but = and means any caster, coming to the Hebrews from the Phnicians.Tr.]
[6][1Sa 31:4. The verb. thrust through is not found in 1Ch 10:4, and Wellh. proposes to omit it here because Saul could not in any case hope to escape this fate at the hands of the enemy. But Saul asks only that he may not be slain by the enemy. Bertheaus view that the word is here a copyists erroneous repetition of the preceding thrust through is replied to by Thenius: if Saul had only feared capture, we should have had in the text besides the come some such word as seize.Tr.]
[7][1Sa 31:6. Instead of several MSS. and one Targum. MS. (De Rossi) read and also all his men. The substitution of all his house in 1Ch 10:6, for all his men does not warrant us in changing this text. Our phrase is not to be considered as a slight exaggeration, nor as foreign to our author (as, namely, a weakening of the tragic impression made by the simple truth), but as a general phrase = his whole army, not unusual among historical writers.Tr.]
[8][1Sa 31:7. Instead of on the other side or beyond, Erdmann renders on the side of, which conveys the sense here, though it is not a literal rendering. The word means beyond (so Gesen. against Frst) and describes either side of a river according to the position of the speaker or writer; thus it may in some instances = the country on the side of a river or plain. As it apparently here describes the western side of the Jordan, it might seem that the narator lived east of the river (Bib. Com.); but this is not necessary, as the phrase may have the general meaning above stated.Tr.]
[9][1Sa 31:9. Whether they sent messengers (in which case the Qal would be the appropriate form of the verb) or the head and armour (as the Piel of the text would indicate) is doubtful.Tr.]
[10][1Sa 31:9. There is no reason why we should assimilate the texts of Samuel and Chronicles here, reading (Chr.) for (Sam.). Some MSS., however, give the latter reading in 1Ch 10:9, no doubt from the disposition to assimilate.Tr.]
[11][1Sa 31:10. The Chald. has suspended = Heb. , which is found in 2Sa 21:12; the difference in the wording is not unnatural, and we need not read here (from impale) instead of (Wellhausen).Tr.]
[12][1Sa 31:10. On the supposition that this verse and 1Ch 10:10 are both parts of a longer statement, various attempts have been made to re-establish the original complete text. Ewald (Gesch. III. 152 Rem.) inserts in our verse after Ashtaroth the words: and his skull in the house of Dagon, the Chronicler then inserting from the last clause. The difficulty in this attempt is not so much to account for the in Chron. (Wellh.), as to account for the omission of the clause in Sam. Why not state that Sauls skull was hung up in the temple of Dagon? Wellhausens view that the body () and skull () refer to the same fact is in itself not improbable; one account might use the general word body, the other might mention the most striking part, the skull. In that case the Beth-Dagon must be identified with the wall of Bethshan by supposing that the temple of Dagon was in Beth-Shan. This, however, is an improbable supposition, and there remains the view that the two texts were not originally identical, but that the two accounts vary by mentioning different circumstances in the general fact. Wellhausen also holds that the two verses are not constructed from one original text.Observe that instead of the of Samuel, Chron. has , perhaps in obedience to a change in good usage.Tr.]
[13][See Text. and Grammat.Tr.]
[14][See Text. and Gramm. where Erdmanns translation: on the side of the plain and on the side of Jordan is accepted as conveying the sense. But the ordinary rendering beyond Jordan may be retained (as in Eng. A. V.) by supposing that the panic was so great as to extend to the other side of the river, and that the Philistines temporarily occupied the transjordanic cities. Similarly the people beyond the plain were panic-struck and fled.Tr.]
[15]The sing. with a plu. subst. in plu. sense as in Exo 6:14.
[16][This is thought by the Bib. Comm. to be the famous temple of Venus at Askelon.Tr.]
[17][Other supposed cases of burning of corpses are Amo 6:10; 2Ch 16:14; Jer 34:5, of which the two last, however, refer to spice-burnings, and the first may be rendered his uncle and his kinsman, or the cremation may express the extreme suffering and religious declension of the nation.Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This is a melancholy Chapter, which relates to us the sequel of Saul’s history; the sad termination of a sinful life. The battle between the Philistines, and Israel, in mount Gilboa, in which the Philistines are conquerors, and Saul, Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua, his sons, are slain. – Israel possessed by the Philistines; the camp of Saul plundered, his dead body, and those of his sons, carried away to Beth-shan: but afterwards rescued by the men of Jabesh-gilead. These are the principal contents rehearsed in this Chapter, which ends the Book.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
(1) Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa. (2) And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchishua, Saul’s sons.
David had prophesied, (1Sa 26:10 ) that either the Lord should smite Saul; or, his day should come to die; or, he should descend into battle, and perish; and now the day was arrived. The preludes to his death were most distressing. He beholds his army routed, his faithful soldiers slain, and his three sons killed by his side. – Even Jonathan, the lovely, and beloved Jonathan, is slain also. Perhaps the Reader may be inclined to wish that this affectionate friend of David, had been spared. But not so. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts; nor our ways the Lord’s ways. Yet Reader! do not forget, that though in this solemn visitation, that is common to all men, there is one event in this scene, to the righteous, and to the wicked; yet the righteous hath hope in his death: merciful men are taken away from the evil to come, and enter into peace. See Pro 14:32 ; Isa 57:1-2 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Death of Israel’s First King
1Sa 31
Saul’s death was neither more nor less than suicide; the death of all deaths the most loathsome and despised of men: of all deaths the only one that men call cowardly. It was a great historical event, meaning much to the nation which saw its first king thus sadly fall. It was the end of Saul’s kingdom: his sons and all his family, and with them, all his hopes, died with him that night on Mount Gilboa. And it is still a conspicuous moral, as well as historical event, on which we may well pause to look across the ages. Saul brought down thousands with him when he fell, but he had been lowering the tone of the spiritual nation almost from the time when he began his reign. He had insulted and abashed and driven away the spiritual genius that brooded over that holy land, and he had dragged the armies of Jehovah down to the level of the armies of the nations around. And as he had been in his life in the land, so was he when he died at Gilboa. For ‘There was the shield of the mighty vilely cast away the shield of Saul as of one not anointed of the Lord.’ There are three points which indicate the departure of Saul from the path of peace and duty.
I. He had not long- reigned until he began to separate himself from good men in the land. He was soon separated from Samuel, the best, the noblest, the representative good man of the time. He was soon separated from David, the man of the future, the man after God’s own heart, and who desired to do only God’s will. He was soon cruel and fierce in his wrath, slaying one by one the priests of the Lord.
II. Then we find that he was separated from God. He prayed to God and God gave him no answer. He was separated from Him who is the source of all light and the source of all strength. He asked in vain for God’s guidance, and then called in vain for the dead Samuel.
III. Last of all Saul got separated from himself; from his own best nature. There was a great chasm in his nature, between his evil and his controlling better self; and thus he was left to the wreck and ruin which his own worst nature prompted. Such is the spiritual history of him whose tragic life we have now read to its close.
Hugh Black, The British Weekly Pulpit, vol. II. p. 57.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
XIV
ZIKLAG, ENDOR, AND GILBOA
1Sa 27:1-31:13
Let us analyze David’s sin of despair, and give the train of sins and embarrassments that follow. The first line tells us of his sin of despair, 1Sa 27:1 : “And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.” It is a sad thing to appear in the life of David, this fit of the “blues” that came on him, and was utterly unjustifiable. In fact, he is done with Saul forever. Saul will never harm him again, and he is very late in fearing that he will one day perish by the hand of Saul. It reminds us of Elijah under the juniper tree, praying that he might die in his despair, when God never intended him to die at all but to take him to heaven without death. It was unjustifiable because the promises to him were that he should be king, and he should not have supposed that God’s word would fail. It is unjustifiable because up to this time he had been preserved from every attack of Saul, and the argument in his mind should be, “I will be preserved unto the end.”
The distrust of God sometimes comes to the best people. I don’t claim to be among the best people. I am an average kind of a man, trying my level best to do right, and generally optimistic and no man is ever whipped until he is whipped inside, and it is a very rare thing that I am whipped inside. Whenever I am it lasts a very short time. I don’t stay whipped long. But we may put it down as worthy of consideration in our future life that whenever we get into the state of mind the Israelites were in about the Canaanites that we are “mere grasshoppers in their sight and in our own sight,” then our case is pitiable. Let us never take the grasshopper view of ourselves.
That was the first sin, the succumbing of his faith; the temporary eclipsing of his faith. The next sin is this: “There is nothing better for me than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines.” Had he forgotten about God? Had he forgotten that he had tried that Philistine crowd once and had to get away from there without delay? Had he forgotten when he went over into Moab and was told by the prophet to get back to his own country? God would take care of him. That sin is the child of the other.
His third sin was that before taking such a decisive step he didn’t ask God a very unusual thing for him. Generally when anything perplexed him he called for the Ephod and the high priest and asked the Lord what he should do, but he is so unnerved through fear of Saul that he does not stop to ask what God has to say, and so that is a twin to the second sin, that was born of the original one. Without consulting anybody he gathers up his followers with their women, children, and everything that they have, and goes down to Gath, and there commits his next sin. He makes an alliance with the king of Gath and becomes tributary to him.
