Bible Commentaries

Death and Burial of Saul and His Sons - 1 Samuel 31:1-13

The end of the unhappy king corresponded to his life ever since the day ofhis rejection as king. When he had lost the battle, and saw his three sonsfallen at his side, and the archers of the enemy pressing hard upon him,without either repentance or remorse he put an end to his life by suicide,to escape the disgrace of being wounded and abused by the foe (1 Samuel 31:1-7). But he did not attain his object; for the next day the enemy found hiscorpse and those of his sons, and proceeded to plunder, mutilate, andabuse them (1 Samuel 31:8-10). However, the king of Israel was not to be left toperish in utter disgrace. The citizens of Jabesh remembered the deliverancewhich Saul had brought to their city after his election as king, and showedtheir gratitude by giving an honourable burial to Saul and his sons (1 Samuel 31:11-13). There is a parallel to this chapter in 1 Chronicles 10:1-14, which agrees exactlywith the account before us, with very few deviations indeed, and thosemostly verbal, and merely introduces a hortatory clause at the end (1 Chronicles 10:13; 1 Chronicles 10:14).

The account of the war between the Philistines and Israel, thecommencement of which has already been mentioned in 1 Samuel 28:1, 1 Samuel 28:4.,and 1 Samuel 29:1, is resumed in 1 Samuel 31:1 in a circumstantial clause; and to this there isattached a description of the progress and result of the battle, moreespecially with reference to Saul. Consequently, in 1 Chronicles 10:1, wherethere had been no previous allusion to the war, the participle נלחמים is changed into the perfect. The following is the way in which weshould express the circumstantial clause: “Now when the Philistines werefighting against Israel, the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, andslain men fell in the mountains of Gilboa” (vid., 1 Samuel 28:4). The principalengagement took place in the plain of Jezreel. But when the Israelites wereobliged to yield, they fled up the mountains of Gilboa, and were pursuedand slain there.

1 Samuel 31:2-6

The Philistines followed Saul, smote (i.e., put to death) histhree sons (see at 1 Samuel 14:49), and fought fiercely against Saul himself. When the archers (בּקּשׁת אנשׁים is an explanatoryapposition to המּורים) hit him, i.e., overtook him, he wasgreatly alarmed at them (יחל, from חיל or חוּל),

(Note: The lxx have adopted the rendering καὶ ἐτραυμάτισαν εἰς τὰ ὑποχόνδρια ,they wounded him in the abdomen, whilst the Vulgaterendering is vulneratus est vehementer a sagittariisIn 1 Chronicles 10:3 the Sept. rendering is καὶ ἐπόνεσεν ἀπὸ τῶν τόξων ,and that ofthe Vulgate et vulneraverunt jaculisThe translators have thereforederived יחל from חלל = חלה, and thengiven a free rendering to the other words. But this rendering isoverthrown by the word מאד, very, vehemently, to saynothing of the fact that the verb חלל or חלה cannot be proved to be ever used in the sense of wounding. If Saul hadbeen so severely wounded that he could not kill himself, and thereforeasked his armour-bearer to slay him, as Thenius supposes, he wouldnot have had the strength to pierce himself with his sword when thearmour-bearer refused. The further conjecture of Thenius, that theHebrew text should be read thus, in accordance with the lxx,המּררים אל ויּחל, “he was wounded in the region of the gall,”is opposed by the circumstance that ὑποχόνδρια is not the gall orregion of the gall, but what is under the χόνδρος , or breast cartilage,viz., the abdomen and bowels.)

and called upon his armour-bearer to pierce him with the sword, “lestthese uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and play with me,” i.e.,cool their courage upon me by maltreating me. But as the armour-bearerwould not do this, because he was very much afraid, since he wassupposed to be answerable for the king's life, Saul inflicted death uponhimself with his sword; whereupon the armour-bearer also fell upon hissword and died with his king, so that on that day Saul and this three sonsand his armour-bearer all died; also “all his men” (for which we have “allhis house” in the Chronicles), i.e., not all the warriors who went out withhim 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 Ishboshethwas included, for the latter was not in the battle; and although the formerwas Saul's cousin and commander-in-chief (see 1 Samuel 14:50-51), he did notbelong to his house or servants.

1 Samuel 31:7

When the men of Israel upon the sides that were opposite to thevalley (Jezreel) and the Jordan saw that the Israelites (the Israelitishtroop) fled, and Saul and his sons were dead, they took to flight out of thecities, whereupon the Philistines took possession of them. עבר isused here to signify the side opposite to the place of conflict in the valleyof Jezreel, which the writer assumed as his standpoint (cf. 1 Samuel 14:40);so that העמק עבר is the country to the west of thevalley of Jezreel, and היּרדּן עבר the country to thewest 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, thePhilistines took possession of, so that the whole of the northern part ofthe land of Israel, in other words the whole land with the exception ofPeraea and the tribe-land of Judah, came into their hands when Saul wasslain.

