Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Samuel 31:4

Then said Saul unto his armorbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armorbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.

4. Then said Saul, &c.] Cp. Jdg 9:54.

these uncircumcised ] No indignity could be more intolerable than for the sacred person of Jehovah’s Anointed to be the butt of the heathen who had no part in His covenant. Cp. 1Sa 14:6.

abuse me ] Maltreat me for their own amusement.

a sword ] His sword.

fell upon it ] This account of Saul’s death is obviously inconsistent with that given by the Amalekite (2Sa 1:9 ff.). His story was a fabrication. He found the king’s corpse on the field, stripped it, and brought the spoil to David in the hope of a reward.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

1Sa 31:4

Saul took a sword and fell upon it.

The death of Saul

Sauls life is a tragedy, and his death is the closing scene. Circumstances close round him, and press him to his doom. These circumstances know no remorse. They never pause for pity. The last foe that Saul meets is himself. His 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. Yet to this Saul came, as if he had not been the anointed of the Lord, as if he never had been the glory of Gods people Israel. The whole of the preceding history had a sound in it portentous of change and death. And Saul himself, better than any other man, was aware that his end was near; and he went on to that end in a most pitiable plight; a hero without a heros hope. There is a singular fitness in the chapter which closes this life of Saul. There is no sentimental dallying with the tragic facts. The battle was set, and from the first, the Philistines did the fighting. We need not dwell on the features of this tragedy. It was a great historical event, meaning much to the nation which saw its first king thus sadly fall. It was the end of Sauls 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. The people had, indeed, got in him what they asked for–a king like unto their neighbours. 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. When we look at this life in its most general, human aspects, it is hard to escape the question: Why did God bring Saul into all these circumstances of trial where he so ignobly failed and fell? Would it not have been better for Saul never to have been called from his fathers plough? There is something more serious by far than to be a king; it, is more serious to be a man. If mere safety and immunity from trial and danger are all that are to be desired by us, we must needs rank ourselves with the irrational creation. But when we are made men we are called with a high calling. We have set before us an immortal destiny, either to work that out or wreck it away. We are all on our trial. The highest issues of human life are brought out by the greatness and the strength of our trials. So was it with Saul. His trial began with his great opportunity. The highness of his calling measures the deepness of his falling. There are three points which indicate the departure of Saul from the path of peace and duty.

1. 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 separate from David, the man of the future, the man after Gods own heart, and who desired to do only Gods will. He was soon cruel and fierce in his wrath, slaying one by one the priests of the Lord.

2. Then we find that he was separate from God. He prayed to God, and God gave him no answer. He asked in vain for Gods guidance, and then called in vain for the dead Samuel.

3. 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. (Armstrong Black.)

Suicide

Our Creator, it is said, has given us a general desire to obtain good, and avoid evil; why may we not obey this impulse? We leave a kingdom, or a society, of which we do not approve; we avoid bodily pain by all the means which we can invent; why may we not cease to live, when life becomes a greater evil, than a good? Because, in avoiding pain, or in procuring pleasure, we are always to consider the good of others, as well as our own. Poverty is an evil, but we may not rob to avoid it; power is a good, but it is not justifiable to obtain it by violence or deceit; we have only a right to consult our own good within certain boundaries, and after such a manner that we do not diminish the good of others: Every evil incapable of such limited remedy, it is our duty to bear; and if the general idea that we have a right to procure voluntary death to ourselves, be pregnant with infinite mischief to the interests of religion, and morality, it is our duty to live, as much as it is our duty to do anything else for the same reason; a single instance of suicide may be of little consequence; nor is a single instance of robbery of much; but we judge of single actions, by the probability there is of their becoming frequent, and by the effects they produce, when they are frequent.

1. Suicide, 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 mans 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? 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.

2. Suicide has been called magnanimity; but what is magnanimity? A patient endurance of evil, to effect a proposed good; and when considering the strange mutability of human affairs, are we to consider this endurance as useless, or when should hope terminate but with life? To linger out year after year, unbroken in spirit, unchanged in purpose, is doubtless, a less imposing destiny than public, and pompous suicide; but if to be, is more commendable, than to seem to be; if we love the virtue, better than the name, then is it true magnanimity to extract wisdom from misery, and doctrine from shame; to call day, and night upon God; to keep the minds eye sternly riveted on its object through failure, and through suffering; through evil report, and through good report; and to make the bed of death the only grave of human hope; but at the moment when Christianity warns you that your present adversity may be a trial from God; when experience teaches that great qualities come in arduous situations; when piety stimulates you to show the hidden vigour, the inexhaustible resources, the beautiful capacities of that soul, which God has exempted from the destruction which surrounds it; at that moment, the law of self-murder gives you, for your resource, ignominious death, frightful disobedience, and never-ending torments.