That in turn leads to another sin. He is bound to fight against the enemies of God’s cause, and so, occupying a town, Ziklag, bestowed upon him by the Philistine king, he marches out secretly and makes war on the Geshurites and Ginzites and Amalekites, and for fear that somebody would be spared to tell the Philistines that he was killing their allies, he kills them all, men, women, and children. Now, if he had been carrying out a plan of Jehovah he would have been justified, but the record says that he did it for fear that if he left any one of them alive they would report the fact to King Achish of Gath. His next sin is to tell a lie about it. We call it “duplicity,” but it was a sure-enough lie. He made the impression on Achish’s mind when he went out on this expedition that he was going against Judah, which pleased the Philistine king very much, for if he was fighting against Judah, then Judah would hate him and the breach would be widened between him and his own people.
We now come to another sin. Each sin leads to another. The Philistines determined to make a decisive war against Saul, and not to approach him in the usual way, but to follow up the boundary of the Mediterranean Sea and strike across through the very center of Palestine and cut the nation in two from the valley of Esdraelon. So Achish says to David, “You must go with us. You are our guest and ally and occupying a town I gave you.” So David marches along with his dauntless 600, and evidently against the will of his own men, as we will see later. He does go with the Philistines to the very battlefield, and when they get there the Philistines, seeing that he is with the court of the king, object to’ his presence and will not allow him to go to the battle with them. So he returned to the land of the Philistines.
I have no idea that he ever intended to strike a blow against Saul. I feel perfectly sure of it. When the battle was raging he would have attacked the Philistines in the flank with his 600 men, but he made the impression on the mind of the king that he would fight with them against Saul. The providence of God kept him from committing that sin.
These are the six sins resulting from getting into the wrong place just one time. I don’t say he won’t get into the place again, but this time he certainly was cowed. A man can’t commit just one sin. A sin can outbreed an Australian rabbit. The hunter sometimes thinks he sees just one quail, but when he flushes him, behold there is a pair or maybe a covey! There is a proverb that whoever tells a lie ought to have a good memory, else he will tell some more covering that one up, forgetting his first statement. I am sorry to bring out this charge against David, but I will have a much bigger one to bring out before we are done with him. He is one of the best men that ever lived, but all the good men that I know have their faults.
I have never yet been blest with the sight of a sinless man. I know there are some people who claim to be perfect and sinless, but I don’t know any who really are. A great modern sermon was preached on this despair of David, taking that first line as a text: “I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul.” The preacher was John McNeil, who is called the “modern Spurgeon.” He has charge of one of the livest churches in London and has published several volumes of sermons. This is the first in one of his books, and it is a great one.
This sin of David was punished in two ways. While he was off following the Philistines to the battlefield, these same Amalekites that he had been troubling so much, swooped down on Ziklag the town given to David by Achish and there being no defenders present, nobody but the women and children, they burned the town. They didn’t kill any one, but they took all the women and the children and the livestock and the furniture and everything made as clean a sweep as you ever saw, including both of David’s wives, Ahinoam and Abigail. The second punishment was that his own men, who didn’t want to go up with the Philistines, wanted to stone him for what bad happened when he was gone. His life was in danger.
But he recovered himself from this sin. When he saw the destruction of Ziklag and the temper of his men, the text says that David “greatly encouraged his heart in God and called for the high priest and the Ephod.” What a pity he hadn’t called for him sooner! But God is quick to answer readily, and forgive his erring children, and to put away their sin, and the answer comes through the Ephod to David’s questions: “Shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them?” and God’s answer comes as quick as lightning, “Pursue them, for you shall overtake them and you shall recover all.” That was a very fine reply for a sinner to get when his troubles arose from his own sin, and so he does pursue them with his 600 men, and David in pursuit of a foe was like the Texas rangers. If a man’s horse gave out they left it. If a man himself gave out they left him. They just kept pursuing until they found and struck the enemy. That was the way with David.
A third of his force, 200 of his brave men, when they got to a certain stream of water, could not go any farther. He had to leave them and go with just 400 men. Out in the desert he finds a slave of one of the Amalekites, an Egyptian, starving to death. He had had nothing to eat for three days. David fed him, and asked him if he would guide them to the camp of the Amalekites. He said he would if they would never let his master get him again, and David came upon them while they were feasting and rejoicing over the great spoils. He killed all of them except about 400 young men who rode on camels. They got away. Camels are hard to overtake by infantry. They are very swift. And your record says that David recovered every man, woman, and child and every stick of furniture, besides all the rich spoils these desert pirates bad been gathering in for quite a while, cattle and stock of every kind.
David made the following judicious uses of the victory:
1. On the return, when they got to where those 200 were left behind, certain tough characters in his army did not want the 200 men to share in the spoils. They could have their wives and children, but nothing else. David not only refused to follow that plan, but established a rule dating from that time, that whoever stayed behind, with the baggage must share equally with those that went to the front. These men did not want to stay, but they couldn’t go any farther.
At the battle of San Jacinto, Houston had sternly to detail a certain number of his men to keep the camp, and they wept because they were not allowed to go into the battle. Those men that were detailed to stay in camp ought to be counted as among the victors of the battle of San Jacinto, and history go counts them.
2. The second judicious use that he made of the spoils captured from these Amalekites was to send large presents to quite a number of the southern cities of Judah that had been friendly to him and his men. He was always a generoushearted man. That made a good deal of capital for David. Even had he been acting simply as a politician, that was the wisest thing he could have done. But he simply followed his heart.
There were great accessions to David at Ziklag. The text tells us, 1Ch 12:1-7 , that there were about twenty-three mighty men, some of whom were Benjamites, who had come from Saul’s tribe, and they were right-handed and left handed. They could shoot an arrow with either hand. They could use either hand to sling a stone, and among these twenty-three were some of the most celebrated champions of single combat ever known in the world’s history. One of them, Jashobeam, in one fight killed 300 men with one spear.
SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR It is important for us to note just here the Mosaic law against necromancy, or an appeal to the dead by the living through a medium, i.e., a wizard, if a man, or a witch, if a woman, and wherein lies the sin of necromancy, which relates exclusively to trying to gather information from the dead. The law of Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, is very explicit that no Israelite should ever try to gather information from the dead through a wizard or a witch, and the reason is that hidden things belong to God and revealed things to us and our children. The only lawful way to information concerning what lies beyond the grave is an appeal to Jehovah, and if God does not disclose it, let it alone. The prophetic teaching on this subject is found in the famous passage in Isaiah: “Woe to them that seek to wizards and witches that chirp and mutter. Why should the living seek unto the dead instead of unto the living God?”
Early in his reign Saul had rigidly enforced the Mosaic law putting the wizards and witches to death, or driving them out of the country.
There are several theories of interpretation concerning the transaction in 1Sa 28:11-19 , but I will discuss only three of them. Saul himself goes to the witch of Endor and asks her to call up Samuel, making an inquiry of the dead through a medium, wanting information that God had refused to give him. These are the theories:
1. Some hold that there was no appearance of Samuel himself nor an impersonation of him by an evil spirit; that there was nothing supernatural, but only a trick of imposture by the witch, like many modern tricks by mediums and spirit rappers, and that the historian merely records what appeared to be on the surface. That is the first theory. That is the theory of the radical critics, who oppose everything supernatural, and you know without my telling you what my opinion is of that theory. There are indeed many tricks of imposture by pretended fortunetellers, and some of them are marvelous, but such impostures do not account for all the facts.
2. Others hold that there was a real appearance of Samuel, but -the witch didn’t bring him up; she was as much if not more, startled than Saul when he came; that God himself interfered, permitting Samuel to appear to the discomfiture of the witch, who cried out when she saw him, and to pronounce final judgment on Saul. They quote in favor of this theory Eze 14:3 ; Eze 14:7-8 : “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them? . . . For every one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that separateth himself from me, and taketh his idols into his heart, and putteth the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet to inquire for himself of me; I, Jehovah, will answer him by myself; and I will set my face against that man, and will make him an astonishment, for a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people.” They interpret this passage to mean that when a man violated God’s law,. as Saul and this witch did, that God took it upon himself to answer, and answered through Samuel.
That theory is the Jewish view throughout the ages. According to the Septuagint rendering of 1Ch 10:13 , “Saul asked counsel of her that had a familiar spirit, and Samuel made answer to him.” It further appears to be the Jewish view by the apocryphal book Sirach 46:20, which says, “After his death Samuel prophesied and showed the king his end, and lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy.” The Jewish view further appears in Josephus who thinks that Samuel was really there, but that God sent him; not that the witch had brought him up or could do it. This view was adopted by many early Christian writers; for example, Justin Martyr, Origen, and Augustine, all great men, and this view is held more and more by modern commentators, among them, for instance, Edersheim, in his History of Israel, and Kirkpatrick in the “Cambridge Bible,” and Blaikie in the “Expositor’s Bible,” and Taylor in his History of David and His Times. All those books I have recommended; they all take that second view.