On the day following the battle, when the Philistines tripped the slain,they found Saul and his three sons lying upon Gilboa; and having cut offtheir heads and plundered their weapons, they went them (the heads andweapons) as trophies into the land of the Philistines, i.e., round about tothe different towns and hamlets of their land, to announce the joyful newsin their idol-temples (the writer of the Chronicles mentions the idolsthemselves) and to the people, and then deposited their weapons (theweapons of Saul and his sons) in the Astarte-houses. But the corpses theyfastened to the town-wall of Beth-shean, i.e., Beisan, in the valley of theJordan (see at Joshua 17:11). Beth-azabbim and Beth-ashtaroth arecomposite words; the first part is indeclinable, and the plural form isexpressed by the second word: idol-houses and Astarte-houses, like beth-aboth (father's-houses: see at Exodus 6:14). On the Astartes, see at Judges 2:13. It is not expressly stated indeed in 1 Samuel 31:9, 1 Samuel 31:10, that the Philistines plundered the bodies of Saul's sons as well, andmutilated them by cutting off their heads; but ראשׁו andכּליו, his (i.e., Saul's) head and his weapons, alone arementioned. At the same time, it is every evident from 1 Samuel 31:12, where theJabeshites are said to have taken down from the wall of Beth-shean notSaul's body only, but the bodies of his sons also, that the Philistines hadtreated the corpses of Saul's sons in just the same manner as that of Saulhimself. The writer speaks distinctly of the abuse of Saul's body only,because it was his death that he had chiefly in mind at the time. To theword וישׁלּחוּ we must supply in thought the object ראשׁו and כּליו from the preceding clause. גּויּת andגּויּת (1 Samuel 31:10 and 1 Samuel 31:12) are the corpses without the heads. The fact that the Philistines nailed them to the town-wall of Beth-sheanpresupposes the capture of that city, from which it is evident that theyhad occupied the land as far as the Jordan. The definite word Beth-ashtaroth is changed by the writer of the Chronicles into Beth-elohim,temples of the gods; or rather he has interpreted it in this manner withoutaltering the sense, as the Astartes are merely mentioned as the principaldeities for the idols generally. The writer of the Chronicles has alsoomitted to mention the nailing of the corpses to the wall of Beth-shean,but he states instead that “they fastened his skull in the temple of Dagon,”a fact which is passed over in the account before us. From this we may seehow both writers have restricted themselves to the principal points, orthose which appeared to them of the greatest importance (vid., Bertheauon 1 Chronicles 10:10).

When the inhabitants of Jabesh in Gilead heard this, all the brave men ofthe town set out to Beth-shean, took down the bodies of Saul and his sonsfrom the wall, brought them to Jabesh, and burned them there. “But theirbones they buried under the tamarisk at Jabesh, and fasted seven days,” tomourn for the king their former deliverer (see 1 Samuel 11:1-15). These statements aregiven in a very condensed form in the Chronicles (1 Samuel 31:11, 1 Samuel 31:12). Not only isthe fact that “they went the whole night” omitted, as being of no essentialimportance to the general history; but the removal of the bodies from thetown-wall is also passed over, because their being fastened there had notbeen mentioned, and also the burning of the bodies. The reason for the lastomission is not to be sought for in the fact that the author of theChronicles regarded burning as ignominious, according to Leviticus 20:14; Leviticus 21:9,but because he did not see how to reconcile the burning of the bodies withthe burial of the bones. It was not the custom in Israel to burn the corpse, but to bury it in theground. The former was restricted to the worst criminals (see at Leviticus 20:14). Consequently the Chaldee interpreted the word “burnt” as relatingto the burning of spices, a custom which we meet with afterwards as aspecial honour shown to certain of the kings of Judah on the occasion oftheir burial (2 Chronicles 16:14; 2 Chronicles 21:19; Jeremiah 34:5). But this is expressed byשׂרפה לו שׂרף, “to make a burning forhim,” whereas here it is stated distinctly that “they burnt them.” Thereason for the burning of the bodies in the case of Saul and his sons is to besought for in the peculiarity of the circumstances; viz., partly in the factthat the bodies were mutilated by the removal of the heads, and therefore aregular burial of the dead was impossible, and partly in their anxiety lest, ifthe Philistines followed up their victory and came to Jabesh, they shoulddesecrate the bodies still further. But even this was not a complete burningto ashes, but merely a burning of the skin and flesh; so that the bones stillremained, and they were buried in the ground under a shady tree. Insteadof “under the (well-known) tamarisk” ((eshel)), we have האלה תּחת (under the strong tree) in 1 Chronicles 10:11. David afterwardshad them fetched away and buried in Saul's family grave at Zela, in theland of Benjamin (2 Samuel 21:11.). The seven days' fast kept by theJabeshites was a sign of public and general mourning on the part of theinhabitants of that town at the death of the king, who had once rescuedthem from the most abominable slavery.

In this ignominious fate of Saul there was manifested the righteousjudgment of God in consequence of the hardening of his heart. But the lovewhich the citizens of Jabesh displayed in their treatment of the corpses ofSaul and his sons, had reference not to the king as rejected by God, but tothe king as anointed with the Spirit of Jehovah, and was a practicalcondemnation, not of the divine judgment which had fallen upon Saul, butof the cruelty of the enemies of Israel and its anointed. For although Saulhad waged war almost incessantly against the Philistines, it is not knownthat in any one of his victories he had ever been guilty of such crueltiestowards the conquered and slaughtered foe as could justify this barbarousrevenge on the part of the uncircumcised upon his lifeless corpse.