3. It may be imagined that suicide is a crime of rare occurrence, but we must not so much overrate our love of life, when there is hardly a passion so weak, which cannot at times, overcome it; many fling away life from ambition, many from vanity, many from restlessness, many from fear, many from almost every motive; nature has made death terrible, but nature has made those evils terrible, from the dread of which we seek death; nature has made resentment terrible, infamy terrible, want terrible, hunger terrible; every first principle of our nature alternately conquers and is conquered; the passion that is a despot in one mind, is a slave in the other; we know nothing of their relative force.

4. It is hardly possible be conceive this crime, committed by anyone who has not confounded his common notions of right and wrong by some previous sophistry, and cheated himself into a temporary scepticism; but who would trust to the reasoning of such a moment in such a state of the passions, when the probability of error is so great, and the punishment so immeasurable? Men should determine, even upon important human actions, with coolness, and unimpeded thought; much less, then, is a rash and disturbed hour enough for eternity.

5. It has often been asked, if self-murder is forbidden by the Christian religion; but those who ask this question forget, that Christianity is not a code of laws, but a set of principles from which particular laws must frequently be inferred; it is not sufficient to say, there is no precise, and positive law, naming, and forbidding self-murder; there is no law of the gospel, which forbids the subject to destroy his ruler; but there is a law, which says, fear, and obey him; there is no law which prevents me from slaying my parent; but there is a law which says, love, and honour them; be meek, says our Saviour; be long suffering; abide patiently to the last; submit to the chastening hand of God, and let us never forget, that the fifth, and greatest gospel is the life of Christ; that he acted for us, as well as taught, that in the deserts of Judea, in the hall of Pilate, on the supreme cross, his patience shows us, that evil is to be endured, and his prayers point out to us, how alone it can be mitigated. (Sidney Smith, M. A.)

Lessons from a suicide

There is always something solemn in doing things which, when done, cannot be undone–in taking steps which, when taken once, can never be recalled. We sign our contracts with a trembling hand; and enter into those bonds which least of all we desire to break, with a solemnity which arises from the thought that, once entered upon, we cannot recede. The act of suicide affords the most decisive evidence of the extensive delusion which men can practise on themselves, and of the blinding power which they permit the tempter to exercise over them, when, under the idea of relief and escape, they involve themselves in a deeper calamity, and in order to effect an oblivion of present suffering, they grasp the cup of eternal woe, and put it to their lips. From what shall I escape? is but one-half of the question–Into what shall I bring myself? is the still more momentous portion of the inquiry.

1. Looking at the circumstances of Sauls death in their connection with the history of the people over whom he reigned, it is impossible not to perceive that they were fraught with instruction to the nation, with lessons valuable though humiliating. They reiterate with deeper emphasis the truth–that when men are determined to have their own way–when they will not listen to heavenly suggestions, to Divine remonstrances–and when they think that they can manage better for themselves than God can manage for them, there is but one way of convincing them of their error. They must be allowed to take the problem of their peace and happiness into their own hands, to attempt to work it out in their own fashion, and then to reap the bitter results of failure, which in such a case are inevitable. Israel worked out their own problem, and they brought it to this issue–And the men of Israel flee from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa, etc. And thus will it ever be, where men expect to reap more from their own theories than from Gods fixed laws and plans.

2. We may take, as a second suggestion from the spectacle before us, the thought–How dreadful it is for a man to be in trouble without God to sustain and support him. The waves and billows were indeed going over Saul. We see here the acting out of one of those principles which regulate the Divine dealings with men If they seek Him, He will be found of them; if they forsake Him, He will cast them off foreverse Fearful as is the lesson taught us by the self-murder of Saul, it is consolatory to know that no one need be in trouble without God. Precious promises point out the way in which we may be delivered from any such fear.