3. Now here is the third theory of interpretation. First, there is such a thing as necromancy, in which, through mediums possessed of evil spirits which spirits do impersonate the dead and do communicate with the living. This theory holds that the case of Saul and the witch of Endor is in point that an evil spirit (for this woman is said to have had a familiar spirit; she was possessed with an evil spirit and the business of these evil spirits in their demoniacal possession is to impersonate dead people;) caused the semblance of Samuel to appear and speak through his mouth. This theory claims that the scripture in Job 3:17 , to wit: “When the good man dies he goes where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest,” would be violated if this had really been Samuel, who said, “Wherefore hast thou disquieted me?” And whoever this man was that appeared did say that.
If God had sent him he could not very well have used that language. God had a right to do as he pleased, but Saul had no right to try to call back a dead man to get information from him. This theory also claims that the prophecy pronounced by that semblance of Samuel was not true, but it would have been true if Samuel had said it. That prophecy says, “Tomorrow thou and thy sons shall be with me,” but Saul didn’t die until three days later; on the third day the battle of Gilboa was fought, and that Samuel, neither dead nor alive, would have told a falsehood. Very many early Christian writers adopt this theory, among them Tertullian and Jerome, the author of the Vulgate or Latin version of the Bible, and nearly all of the reformers, Luther, Calvin, and all those mighty minds that wrought out the reformation. They took the position that the evil spirit simulated Samuel. Those who hold to this theory further say that unless this is an exception, nowhere else in the Word of God is any man who died mentioned as coming back with a message to the living except the Lord; that he is the first to bring life and immortality to light through the gospel after he had abolished death. They do not believe that the circumstances in this case warrant an exception to the rule that applies to the whole Bible, and particularly they quote the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man asks that Lazarus might go back to the other world with a message to his brethren, and it was refused on the ground that they have Moses and the prophets, and if a man won’t hear Moses and the prophets neither would he hear though one rose from the dead. That makes a strong case.
Certainly the first theory is not true, and the other two theories are advocated with such plausibility and force that I will leave you to take whatever side you please. My own opinion is that Samuel was not there, but on a matter of this kind let us not be dogmatic. Let us do our own thinking and we will be in good company no matter which of these last theories we adopt.
A great many years ago, when spirit rapping was sweeping over the country, it was a custom among Methodist preachers to tell about visitations they had from the dead, and warnings that they had received, and J. R. Graves fought it. He said that it was against the written law of God, the law of Moses and the prophets, and our Lord and his apostles, and that we didn’t need any revelations from dead people, whereupon a Methodist preacher named Watson challenged him to debate the question and they did debate it. Graves stood on this position: There isn’t a case in the Bible where one who died was allowed to come back with a message to the living but Jesus only, and he is the only traveler that has ever returned from that bourne to throw light on the state of the dead. In the debate, of course, the central case was that of Saul, the witch of Endor and Samuel. If Watson couldn’t maintain himself on that it was not worth while to go to any other case. Watson quoted the appearance of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. Graves said, “Yes. They did appear, but they had no message for living people; none for the apostles.” Then he finally made all of his fight on this case. I read the debate with great interest. It was published, but it is out of print.
GILBOA The description of the battle and the results are so explicit in the text that I refer the reader to the Bible account of this great battle. But we need to reconcile 1Sa 31:4-6 , and 1Ch 10:4-6 . Both of these assert that Saul committed suicide fell on his sword and died and that he did die (2Sa 1:6-10 ), where that Amalekite who brought the news to David of the battle says that he found Saul wounded, and that Saul asked the Amalekite to kill him, and that the Amalekite did kill him. The Amalekite brought also to David a bracelet and a crown that belonged to Saul. You are asked to reconcile these two statements. Did Saul commit suicide? We know he tried to do it, but did he actually commit suicide, or did that Amalekite, after Saul fell on his sword, find him still alive and kill him? My answer is that the Amalekite lied. The record clearly says that Saul did kill himself, and his armor-bearer saw that he was dead, and every reference in the scriptures is to the death by his own hand except this one. This Amalekite, knowing that Saul and David were in a measure rivals, supposed that he might ingratiate himself with David if he could bring evidence that he had killed Saul.
There is no doubt that this Amalekite was there and found Saul’s body, and no doubt he stripped that dead body of the bracelet and the crown, but his story was like the story of Joe in the “Wild Western Scenes.” An Indian had been killed, stabbed through the heart, and the heart blood gushing all over the man who slew him. The fight was so hot that Joe, being a coward, stayed there fighting the dead Indian, and so they found him there stabbing and saying that the man that had first stabbed him through thought he had killed him, but that he was not dead and had got up and attacked him, and he had been having a desperate fight with the Indian.
The news of this battle sadly affected Jonathan’s son. Everybody that heard of the battle started to flee across the Jordan, and the nurse picked up Jonathan’s child and in running dropped him and he fell, and became a cripple for life. We will have some very interesting things about this crippled child after a while.
The gratitude and heroism of the men of Jabeshgilead are worthy of note.
The Philistines had cut off Saul’s head and sent it back to the house of their god, and took his armor and hung up his body and the body of his son Jonathan and the bodies of the two brothers of Jonathan on the wall of Bethshan, and when the men of Jabeshgilead (who had been delivered by Saul as the first act of his reign, and who always remembered him with gratitude) heard that Saul was killed, they sent out that night their bravest men and took those bodies down, carried them over the Jordan, burned them enough to escape recognition, and buried their bones under a tree. A long time afterwards David had the bones brought and buried in the proper place. I always think kindly of those men of Jabeshgilead.
David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan is found in 2Sa 1 . That lamentation, expressed in the text, is one of the most beautiful elegaic poems in the literature of the world. It is found on page 104 of the textbook. It is not a religious song. It is a funeral song, an elegy, afterward called “The Bow,” and David had “the song of the bow” taught to Israel, referring to Jonathan’s bow. I give just a little of it: Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in scarlet delicately, Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
Now the tribute to Jonathan: Jonathan is slain upon thy high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love to me was wonderful, Passing the love of women.
Every admirer of good poetry bears tribute to this exquisite gem, and it has this excellency: It forgets the faults and extols the virtues of the dead. Saul had done many mighty things. That part of Gray’s Elegy, “No further seek his merits to disclose,” compares favorably with this. It is the only elegy equal to David’s.
QUESTIONS
1. Analyze David’s sin of despair, and in order, the train of sins and embarrassments that follow.
2. What great modern sermon was preached on the despair of David, taking this line for a text: “I shall one day perish by the and of Saul”?
3. How was this sin of David punished?
4. How does he recover himself from this sin?
5. What judicious uses of the victory did he make?
6. What were the great accessions to David at Ziklag?
7. What is the Mosaic law against necromancy, or an appeal to the dead by the living through a medium, i.e., a wizard, if a man, or a witch, if a woman, and wherein lies the sin of necromancy?
8. What is the prophetic teaching on this subject?
9. What had Saul done to enforce the Mosaic law?
10. What are the theories of interpretation concerning the transaction in 1Sa 28:11-19 ?
11. Describe the battle of Gilboa and the results.
12. Reconcile 1Sa 31:4-6 and 1Ch 10:4-6 .
13. How did the news of the battle affect Jonathan’s son?
14. Describe the gratitude and heroism of the men of Jabeshgilead.
15. How did David lament over Saul and Jonathan, 2Sa 1 ?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
1Sa 31:1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.
Ver. 1. Now the Philistines fought against Israel. ] As they had done, by times, all the days of Saul, whose endless turmoils – as one saith of our King John – kept his body still in action, his mind in passions, and his prowess in use. Now he is to fight his last, and to die for his transgressions, 1Ch 10:13 and, as it maybe feared, in his trangressions, which is worse than to die in a ditch, Joh 8:21 though Josephus renown him for a martyr to his country, and Pellican send him to heaven.
And the men of Israel fled and fell down slain.] Or, Wounded: as they had been foretold. 1Sa 12:25 “But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both you and your king”; but they believed it not, till it befell them. Now they are so hard bestead, that they had neither good heart to go forward, nor good liking to stand still, nor good assurance to run away: as our historian saith of the Scottish army at Musselburgh field; adding, moreover, that two thousand lying all day as dead, departed in the night; and that many so strained themselves in their flight, that they fell down breathless and dead; whereby they seemed in running from their death, to run to it. The execution was much maintained by the Scots’ own swords scattered in every place, &c. The like might be done here. If this calamity befell them at the same instant when David was triumphing over the Amalekites, as Josephus saith it did, it was very remarkable. It is sometimes hail with the saints, when it is much worse with the wicked. At once the sun rose upon Zoar, and the fire fell down upon Sodom. Abraham stands upon the hill, and seeth the cities burning. Gen 19:27-28
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
1 Samuel
THE END OF SELF-WILL
1Sa 31:1 – 1Sa 31:13
The story of Saul’s tragic last days is broken in two by the account, in 1Sa 29:1 – 1Sa 29:11 and 1Sa 30:1 – 1Sa 30:31 , of David’s fortunate dismissal from the invading army, and his exploits against Amalek. The contrast between the two lives, so closely intertwined and powerful for good and evil on each other, reaches its climax at the end of Saul’s. While the one sets in dark thunderclouds, the other is bright with victory. While the fall of Saul lays all northern Israel bleeding at the feet of the enemy, David is sending the spoils of his conquest to the elders of Judah. Saul’s headless and dishonoured body hangs rotting in the sun on the walk of Bethshan, while David sits a conqueror in Ziklag. The introduction of the brightness of the two preceding chapters is intended to heighten the darkness that broods over this one, and to deepen the stern teaching of that terrible death. Defeat, desolation, despair, attend to his self-dug grave the unhappy king, whose end teaches us all what comes of self-willed resistance to the law and the Spirit of God. Everything else is subordinated in the narrative to the account of his death. Next to nothing is said about the battle, the very site of which is left obscure. We cannot tell whether it was fought down in the plain by the fountain at Jezreel, where Israel was encamped, according to 1Sa 29:1 , or whether both sides manoeuvred and changed their ground, and the decisive struggle was on the slope of Gilboa. In any case, the site was almost identical with that of Gideon’s victory, but there was no Gideon in command on that dark day. The language 1Sa 31:1 seems to imply that the battle was over and the rout begun before the Israelites reached Gilboa. If so, we have to conceive of a short, hopeless struggle on the plain, and then a rush to the hills for safety, in which Saul and his sons and bodyguard were borne along, but held together, closely followed by the ‘red pursuing spear’ of the conquerors, fierce with ancestral hate and the memories of defeat. There, on the hillside, stands the towering form of Saul with a little ring of his children and retainers round him, the words he had heard last night in the sorceress’ tent unnerving his arm, and many a past crime rising before him, and whispering in his ear,
‘In the battle think on me,
And fall thy edgeless sword; despair and die.’
But whatever else was in his soul, repentance was not there. He may have been seared by remorse, but he was not softened by penitence, and was fierce and proud in despair as he had been in prosperity. The Revised Version substitutes ‘overtook’ for ‘hit’ in 1Sa 31:3 ; but Saul’s fear ‘lest these uncircumcised come’ is against that rendering, and the fact that the enemy did not know of his death till next day 1Sa 31:8 is a difficulty in the way of accepting it. The word is literally ‘found’ and possibly means that the archers recognised him, and were making for him, though, as would appear, from some cause they missed him in the confusion. The other change in the Revised Version, that of ‘greatly distressed’ for ‘sore wounded’ fits the context; and if it be adopted, we have the picture of the unwounded but desperate man, once brave, but now stricken with a panic which opens his lips for his only word. In grim silence he had met the loss of battle, sons, and kingdom; but the proud sense of personal dignity is strong to the end, and he fiercely issues his last command, and embraces death to escape insult. The haughty spirit was unchanged, crushed but the same, unsoftened, and therefore roused to madder defiance of God and man. What an awful last saying for ‘the anointed of Jehovah,’ and how the overweening self-will and vehemence and passionate pride of his whole life are gathered up in it!
His last command is disobeyed by the trembling armour-bearer, whose very awe makes him disobedient, Did Saul, at that last moment, send a thought to an armour-bearer whom he had had in happier days, and who was to inherit his lost kingdom? The enemy are coming nearer. No time is to be lost if he would escape the savage mutilations and torments which ancient warfare made the portion of captive kings. Not another word passes his lips, but, in the same grim silence, he fixes his sword upright in the ground, and flings himself on its point, and dies. All through his reign no hand had injured him but his own; and, as he lived, so he died, his own undoer and his own murderer. Suicide, the refuge of defeated monarchs and praised by heathen moralists as heroic, was rare in Israel. Saul, Ahithophel, and Judas are the instances of it. The most rudimentary recognition of the truths taught by the Old Testament would prevent it. If Saul had had any faith in God, any submission, any repentance, he could not have finished a life of rebellion by a self-inflicted death, which was itself the very desperation of rebellion. We have not to pronounce on his fate, but his act was a sin of the darkest dye.
Yet note how the narrative abstains from all comment. It neither condemns nor pities, though a profound sense of the tragic eclipse is audible in that summing up in 1Sa 31:6 : ‘So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armour-bearer, and all his men that is, immediate followers or escort, that same day together.’ And there they all lay, bloody corpses in the fellowship of death, on the slopes of Gilboa. Where Scripture Is silent, it is not our part to speak; but we can scarcely turn from that mighty form, prone by his own rash act, without seeking to learn the lesson of his life and fate. Saul had many noble and lovable qualities, such as bravery, promptitude, in his earlier days modesty and generosity. All these he had by nature, but there is no sign that he ever sought to cultivate his moral character, or to win any grace that did not come naturally to him; nor is there any reason to suppose that religion had ever any strong hold on him. His whole character may be summed up in Samuel’s words in announcing his rejection: ‘Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry.’ Rebellion persisted in, in spite of all remonstrances and checks, till it becomes master of the whole man, is the keynote of his later years. Before that baleful influence, as before some hot poison wind, all the flowers of good dispositions were burned up, and the bad stimulated to growth. His early virtues disappeared, and passed into their opposites. Modesty became arrogance, and a long course of indulgence in self-will developed cruelty, gloomy suspicion, and passionate anger, and left him the victim and slave of his own causeless hate. He who rebels against God mars his own character. The miserable later years of Saul, haunted and hunted as by a demon by his own indulged and swollen rebellion and unsleeping suspicion, are an example of the sorrows that ever dog sin; and, as he lies there on Gilboa, the terrible saying recurs to our memory: ‘He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.’
The remainder of the chapter is occupied with three points, bearing on the solemn tragedy just recorded. First, we have the disastrous effects of it in the complete loss of the northern territories. ‘The men . . . that were on the other side of the valley’ are the tribes to the north of the great plain; and ‘they that were on the other side Jordan’ are probably those on the east bank. So thorough was the defeat, especially as Saul and the royal house were slain, that they abandoned their homes, and the Philistines took possession. ‘One sinner destroyeth much good.’ When Israel’s king was madly rebellious, Israel was smitten, and its inheritance diminished.
Next we have the insults to the headless corpses. The Philistines did not know till the following day how complete was their victory. The account in 1Ch 10:10 adds that Saul’s head was sent to the temple of Dagon, probably as a kind of effacing of the shame wrought there by the presence of the ark. The false gods had triumphed, as their worshippers thought, and Saul’s death was Jehovah’s defeat. That apparent victory of the idols and the mocking exultation over the bloody trophy and dinted armour are, to the historian, not the least bitter consequences of the battle.
The last point is the brave midnight march of the men of Jabesh from their home on the eastern uplands beyond Jordan, across the river and up to Bethshan, perched on its lofty cliff, and overlooking the valley of the Jordan. It was a requital of Saul’s deed in his early bright days, when, with his hastily raised levies, he scattered the Ammonites. It is one gleam of light amid the stormy sunset. There were men ready to hazard their lives even then, because of the noblest of Saul’s acts, which no tyrannical arbitrariness or fierceness of later days had blotted out. So the little band of grateful heroes carried back their ghastly load to Jabesh, and burned the mutilated bodies there, employing an unfamiliar mode, as we may suppose, by reason of their mutilation and decomposition, and then reverently gathering the white bones from the pyre, and laying them below the well-known tamarisk. Saul’s one good deed as king sowed seeds of gratitude which flourished again, when the opportunity came. His many evil ones sowed evil seed which bore fatal fruit; and both were seen in his end.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
men. Hebrew. ‘enosh. App-14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 31
Now the Philistines fought against Israel: the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa. And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchishua, Saul’s sons. And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded from the archers. Then Saul said to his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through with it; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it ( 1Sa 31:1-4 ).
So Saul was hit by an arrow, and he knew he was gonna die, but he was afraid that the Philistines would come and mutilate his body, torture him when they got him. So he asked his armourbearer to kill him, but he was hesitant to do so. Saul set out his spear, and he fell on his spear. But even then he didn’t die. It said, “then he died.” But actually the next chapter as we get into second Samuel, we’ll find that actually he still hadn’t died, he was still lying there, and this Amalekite came by and he raised himself up, the spear to him, and pleaded with the Amalekite to kill him, which he did.
And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, [That is he thought he was dead.] he fell likewise upon his sword, and he died with him. So Saul died, his three sons, his armourbearer, and all of his men, the same day together. When the men of Israel that were on the other side of the valley, and those that were on the other side of Jordan, saw that the men of Israel had fled, and Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook the cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the Philistines came to strip the slain, and they found Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa. And they cut off his head, and stripped his armour, and sent it into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan ( 1Sa 31:5-10 ).
Now Bethshan is right at the northern edge of Mount Gilboa. It’s the end of the range, it was a city that-the ruins are still there. In fact, the walls of Bethshan still stand today, that is the ancient ruins. They’ve been excavated some. The Philistines cut off his head, and then pinned his body on the wall there at Bethshan. It is near Mount Gilboa, a city that was nearby and so…
The inhabitants of Jabeshgilead [Now Jabesh-gilead was over on the other side of the Jordan River.] when they heard what they had done to the body of Saul; The valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Bethshan, and they came to Jabesh, and they burnt them there ( 1Sa 31:11-12 ).
So they cremated Saul and his sons.
Now occasionally people ask me my opinion of cremation, and it is just this, as far as I’m concerned, cremation is only a speeding up of the natural processes. Cremation will do in thirty-seven minutes, what eremacausis will do in thirty-seven years. It’s just the speeding up the processes of the destruction of this body. Ultimately, your body even in the grave is gonna deteriorate and go back to dust. Cremation only hastens the process.