3. We see, in Sauls case, that there is no surer sign that a man is on the high road to ruin than that his heart is hardened against Divine warnings. Quickly, one after another, came solemn calls to the king of Israel to humble himself at last before God. We wait; and the thought rushes into our heart, He will break down at last; he will stand out no longer. But it did not. And then it was seen that the heart which can stand out against solemn calls, ruin will be the result. He that being often reproved, etc. It is a grievous miscalculation, moreover, which men make, when, conscious that life is passing on in the neglect of God and of duty, they reckon within themselves upon a certain power which they imagine the approach of death will have to awaken their attention to religious duties, and to bring with it the disposition to return to God in repentance and prayer.

4. As we compare the conclusion of this history with its commencement, we cannot but discover an impressive lesson as to the influence of external circumstances upon personal character. As Saul rose in his social position, he sunk in his moral condition. It is dangerous to keep an idol for ourselves; it is not less perilous to become the idol of others. Never was there a man more frequently instructed in the lesson of entire dependence upon God. (J. A. Miller.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 4. Draw thy sword, and thrust me through] Dr. Delaney has some good observations on this part of the subject: “Saul and his armour-bearer died by the same sword. That his armour-bearer died by his own sword is out of all doubt; the text expressly tells us so; and that Saul perished by the same sword is sufficiently evident. Draw THY sword, says he to him, and thrust me through; which, when he refused, Saul, says the text, took THE sword, ( eth hachereb, the very sword,) and fell upon it. What sword? Not his own, for then the text would have said so; but, in the plain natural grammatical construction, the sword before mentioned must be the sword now referred to, that is, his armour-bearer’s, 1Ch 10:4-5. Now it is the established tradition of all the Jewish nation that this armour-bearer was Doeg, and I see no reason why it should be discredited; and if so, then Saul and his executioner both fell by that weapon with which they had before massacred the priests of God. So Brutus and Cassius killed themselves with the same swords with which they stabbed Caesar; and Calippus was stabbed with the same sword with which he stabbed Dio.”

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Thrust me through, and abuse me; lest they take me, and put me to some shameful and cruel death.

Saul took a sword, and fell upon it, and died of the wound, as it follows.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

Then said Saul unto his armourbearer,…. Who, the Jews b say, was Doeg the Edomite, promoted to this office for slaying the priests:

draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; for if he was wounded, yet not mortally, and it is certain he did not so apprehend it. It is much the sword of the armourbearer should be sheathed in a battle; but perhaps he was preparing for flight, and so had put it up in its scabbard:

lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me; lest they should not dispatch him at once, but put him to a lingering and torturing death, and insult him, and mock at him, as they did Samson:

but his armourbearer would not, for he was sore afraid; to lay his hand on the king the Lord’s anointed, to take away his life, being more scrupulous of doing that, if this was Doeg, than of slaying the priests of the Lord; or he might be afraid of doing this, since should he survive this action, he would be called to an account by the Israelites, and be put to death for killing the king:

therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it; or rather “the sword”, the sword of his armourbearer, and so was a suicide: the Jews endeavour to excuse this fact of Saul, because he knew he should die in battle from the words of Samuel; and being pressed sore by the archers, he saw it was impossible to escape out of their hands and therefore judged it better to kill himself than to fall by the hands of the uncircumcised; but these excuses will not do. Josephus c denies he killed himself; that though he attempted it, his sword would not pierce through him, and that he was killed by the Amalekite, and that that was a true account he gave to David in the following chapter; though it seems rather to be a lie, to curry favour with David, and that Saul did destroy himself.

b Hieron. Trad. Heb. in lib. Reg. fol. 77. B. c Antiqu. l. 6. c. 14. sect. 7.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

(4) His armourbearer.Jewish tradition tells us that this faithful armourbearer was Doeg, the Edomite, and that the sword which Saul took apparently from the hand of the armourbearer was the sword with which Doeg had massacred the priests at Gibeon and at Nob.

Lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me.Even in Sauls dying speech there is something of that religious formalism which marked his character after his fall from God, and which is a striking sign of spiritual blindness. He censures the Philistines as uncircumcised.Wordsworth.

Saul had a strong consciousness of the sacredness of his person as the Lords anointed; as it has been well said of him, no descendant of a long line of so-styled Christian or Catholic sovereigns has held a loftier claim of personal inviolability.

And abuse me.He remembered how these same Philistines in former years had treated the hero Samson when he fell into their hands.