I see no spiritual kind of a reason for not being cremated. I don’t think that it’s wrong if a person wants cremation. I don’t see anything wrong with cremating a person’s body. I don’t see any spiritual significance at all to the whole thing. Saul and his sons were all cremated, and the Bible doesn’t say anything against it, or “Oh, that was so horrible,” or “that was so wrong,” or whatever. So actually it’s only a shell, it’s only a tent that has been worn out and is no longer of any value.
What they do to my body after my spirit moves out, I could care less. If my cornea in my eyes are of any value to anybody, they’re welcome. If my kidneys are of any value, they’re welcome. If my heart is of any value, they’re welcome. They can do whatever they want to this old body once my spirit moves out, I could care less. If they want to save money and cremate the thing, fine. Because I’m not gonna be around to worry about it. I’m gonna be so stoked with the new model that’s been given to me, that I have no desire to hang on to the remnants of this old thing. Appreciate the body that God has given to me, I appreciate the good years, but this old house isn’t what it used to be. As time goes on, it’s becoming less all the time.
Paul the apostle said, “We who are in this body do often groan earnestly desiring not that we might be unclothed, but that we might be clothed upon with a body which is from heaven”( 2Co 5:2 ). You know after a certain period of time you start getting tugs and pulls from the other side. You’ve seen it all, you’ve lived, and you think, “Well hey Lord, I’m ready. I’ve seen enough of this corrupt world, and this world system.”
Paul said to the Philippians, “Hey, I have really mixed emotions for I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is much better, and yet, I feel that you still need me for awhile, and so for your sake, I want to still be around. I love you, and I love your fellowship, and I like being around you, but man I’m really tugged also from the other side because it’d be so neat to just be with the Lord, and to get it on there with Him.”
Just mixed emotions, and I think that there are times when each of us as children of God have these same mixed emotions. We desire to depart and to be with the Lord which is far better, and yet we still feel the responsibilities and the tugs from the needs that there exists still for our presence, or help, or influence, or whatever to those that we love around us. So those mixed emotions.
So they took the bones, and they buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and they fasted for seven days ( 1Sa 31:13 ).
So the end of Saul’s career, a sad, and tragic career. A man endowed by God with tremendous abilities, good looks, great physique, a man who had once experienced the anointing of God upon his life, came to a place of rebellion against God, disobeying the voice of God. Thinking that he didn’t have to yield to God any longer, and because he rejected God from ruling over him, God rejected him from ruling over Israel. The sad, and the tragic end of the man who played the fool. Body mutilated by the Philistines, cremated by his friends, buried.
Now we, as we start into second Samuel, get into the story of David in full swing. We’ll take eight chapters next week, and we’ll get in now to the story of David, a very exciting story indeed. This man who is so human, and yet the man whom God loved.
Shall we stand?
Thank You Father for Thy Word. We pray Father, that we might learn by the examples, and by the lives that we Lord, would obey You, and yield to You, submit ourselves in all ways. Lord we pray Your blessing now upon these, Your children as they go their separate ways. Let the Word of God dwell in our hearts richly through faith, and may we, with all the saints comprehend what is the length, and the breadth, and the depth, and the height of Your love for us, as we walk with Thee, in Jesus’ name, Amen. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
This closing chapter in the first Book of Samuel is draped in sackcloth and ashes. It gives the account of the end of the career of one of the most disastrous failures on record in Biblical history.
Defeat at the hands of the Philistines drove Saul to tragic desperation. Wounded in the final fight, and fearing that the last blow might come to him by the hand of an enemy, he called upon his armor-bearer to slay him.
When the armor-bearer refused to do so, Saul died by his own hand physically, as he had already slain himself morally by his own sin and folly.
Tragically terrible, and ghastly beyond compare, is the account of the Philistines carrying Saul’s head about in token of their triumph and his defeat.
The chief spiritual value of this whole Book consists in the solemn lessons it teaches by the life and failure and death of this man. The story proclaims forevermore that advantages and remarkable opportunities are no guarantees of success unless the heart be firm and steady in allegiance to principle and loyalty to God.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
One Brave Deed on a Dark Day
1Sa 31:1-13
This defeat meant something more than a temporary reverse. It was symptomatic of national decay. Sauls reign had brought moral degeneracy to his people. Their moral fiber was impaired, their life-blood impoverished. As king and people were weighed in the divine balances (which are ever testing us), they were found wanting. No man can sin alone! Sin becomes an epidemic!
Much had happened since Sauls designation as king. Alas, that so bright a dawn should have clouded in such a sunset! Like a noble tree Saul fell before the storm. He fell because he had never prayed, as David did, to be cleansed from secret faults, and to be held back from presumptuous sins. The only gleam of light on that terrible day was the chivalrous deed of Jabesh-gilead. Her sons could never forget Sauls valorous exploit on their behalf. After the manner of Joseph and Nicodemus at the death of our Lord, they identified themselves with what seemed a lost cause. Would that every reader of these lines was equally grateful and generous in confessing Him who delivered us from a yet greater death!
For Review Questions, see the e-Sword Book Comments.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
9. The Death of Saul
CHAPTER 31
1. Saul wounded in battle (1Sa 31:1-3)
2. Saul a suicide (1Sa 31:4-6)
3. The victorious Philistines (1Sa 31:7-10)
4. The bodies recovered and burnt (1Sa 31:11-13)
A sad ending to one of the saddest stories of the Bible. Jonathan, Abinadab and Melchi-shua, Sauls sons, fall first. Then Saul is wounded. He asks his armour bearer to make an end of his sufferings. There is no evidence whatever of his repentance and turning unto the Lord. He died as he had lived in rebellion against Jehovah. The armour-bearer refused to kill Saul; then he fell upon his own sword and committed suicide. He is the first suicide mentioned in the Bible. Ahithophel (2Sa 17:23); Zimri (1Ki 16:18) and Judas Iscariot (Mat 27:5) are other suicides recorded in the Word. The first chapter of the second book of Samuel tells us of an Amalekite who slew Saul. This is not a contradiction at all as some have declared. First Saul asked his armour-bearer to slay him; he refused. Then he fell upon his sword but was not wholly successful. In anguish he leaned upon his spear and when the Amalekite came along, he told him that his life was still in him (2Sa 1:9) and he slew him. His end is sad and has its solemn lessons. His sin was the sparing of Amalek, we say again, the type of the flesh. Of this sin Samuel had reminded him in his message of doom (1Sa 28:18). His disobedience ended in self-destruction. Such is sin. And an Amalekite made the end of him. Sin allowed and followed will do its dreadful work in the end, as this Amalekite, spared by Saul, ends his life.
The triumph of the Philistines is complete. Sauls body is held up to scorn in the idol-house of the Philistines and afterward his body and the bodies of his sons are recovered and buried by Jabesh. The peoples choice, King Saul, has gone down in ruin and shame. All looks hopeless now. Israels hope centers now in the coming king after Gods own heart, David the son of Jesse. How he foreshadows the true King and his coming kingdom, He who is the hope of Israel, the hope of the world, as well as the hope of the church, we shall find in the second book of Samuel.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
the Philistines: 1Sa 28:1, 1Sa 28:15, 1Sa 29:1
fell down: 1Sa 12:25, 1Ch 10:1-12
slain: Heb. wounded
Gilboa: Eusebius and Jerome place this mountain six miles west from Bethshan, where was a large place called Gelbus. The natives still call it Djebel Gilbo. 1Sa 28:4, 2Sa 1:21
Reciprocal: Lev 26:17 – ye shall be 1Sa 7:13 – against 1Sa 28:19 – the Lord 2Sa 1:4 – the people 2Sa 1:6 – mount 2Sa 1:23 – they were 2Sa 4:4 – when the tidings 2Sa 21:12 – in Gilboa 1Ch 13:2 – left 1Ch 17:8 – have cut off Psa 44:10 – Thou Psa 60:1 – scattered Psa 63:10 – They shall fall Psa 75:3 – earth Psa 78:9 – The children Psa 141:6 – When their judges Pro 24:22 – their Hos 13:11 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Sa 31:1. Now the Philistines fought against Israel That is, gave them battle. As they began the quarrel, (1Sa 29:1,) so they seem to have begun the fight. It must be observed that the foregoing chapter is a digression, to relate what happened to David at this time. The sacred writer now resumes the thread of the narrative in regard to Saul, relating what befell him upon his return from Endor. And it seems he was scarce returned before the Philistines attacked his camp, and, after some resistance, broke into it. Delaney thinks that they were encouraged to this attempt by some secret information of Sauls having stolen out of the camp the evening before, with his general, Abner, (who is supposed to have been one of his attendants,) and another person. Certainly intelligence of that kind could not be hard to be obtained, and, if obtained, would be a strong encouragement to such an attack. And if this were the case, Sauls applying to the enchantress was the immediate cause of his destruction. See 1Ch 10:13, where one cause of his death is stated to be his applying for counsel to one who had a familiar spirit.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Sa 31:6. And all his men; his body guard, brave men who would not survive the fall of their master. But in 1Ch 10:6 it is said, all his house died together. They knew that the Philistines would give them no quarter; and therefore they preferred being enrolled in the list of heroes, which forbids the historian from putting them in the catalogue of suicides.
1Sa 31:10. The wall of Beth-shan; in the public street or principal place of the town. 2Sa 21:12.
REFLECTIONS.
We now come to the painful close of Sauls gloomy and tragic life. He was, as many versions read at the first verse, wounded with hypochondria. Therefore, though destitute of the divine presence, and fully apprized of his defeat and final doom; yet he took no warning, but rushed on to his own destruction. Israel was also defeated when they presumed to go up against the people of Amalek, and of Canaan, after the revolt in the desert. Numbers 15. Peter in like manner received a dreadful wound, while warming himself at the fire, in company with the wicked, after he had promised in his own spirit to go with the Lord to prison and to death. May we ever be strengthened with the Spirits might in the inner man, or we cannot stand against our foes.
Jonathan, ever faithful as a son, fell with his sire. Oh what tears are due to the memory of so much worth, so much love, so much fidelity, and so much valour in arms. Safety is promised in general to the righteous, but the promise has its exceptions and limits, that all men may watch and fear. With Jonathan two of his brothers fell at the same time, leaving only Ish- bosheth, an inconsiderate son, to perpetuate the memory of Saul.
But while we contemplate this dark and mysterious cloud which overshadowed and fought against Israel on Gilboa, it opens a serene and smiling aspect on the side of David. In the death of Saul, and of his three sons, we see the mountains applained, and the vallies exalted, that the son of Jesse might ascend the throne. This awful defeat therefore of Israel was as a mighty tide, which suddenly turning, raised the country to unrivalled sovereignty and power in the east. How happy then, that David did not avenge himself of Saul in the cave. The Lord in due time undertook his cause, and did for him ten thousand times better than he could have done for himself. And this most distinguished interposition of the divine providence should lead us at all times to abstain from doing evil, and teach us to trust in Davids God.
We cannot however forbear casting a painful look on the reign and death of Saul. All his virtues, all his fine actions, were spoiled by an awful predominancy of bad and implacable passions, which often made him a terror to his servants, and hurried him into disobedience to God. And when the divine justice gave him up to the impetuosity of those passions, or troubled him occasionally by an evil spirit, he would hear no counsel, he would bear no controul. When the Lord answered him not, his high spirit had recourse to the pythoness of Endor; and scarcely had he reached his camp, after receiving his sentence, before the Philistines began the battle, and executed the divine commission. He fled; he was wounded; he invited death, but death shrunk away. He could not bear the insults offered to Samson to be repeated on his person; therefore he fell on his sword. But the fresh wound only encreasing his anguish, he prayed a man spared of Amalek to give him the finishing stroke of death. Saul had indeed cut off that nation in the greater cities, but he had left large remnants of them in corners to trouble Israel, and to finish his life for disobeying God in sparing their lives! Through haughtiness of spirit Saul committed suicide; and can a man guilty of so horrible a crime be saved? If Saul was afflicted with hypochondria, he might be saved; and the Jews speak with confidence of his salvation. But a man in his right mind, who leaves life through disgust, cannot be saved. Entering his Makers presence, covered with the foulest of crimes, he will be met with eyes of flame. A voice will say, friend, how camest thou in hither? Thy work was not done; thou hast cowardly deserted thy post. Thou hast invaded the rights of heaven, to make thy calamities subservient of good. Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness.
We cannot close the chapter without noticing the gratitude and courage of the men of Jabesh-gilead. Saul had saved them promptly when besieged by Nahash, who threatened them with the loss of their right eyes, and with eternal bondage: and now they saved his body, at the risk of their lives, from ignominy and insults, and interred both his and his sons with all the honours due to royalty. It was an act of gratitude worthy to be recorded for the example of other men.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1 Samuel 31. Battle of Gilboa.Cf. p. 285, and 2Sa 1:6-16*.
1Sa 31:1-7. Israel was routed, Sauls sons slain, and he himself in danger of being taken prisoner. To avoid this he fell upon his own sword.
3. he was greatly distressed: perhaps read, with LXX, he was wounded by the archers.
1Sa 31:4. and thrust me through (second occurrence): omit with 1Ch 10:4. What Saul fears is not mutilation after death, but being taken alive, and, like Samson, being made to provide sport for the Philistines.
1Sa 31:7. they that were beyond Jordan: omit with 1Ch 10:7.
1Sa 31:8-13. The Philistines announced their victory by sending Sauls head round their land, to carry the tidings to their idols and to the people (1Ch 10:9 and LXX). They put his armour in the House of Ashtaroth, i.e. the temple of Astarte (p. 299), and fastened the bodies of Saul and his sons outside the wall of Bethshan (Jdg 1:27*). The men of Jabesh-gilead (1Sa 11:1-11) went by night, brought them away, and buried them. [Robertson Smith (RS2, p. 373), says, Sauls body was burned possibly to save it from the risk of exhumation by the Philistines, but perhaps rather with a religious intention, and almost as an act of worship, since his bones were buried under the sacred tamarisk at Jabesh.A. S. P.]
1Sa 31:10 b. Ch. alters this into and fastened his head in the house of Dagon, and omits from the wall of Beth-shan in 1Sa 31:12. The S. text is the more correct.
1Sa 31:12. burnt them there: many read and lamented for them there, because burning was incompatible with the established custom of Israel, SBOT. But ICC prefers to retain the present text, otherwise why bones in 1Sa 31:13? 1Ch 10:12 omits the clause.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
The day has come for Saul to descend into battle and die. The Philistines fight against Israel and find no resistance. We know that Saul was totally demoralized and could only expect that his armies would share the same hopeless fear. Israel fled before the enemy and the Philistines were able to slaughter them indiscriminately. In pursuing Israel (v.2) they killed three of Saul’s sons (ch.14:49), as Samuel had foretold (ch.28:19). Ishbosheth was a son not mentioned before. Likely he was a younger son, but he had no energy nor capacity to be king, though Abner tried to install him in this place later (2Sa 2:8).
Saul was badly wounded by an arrow. There was no compassionate stretcher bearer to carry him away, and his armour bearer was unable to do anything to help him. Therefore he urged his armour bearer to put him to death, for he feared the mockery of the Philistines when they found him. How pathetic is his utter absence of faith in the God of Israel! He would choose a death of dark hopelessness rather than to endure mockery from his enemies. But his armour bearer had more respect for the throne of Israel than to kill the king: he was rightly afraid of doing such a thing. Saul then deliberately committed suicide by falling on a sword.
This whole picture is most solemn to consider. Saul was orthodox, correct in a formal way, requiring legal outward obedience to God, — though compromising this when his own interests were involved. To him the things of God were formal, not vital. No wonder then that he is destroyed by Philistines, the very type of formality in religion, but also by his own hand, indicating that our disobedience to God is really what destroys us. But in Jonathan’s case, he MIXED his reality with formal conformity to Saul, and perished with is father! — but not by his own hand.
Saul’s armour bearer, however, was so devoted to Saul that Saul’s example moved him to commit suicide also. All Saul’s men (perhaps referring to those close to him) were killed also (v.6). The Philistines must have marched a long distance to attack Israel in the area of Jezreel, for we can well understand that Saul would not want to initiate the battle. Mount Gilboa is in the far north and east of Jerusalem. The Philistines pursued Israel through Israel’s own land, almost to the Jordan valley. in verse 7 it may be another valley mentioned, when Israelites on the other side of the valley forsook their own cities, for it is also said that those on the other side of Jordan did the same. This was a great victory for the Philistines, who took possession of these cities by having their own people come to live in them.
The battle being over, the Philistines return the next day, not to bury the bodies of the dead, but to strip them. Finding the bodies of Saul and his sons, they cut off Saul’s head and take his armour. To them this was an occasion of great rejoicing, and thy published the news in their idol houses and throughout the land of the Philistines (v.9). Saul’s armour was taken to the temple of the idol in Beth-Shan, not far distant from Mt.Gilboa. The bodies of his sons were hung there too. (v.12).
Such gloating over the defeat of enemies is disgusting. God will take this into serious account. If He allows the king of Israel to suffer a humiliating death because of his refusing God’s word, He will not ignore the heartless wickedness of men who gloat over his death. (Pro 24:17-18). When we see judgment fall on anyone, our attitude should be that of sorrow for the person and of honest judgment of ourselves, remembering that only the grace of God preserves us from the judgment we deserve.
The inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead (across the Jordan), having heard of the indignity done to the body of Saul, took immediate action to counteract this. The valiant men of the city journeyed all night to Beth-Shan, removed the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall and brought them to Jabesh. There they burned their bodies and buried the remaining bones. Though cremation is not God’s way of disposing of a body, it may have been that these men were apprehensive that the Philistines would go to the length of exhuming the bodies in order to show further indignities to them. At least they showed honorable respect for God-ordained authority.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
The death of Saul ch. 31
The scene shifts back to Mt. Gilboa in the North and Saul. Saul’s battle with the Philistines in this chapter may have been simultaneous with David’s battle against the Amalekites in the previous one.
"Chapters 30 and 31 gain in poignancy and power if we regard their events as simultaneous. In the far south, David is anxious about his own and about spoil, while in the far north Saul and the Israelite army perish. . . . While David smites (hikkah) [’fought,’ 1Sa 30:17] the Amalekites, and they flee (nus) [1Sa 30:17], the Philistines smite (hikkah) [’killed,’ 1Sa 31:2] Saul and his sons, and Israel flees (nus) [1Sa 31:1; 1Sa 31:7]." [Note: Miscall, pp. 181-82.]