His armourbearer would not.Love and devotion to his master we can well imagine stayed his hand from carrying out his fallen masters last terrible command. If the armourbeareras the Jewish tradition above referred to assertswas indeed Doeg the Edomite, the two, the king and his confidential officer, had been fast friends for years. Some dread of the after consequences, too, may have weighed with the royal armour-bearer, as he was to a certain extent responsible for the kings life. What possibly he dreaded actually came to pass in the case of the Amalekite who told David that he was the one who inflicted the fatal stroke when the king was dying; as a guerdon for his act, David had him at once put to death for having put forth his hand to destroy the Lords anointed.

A sword.It was a heavy weapon, a war sword, answering to the great epe darmes of the Middle Ages. This he took from the reluctant hands of his faithful follower, and placing the hilt firmly on the ground, he threw the weight of his body on the point.

In 2Sa. 1:6-10 we have another account of the death. There an Amalekite bearing the royal insignia of the late king, the crown royal and the well-known bracelet of Saul, comes to David at Ziklag after the fatal fight, and recounts how, finding the king leaning on his spearpossibly, as Bunsen supposes, lying on the ground propping his weary head with the nervously-clutched spear, exhausted and seized with cramp (this is the Rabbinical translation of the word rendered anguish), at his urgent request, slew him. Most commentatorsfor instance, Kiel, Lange, Bishop Hervey, &c.regard the Amalekites story as an invention framed to extract a rich gift from David, who, the savage Arab thought, would be rejoiced to hear of his great enemys fall. If this be so, then we must suppose that the Amalekite wandering over the field of battle strewn with the slain on the night which succeeded the battle, came upon the body of Saul, and, attracted by the glitter of the golden ornaments, stripped off the precious insignia, and hastened with his lying story to David. Ewald, however, sees no reason to doubt the trustworthiness of the Amalekites story; in fact, the two accounts may well be harmonised. Stanley graphically paints the scene after he had fallen on his sword, and his faithful armourbearer had in despairing sorrow killed himself also. His armourbearer lies dead beside him; on his head the royal crown, on his arm the royal bracelet; . . . the huge spear is still in his hand; he is leaning peacefully on it. He has received his death-blow either from the enemy (1Sa. 31:3), or from his own sword (1Sa. 31:4). The dizziness and darkness of death is upon him. 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 himself had all but accomplished.Jewish Church, Lect. 21. The words of the next verse (5) do not contradict this possible explanation. The armourbearer, seeing the king pierced with the arrows and then falling on his own sword, may well have imagined his master dead, and so put an end to his own life. But Saul, though mortally wounded, may have rallied again for a brief space; in that brief space the Amalekite may have come up and finished the bloody work; then, after the king was dead, he probably stripped the royal insignia from the lifeless corpse.

So Saul died.This is one of the very rare instances of self-destruction among the chosen people. It seems to have been almost unknown among the Israelites. Prior to Saul the only recorded example is that of Samson, and his was a noble act of self-devotionthe hero sacrificed his life in order to compass the destruction of a great crowd of men, powerful and influential foes of his dear country. His death in the great Dagon Temple at Gaza ranks, as it has been well said, with the heroism of one dying in battle rather than with cases of despairing suicide. There is another instance after the days of Saulthat of the wise privy councillor of King David, Ahithophel, who, in a paroxysm of bitter mortification, we read, went and hanged himself. There is another in the Gospel story familiar to us all. Theologians are divided in their judgment on King Saul. S. Bernard, for instance, thinks that Saul was lost for ever. Corn, Lapide, followed by Bishop Wordsworth, has no kindly thought for the great first king. The Jewish historian Josephus, on the contrary, writes in warm and glowing terms of the patriotic devotion with which Saul went to meet his end. Many of the Rabbis sympathise with Josephus in his estimate of the unhappy monarch. Without in any way justifying the fatal act which closed the dark tragedy of his reign, we may well plead in extenuation the awful position in which the king found himself that evening after Gilboa had been fought and lost, and we may well remember the similar conduct of Brutus, Cassius, and the younger Cato, and call to our minds what posterity has said of these noble heathens, and how far they have judged them guilty of causeless self-murder.