The account of Saul’s death here differs from the one that the Amalekite messenger gave David later, which the writer recorded in 2 Samuel 1. This one is quite clearly the factual one (cf. 1 Chronicles 10). [Note: See Gordon, I & II Samuel . . ., p. 202.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The battle of Mt Gilboa 31:1-6
God had announced that Saul would deliver His people from the hand of the Philistines (1Sa 9:16). However, Saul frustrated God’s purpose by not following the Lord faithfully. Consequently the Philistines got the better of Saul and his soldiers (cf. Jos 1:7-9). This battle took place in 1011 B.C., the last year of Saul’s reign. Three other important battles took place nearby in the Jezreel Valley: Deborah and Barak’s defeat of Sisera (Jdg 4:15; Jdg 5:21), Gideon’s victory over the Midianites (Judges 7), and Pharaoh Neco’s killing of King Josiah (2Ki 23:29). The name of God does not appear in this chapter, perhaps suggesting that He had now given up Saul to the consequences of his apostasy (cf. Romans 1).
Jonathan, a faithful son and subject of the king, followed his father into battle. The death of this godly man because of his father’s sins seems unfair as well as tragic, but God permitted it. David would replace Saul on the throne. Another son of Saul, Ish-bosheth, also known as Eshbaal, must not have been present in the battle (cf. 2Sa 2:8; 2Sa 2:10; 2Sa 2:12; 2Sa 3:8; 2Sa 3:14-15; 2Sa 4:5; 2Sa 4:8; 2Sa 4:12; 1Ch 8:33).
David had been Saul’s armor-bearer before he had to flee from Saul’s presence (1Sa 16:21). Saul, probably fearing that the Philistines would torture and abuse him, [Note: McCarter, p. 443.] asked his armor-bearer to kill him, but the young man refused to do so, as David had when he had opportunity. Why this armor-bearer feared to kill Saul is unclear. Perhaps he feared the disgrace that would have hounded him, or even death, for slaying the king. Or perhaps, like David, he feared God and so would not kill the Lord’s anointed. This insubordination, which had characterized Saul’s conduct before Yahweh, led Saul to take his own life. The Bible records three other suicides: Ahithophel’s (2Sa 17:23), Zimri’s (1Ki 16:18), and Judas’ (Mat 27:5).
"Isn’t it interesting, he’s very concerned about his image with the enemy but shows little concern for his relationship with God whom he is about to meet?" [Note: Swindoll, p. 122.]
Eli, too, died as a result of a battle with the Philistines. Some of his sons also died (1Sa 4:17). Eli had served as Israel’s high priest unfaithfully for 40 years when he died (1Sa 4:18), and Saul had served as her king for about 40 years when he died (1Sa 13:1). Eli fell off his seat and died (1Sa 4:18), but Saul fell on his sword and died. [Note: Youngblood, "1, 2 Samuel," pp. 798-99.] Both men were disappointments to God and His people.
Saul’s armor-bearer also committed suicide in battle, probably because if he had outlived the one whom he should have protected with his life, he could have been executed for dereliction of duty. The soldiers who went into battle with Saul also perished. The king not only died, but he took many of his own men down with him.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE DEATH OF SAUL.
1Sa 31:1-13.
THE plain of Esdraelon, where the battle between Saul and the Philistines was fought, has been celebrated for many a deadly encounter, from the very earliest period of history. Monuments of Egypt lately deciphered make it very plain that long before the country was possessed by the Israelites the plain had experienced the shock of contending armies. The records of the reign of Thotmes III, who has sometimes been called the Alexander the Great of Egypt, bear testimony to a decisive fight in his time near Megiddo, and enumerate the names of many towns in the neighbourhood, most of which occur in Bible history, of which the spoil was carried to Egypt and placed in the temples of the Egyptian gods. Here, too, it was afterwards that Barak encountered the Canaanites, and Gideon the Midianites and Amalekites; here “Jehu smote all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his familiar friends, and his priests, until he left none remaining; “here Josiah was slain in his great battle with the Egyptians; here was the great lamentation after Josiah’s death, celebrated by Zechariah, “the mourning of Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo; “in short, in the words of Dr. Clarke, “Esdraelon has been the chosen place of encampment in every great contest carried on in the country, until the disastrous march of Napoleon Bonaparte from Egypt into Syria. Jews, Gentiles, Saracens, Crusaders, Egyptians, Persians, Druses, Turks, Arabs, and French, warriors out of every nation which is under heaven, have pitched their tents upon the plains of Esdraelon, and have beheld their banners wet with the dews of Tabor and Hermon.” So late as 1840, when the Pacha of Egypt had seized upon Syria, he was compelled to abandon the country when the citadel of Acre, which guards the entrance of the plain of Esdraelon by sea, was bombarded and destroyed by the British fleet. It is no wonder that in the symbolical visions of the Apocalypse, a town in this plain, Armageddon, is selected as the battle-field for the great conflict when the kings of the whole earth are to be gathered together unto the battle of the great day of Almighty God. As in the plains of Belgium, the plains of Lombardy, or the carse of Stirling, battle after battle has been fought in the space between Jezreel and Gilboa, to decide who should be master of the whole adjacent territory.
The Philistine host are said to have gathered themselves together and pitched in Shunem (1Sa 28:4), and afterwards to have gathered all their hosts to Aphek, and pitched by the fountain which is in Jezreel (1Sa 29:1). That is to say, they advanced from a westward to a northward position, which last they occupied before the battle. Saul appears from the beginning to have arranged his troops on the northern slopes of Mount Gilboa, and to have remained in that position during the battle. It was an excellent position for fighting, but very unfavourable for a retreat. Apparently the Philistines began the battle by moving southwards across the plain till they reached the foot of Gilboa, where the tug of war began. Notwithstanding the favourable position of the Hebrews, they were completely defeated. The archers appear to have done deadly execution; as they advanced nearer to the host of Israel, the latter would move backward to get out of range; while the Philistines, gaining confidence, would press them more and more, till the orderly retreat became a terrible rout. So utterly routed was the Israelite army that they do not appear to have tried a single rally, which, as they had to retreat over Mount Gilboa, it would have been so natural for them to do. Panic and consternation seem to have seized them very early in the battle; that they would be defeated was probably a foregone conclusion, but the attitude of a retreating army seems to have been assumed more quickly and suddenly than could have been supposed. If the Philistine army, seeing the early confusion of the Israelites, had the courage to pour themselves along the valleys on each side of Gilboa, no way of retreat would be left to their enemy except over the top of the hill. And when that was reached, and the Israelites began to descend, the arrows of the pursuing Philistines would fall on them with more deadly effect than ever, and the slaughter would be tremendous.
Saul seems never to have been deficient in personal courage, and in the course of the battle he and his shaft were evidently in the very thickest of the fight. “The Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchishua, the sons of Saul.” Saul himself was greatly distressed in his flight by reason of the archers. Finding himself wounded, and being provided with neither chariot nor other means of escape, a horror seized him that if once the enemy got possession of him alive they would subject him to some nameless mutilation or horrible humiliation too terrible to be thought of. Hence his request to his armour-bearer to fall on him. When the armour-bearer refused, he took a sword from him and killed himself.
It may readily be allowed that to one not ruled habitually by regard to the will of God this was the wisest course to follow. If the Philistine treatment of captive kings resembled the Assyrian, death was far rather to be chosen than life. When we find on Assyrian monuments such frightful pictures as those of kings obliged to carry the heads of their sons in processions, or themselves pinned to the ground by stakes driven through their hands and feet, and undergoing the horrible process of being flayed alive, we need not wonder at Saul shrinking with horror from what he might have had to suffer if he had been taken prisoner.
But what are we to think of the moral aspect of his act of suicide? That in all ordinary cases suicide is a daring sin, who can deny? God has not given to man the disposal of his life in such a sense. It is a daring thing for man to close his day of grace sooner than God would have closed it. It is a reckless thing to rush into the presence of his Maker before His Maker has called him to appear. It is a presumptuous thing to calculate on bettering his condition by plunging into an untried eternity. No doubt one must be tender in judging of men pressed hard by real or imaginary terrors, perhaps their reason staggering, their instincts trembling, and a horror of great darkness obscuring everything. Yet how often, in his last written words, does the suicide bear testimony against himself when he hopes that God will forgive him, and beseeches his friends to forgive him. Does not this show that in his secret soul he is conscious that he ought to have borne longer, ought to have quitted himself more like a man, and suffered every extremity of fortune before quenching the flame of life within him?
The truth is, that the suicide of Saul, as of many another, is an act that cannot be judged by itself, but must be taken in connection with the course of his previous life. We have said that to one not habitually ruled by regard to the will of God, self-destruction at such a moment was the wisest course. That is to say, if he merely balanced what appeared to be involved in terminating his life against what was involved in the Philistines taking him and torturing him, the former alternative was by far the more tolerable. But the question comes up, – if he had not habitually disregarded the will of God, would he ever have been in that predicament? The criminality of many an act must be thrown back on a previous act, out of which it has arisen. A drunkard in a midnight debauch quarrels with his father, and plunges a knife into his heart. When he comes to himself he is absolutely unconscious of what he has done. He tells you he had no wish nor desire to injure his father. It was not his proper self that did it, but his proper self over-mastered, overthrown, brutalized by the monster drink. Do you excuse him on this account? Far from it. You excuse him of a deliberate design against his father’s life. But you say the possibility of that deed was involved in his getting drunk. For a man to get drunk, to deprive himself for the time of his senses, and expose himself to an influence that may cause him to commit a most horrible and unnatural crime, is a fearful sin. Thus you carry back the criminality of the murder to the previous act of getting drunk. So in regard to the suicide of Saul. The criminality of that act is to be carried back to the sin of which he was guilty when he determined to follow his own will instead of the will of God. It was through that sin that he was brought into his present position. Had he been dutiful to God he would never have been in such a dilemma. On the one hand he never would have been so defeated and humiliated in battle; and on the other hand he would have had a trust in the Divine protection even when a bloody enemy like the Philistines was about to seize him. It was the true source alike of his public defeat and of his private despair that he indicated when he said to Samuel; “God is departed from me;” and he might have been sure that God would not have departed from him if he had not first departed from God. It is a most important principle of life we thus get sight of, when we see the bearing that one act of sin has upon another. It is very seldom indeed that the consequences of any sin terminate with itself. Sin has a marvelous power of begetting, of leading you on to other acts that you did not think of at first, of involving you in meshes that were then quite out of your view. And this multiplying process of sin is a course that may begin very early. Children are warned of it in the hymn – “He that does one fault at first, and lies to hide it, makes it two.” A sin needs to be covered, and another sin is resorted to in order to provide the covering. Nor is that all. You have a partner in your sin, and to free yourself you perhaps betray your partner. That partner may be not only the weaker vessel, but also by far the heavier sufferer, and yet, in your wretched selfishness, you deny all share of the sin, or you leave your partner to be ruined. Alas! alas! how terrible are the ways of sin. How difficult it often is for the sinner to retrace his steps! And how terrible is the state of mind when one says, I must commit this sin or that – I have no alternative! How terrible was Saul’s position when he said, “I must destroy myself.” Truly sin is a hard, unfeeling master – “The way of transgressors is hard.” He only that walketh uprightly walketh surely. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, that walk in the law of the Lord.”
The terrible nature of the defeat which the Israelites suffered on this day from the Philistines is apparent from what is said in the seventh verse – “And when the men of Israel that were on the other side of the valley, and they that were beyond Jordan, saw that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook their cities and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.” The plain of Esdraelon is interrupted, and in a sense divided into two, by three hills – Tabor, Gilboa, and Little Hermon. On the eastern side of these hills the plain is continued on to the Jordan valley. The effect of the battle of Gilboa was that all the rich settlements in that part of the plain had to be forsaken by the Israelites and given up to the Philistines. More than that, the Jordan valley ceased to afford the protection which up to this time it had supplied against enemies from the west. For the most part, the trans-Jordanic tribes were exposed to quite a different set of enemies. It was the Syrians from the north, the Moabites and the Ammonites from the east, and the Midianites and Amalekites from the remoter deserts, that were usually the foes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh. But on this occasion a new foe assailed them. The Philistines actually crossed the Jordan, and the rich pastures of Gilead and Bashan, with the flocks and herds that swarmed upon them, became the prey of the uncircumcised. Thus the terror of the Philistines, hitherto confined to the western portion of the country, was spread, with all its attendant horrors, over the length and breadth of Israel. We get a vivid view of the state of the country when David was called to take charge of it. And we get a vivid view of the worse than embarrassment, the fatal crime, into which David would have been led if he had remained in the Philistine camp and taken any part in this campaign.
How utterly crushed the Philistines considered the Israelites to be, and how incapable of striking any blow in their own defense, is apparent from the humiliating treatment of the bodies of Saul and his sons, the details of which are given in this chapter and in the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles (chap. 10). If there had been any possibility of the Israelites being stung into a new effort by the dishonour done to their king and princes, that dishonour would not have been so terribly insulting. But there was no such possibility. The treatment was doubly insulting. Saul’s head, severed from his body, was put in the temple of Dagon (1Ch 10:1-14.); his armour was hung up in the house of Ashtaroth; and his body was fastened to the wall of Beth-shan. The same treatment seems to have been bestowed on his three sons. The other part of the insult arose from the idolatrous spirit in which all this was done. The tidings of the victory were ordered to be carried to the house of their idols as well as to their people (l Sam. 21:9). The trophies were displayed in the temples of these idols. The spirit of vaunting, which had so roused David against Goliath because he defied the armies of the living God, appeared far more offensively than ever. Not only was Israel defeated, but in the view of the Philistines Israel’s God as well Dagon and Ashtaroth had triumphed over Jehovah. The humiliation suffered in the days when the ark of God brought such calamities to them and their gods was now amply avenged. The image of Dagon was not found lying on its face, all shattered save the stump, after the heads of Saul and his sons had been placed in his temple. Yes, and the nobles at least of the Philistines would boast that the slaughter of Goliath by David, and the placing of his head and his armour near Jerusalem – probably in the holy place of Israel – were amply avenged. Well was it for David, we may say again, that he had no share in this terrible battle! Henceforth undoubtedly there would be no more truce on his part towards the Philistines. Had they not dishonoured the person of his king? had they not insulted the dead body of Jonathan his noble friend? had they not hurled new defiance against the God of Israel? had they not spread robbery and devastation over the whole length and breadth of the country, and turned every happy family into a group of cowering slaves? Were this people to be any longer honoured with his friendship? “O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united!”
The only redeeming incident, in all this painful narrative, is the spirited enterprise of the men of Jabesh-gilead, coming to Beth-shan by night, removing the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall, and burning them with all honour at Jabesh, Beth-shan was a considerable distance from Gilboa, where Saul and his sons appear to have fallen; but probably it was the largest city in the neighbourhood, and therefore the best adapted to put the remains of the king and the princes to open shame. Jabesh-gilead was somewhere on the other side of the Jordan, distant from Beth-shan several miles. It was highly creditable to its people that, after a long interval, the remembrance of Saul’s first exploit, when he relieved them from the cruel threats of the Ammonites, was still strong enough to impel them to the gallant deed which secured honourable burial for the bodies of Saul and his sons. We are conscious of a reverential feeling rising in our hearts toward this people as we think of their kindness to the dead, as if the whole human race were one family, and a kindness done nearly three thousand years ago were in some sense a kindness to ourselves.
That first exploit of Saul’s, rescuing the men of Jabesh-gilead, seems never to have been surpassed by any other enterprise of his reign. As we now look back on the career of Saul, which occupies so large a portion of this book, we do not find much to interest or refresh us. He belonged to the order of military kings. He was not one of those who were devoted to the intellectual, or the social, or the religious elevation of his kingdom. His one idea of a king was to rid his country of its enemies. “He fought,” we are told, “against all his enemies on every side, against Moab, and against the children of Ammon, and against Edom, and against the king of Zobah, and against the Philistines: and whithersoever he turned himself he vexed them. And he did valiantly and smote Amalek, and delivered Israel out of the hands of them that spoiled them.” That success gave him a good name as king, but it did not draw much affection to him; and it had more of evil than in conferring on them positive good. Royalty bred in Saul what it bred in most kings of the East, an imperious temper, a despotic will. Even in his own family he played the despot. And if he played the despot at home he did so not less in public. All that we can say in his favour is, that he did not carry his despotism so far as many. But his jealous and in so far despotic temper could not but have had an evil effect on his people. We cannot suppose that when jealousy was so deep in his nature David was the only one of his officers who experienced it. The secession of so many very able men to David, about the time when he was with the Philistines, looked as if Saul could not but be jealous of any man who rose to high military eminence. That Saul was capable of friendly impulses is very different from saying that his heart was warm and winning. The most vital want in him was the want of godliness. He had little faith in the nation as God’s nation, God’s heritage. He had little love for prophets, or for men of faith, or for any who attached great importance to moral and spiritual considerations. His persecution of David and his murder of the priests are deep stains than can never be erased. And that godless nature of his became worse as he went on. It is striking that the last transaction in his reign was a decided failure in the very department in which he had usually excelled. He who had gained what eminence he had as a military king, utterly failed, and involved his people in utter humiliation, in that very department. His abilities failed him because God had forsaken him. The Philistines whom he had so often defeated crushed him in the end. To him the last act of life was very different from that of Samson – Samson conquering in his death, Saul defeated and disgraced in his.
Need we again urge the lesson? “Them that honour Me I will honour; but they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” You dare not leave God out in your estimate of the forces that bear upon your life. You dare not give to Him a secondary place. God must have the first place in your regards. Are you really honouring Him above all, prizing His favour, obeying His will, trusting in His word? Are you even trying, amid many mortifying failures, to do so? It is not the worst life that numbers many I failure, many a confession, many a prayer for mercy and for grace to help in time of need, provided always your heart is habitually directed to God as the great end of existence, the Pole Star by which your steps are habitually to be directed, the Sovereign whose holy will must be your great rule, the Pattern whose likeness should be stamped on your hearts, the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ, whose love, and favour, and blessing are evermore the best and brightest inheritance for all the children of men.
End of Vol. I