Well would it be for men when they sit in judgment on Saul, and on other great ones who have failed, as they think, in the discharge of their duties to God as well as to manwell would it be for once to imitate what has been rightly called the fearless human sympathy of the Biblical writers, and to remember how the man after Gods own heart, in strains never to be forgotten, wrote his touching lament over King Saul, dwelling only on the Saul, the mighty conqueror, the delight of his people, the father of his beloved and faithful friend, like him in life, united with him in death; and how with these wordsgentle as they are lovely, inspired by the Holy Spiritthe Bible closes the record of the life, and leaves the first great king, the first anointed of the Lord, in the hands of his God.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

4. His armourbearer would not He dared not stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed; the very thought of such an act filled him with fear.

Saul took a sword Rather, took the sword, that is, the sword of the armourbearer just referred to.

Fell upon it Thrust it through himself by falling over upon it.

This account of Saul’s death is every way consistent with itself and with Saul’s character, and is to be regarded as the true and authentic record of the sacred historian himself. The story of the Amalekite, who stole the king’s crown and bracelet, and brought them to David, (2Sa 1:4-10,) is to be treated as a fabrication, feigned with the hope of finding favour with the successor of Saul.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1Sa 31:4-5. Then said Saul unto his armour-bearer Saul and his armour-bearer died by the same sword; that his armour-bearer died by his own sword, is out of all doubt: the text expressly tells us so; and that Saul perished by the same sword is sufficiently evident. Draw thy sword, says he to him, and thrust me through; which when he refused, Saul, says the text, took THE sword, eth hachereb [the very sword], and fell upon it. What sword? not his own; for then the text would have said so: but, in the plain, natural, grammatical construction, the sword beforementioned must be the sword now referred to, that is, his armour-bearer’s; 1Ch 10:4-5. Now it is the established tradition of all the Jewish nation, that this armour-bearer was Doeg: I see no reason why it should be discredited; and if so, then Saul and his executioner both fell by that weapon with which they had before massacred the priests of God. So Brutus and Cassius killed themselves with the same swords with which they slew Caesar; and Calippus was stabbed with the same sword wherewith he killed Dio.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

(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.

But though death would have soon come from the hands of the Philistines, yet impatient of misery, like a man desperate to plunge into everlasting woe before the time, he becomes his own executioner. Poor wretched, awful character! He is anxious that his body should not be abused by the Philistines; but feels no anxiety for his soul! But even that, after all his caution, as appears by the sequel of the history, is denied him. Reader! think, if it be possible, what a state of mind must he have been in , when, to avoid the racking torments in his own breast, he dares to make experiment of the more immediate torments of the miserable in eternity!

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

1Sa 31:4 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.

Ver. 4. Then said Saul unto his armourbearer. ] Whom the Rabbis constantly affirm to have been Doeg, the Edomite, whom Saul had once commanded to slay the Lord’s priests, and now to do the like to himself.

“ Discite iustitiam moniti. ”

Lest these uncircumcised come. ] To his last he reproaches the Philistines with their uncircumcision: as if his condition had been better than theirs, because he was circumcised. Whereas external privileges profit nothing those that are profane; but they are therefore the worse, because they ought to be better. Gal 5:6 ; Gal 6:15

And abuse me, ] i.e., My body, whereof he took more care than for his precious soul; a common fault. His body was abused, nevertheless.

But his armourbearer would not. ] No more would Mark Antony’s armourbearer Eras: but, that he might not meddle with his master, fell first upon his own sword.

Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it. ] After that he had first seen so many fall by the sword before him; and that with delight, if he had fallen before into the unpardonable sin, as some think he had. We read a of one that had committed that sin, that he wished that his wife and children, and all the world, might be damned together with him. But that he thus desperately slew himself, lest he should be slain by the enemy, “Hic rogo non furor est, ne moriare mori?” So some Jews at the sack of Jerusalem killed themselves, lest they should be taken by the Romans. Cato, lest he should fall into the hands of Caesar; for which suicide Seneca b highly extolleth him, but Augustine, c upon better grounds, dispraiseth and condemneth that fact of his as absurd and cowardly; especially since at his death he bade his son to do otherwise; yea, to promise himself all good of Caesar’s clemency. Cleombrotus and the Circumcelliones are not worth mentioning; Brutus and Cassius were to be pitied: but God receiveth not such souls, saith Jerome, d as against his will go out of their bodies. Osiander thinketh that Saul’s desperate death was a forerunner of his everlasting destruction: the Lord taketh it upon himself, and saith that he slew him. 1Ch 10:14

a Burr., Moses’s Choice, p. 34.

b Lib. de Provid. Divin.

c De Civ. Dei, lib. i. cap. xxiii.

d Ad Marcel.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)