1 Samuel 31
The enemies Saul should have been fighting have come at last. On the eve of battle he crept to Endor and heard only a dead prophet's voice: to morrow he and his sons would be among the dead. This chapter is that morrow, told with terrible economy - no speech, no last great deed, no turning back. The Philistines fight. Israel flees and falls. The archers find Saul, and rather than be taken he falls upon his own sword.3
By morning his headless body hangs on a pagan wall and his armour is a trophy in a foreign temple. The reign begun in the people's own strength ends in the very dishonour Saul most dreaded. Then, in the last three verses, a single light: the men of Jabeshgilead, a town Saul once rescued, rise in the night and bring the bodies home. The throne stands empty now, waiting for the one the LORD had already anointed.
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People in this chapter
A tall Benjamite chosen when Israel demanded a king like the other nations. Began with humility, then unraveled into jealousy, paranoia, and rebellion. The Spirit of the Lord left him, and he died on Mount Gilboa by his own hand.
A brave warrior who climbed a cliff with his armor-bearer to rout a Philistine garrison. Loved David enough to give him his own robe and sword and to choose his friend’s coronation over his own.
1 Samuel 31:1-6The Battle on Mount Gilboa
1Now the Philistines fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa. 2And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchishua, Saul's sons. 3And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers.
No preamble, no prayer, no rallying cry - just battle and rout in a single line (v. 1). The same army that had been delivered again and again now breaks and runs, and the mountain that should have been their high ground becomes the place where they fall. This is the field the dead prophet named the night before, when Saul crept to Endor for a word and heard only doom. The reader already knows how the day must end; the verse simply lets it begin. There is a sober weight in the plainness of it. A reign that opened with the Spirit rushing upon a young king and Israel rallying behind him now closes with Israel scattered across a hillside and the king's own sons cut down around him. Everything Saul grasped at - the throne, the name, the security of being like all the nations - comes apart in a single afternoon.3
Three sons fall on the mountain with their father, and the name listed first is the one that lands hardest: Jonathan (v. 2). This is the prince who could have grasped at the crown and would not, who knew the kingdom was passing to David and made peace with it, who loved David as his own soul and bound himself to him in covenant. He had every earthly reason to resent David and chose instead to love him; and now he dies on his father's losing field, faithful to a father who had thrown a spear at him and faithful in his heart to the friend who would one day mourn him. In the ancient world a man's sons were his future, his name carried forward, his house secured; for all three to fall before their father is the undoing of the whole house of Saul. The dynasty the people wanted ends not in an orderly succession but in a heap of the slain. And the grief of it is doubled for the reader who has walked with Jonathan through these chapters: the best man in Saul's house dies with the worst of the day.
4Then 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. 5And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him. 6So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together.
With everyone else fled, the king turns to the one man still at his shoulder - and asks him to do the unthinkable (v. 4). The armourbearer was a place of trust and nearness: the young man who carried the king's weapons, who stood closest to him in the press of battle. Of this faithful one Saul asks the single thing he cannot do. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. His fear is not cowardice in the face of the Philistines; it is dread at the thing he is being asked to do - to lay a hand on the LORD's anointed, the very thing David twice refused to do when Saul's life lay open in his hand. There is a quiet rebuke folded into the refusal. The armourbearer, unnamed and forgotten, will not raise his sword against the king; the king raises it against himself. And the loyalty that would not strike will, in the next breath, follow Saul into death rather than survive him.
The same word the boy David once flung at Goliath in faith, Saul now speaks in terror. Uncircumcised was the old contemptuous name for the Philistines, the people outside the covenant; David had hurled it as a challenge - who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God? - while Saul drags it out as the measure of his dread (v. 4). He cannot bear the thought of being taken alive and made a spectacle, tortured and mocked for the sport of the enemy. It is a real fear, and the chapter will show it was not unfounded. Yet there is a bitter irony in it. Saul tries by his own hand to escape dishonour, and the dishonour comes anyway - his head struck off, his body hung on a wall, his armour set up in a pagan temple. The death he chose to avoid abuse did not spare him from it. A man cannot finally outrun the consequences he has spent a life setting in motion, and the sword in his own hand cannot purchase the peace he never sought from God.
The end comes in three short, terrible strokes. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it (v. 4). The armourbearer, seeing his king dead, fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him (v. 5). And the day is summed up in a single line: So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together (v. 6). The narrator records it without a word of comment - no curse, no sermon, no softening. He lets the plain fact carry its own weight, and it is heavier for the silence. That same day together gathers the whole house of Saul and the men who served it into one sentence and closes the book on them. This is the reign Israel demanded so they might be like the nations, and this is its harvest. The companion account in Chronicles adds the line this chapter leaves unspoken - that Saul died for his transgression, and because he enquired not of the LORD. Here that verdict is left for the reader to supply, standing over a field of the dead and remembering all the warnings that brought it to pass.2
1 Samuel 31:7-10The Cities Forsaken; the Dead Dishonoured
7And 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 defeat does not stay on the mountain; it spreads across the land like a tide going out. When the people of the surrounding region - those across the valley and beyond the Jordan - see that the army has fled and that Saul and his sons are dead, they abandon their towns: they forsook the cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them (v. 7). This is the cost of a king's failure measured in ordinary lives. Whole communities are uprooted; homes that Israelite families had held are simply walked into by the enemy and occupied. The ground Saul had been raised up to defend is given away in a single rout. There is a hard lesson in the chain of it: when those entrusted with leadership turn from the LORD, it is not only they who fall; the people under them lose the very places they live. The Philistines do not merely win a battle here - they move into the houses. The reign that was meant to deliver Israel from her enemies ends by handing them her cities.
8And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa. 9And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. 10And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan.
On the next day the victors come to plunder the dead, and they find the great prize: Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa (v. 8). What follows is the precise dishonour Saul had begged his armourbearer to spare him. They cut off his head, and stripped off his armour (v. 9) - the same grim trophy-taking that the boy David had once done to Goliath, now turned against the king of Israel. And they make it a religious triumph. They send the news into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. This is not only a military victory broadcast; it is a theological boast. By proclaiming Saul's death in the temples of their gods, the Philistines are declaring that their idols have defeated the God of Israel. It is the same taunt Goliath had made on the field years before, and it is the lie the whole book has been answering: that the dead idols of the nations are stronger than the living LORD. The boast is loud, and for a day it seems true. But the God whose anointed has fallen is not the one who has been defeated; it is the king who would not hear Him.
The desecration reaches its lowest point in verse 10. Saul's armour is hung up as a votive offering in the temple of Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Philistines - his weapons dedicated to a foreign deity as proof of her power, the way Israel had once kept the sword of Goliath behind the ephod as a memorial of the LORD's victory. And his body, headless, is fastened to the outer wall of Bethshan, a city overlooking the valley, hung up where every traveller and every soldier could see the corpse of Israel's first king rot in the open. For a body to go unburied was, in that world, the deepest shame that could be done to the dead. Everything Saul feared in verse 4 has come upon him in full. And yet the very excess of the dishonour will become the occasion for the chapter's last and most surprising turn. The body hung up to shame Israel will be the thing that calls out Israel's love. What the enemy means as a trophy, a handful of faithful men will treat as a charge laid upon them in the night.
1 Samuel 31:11-13The Valiant Men of Jabeshgilead
11And when the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul; 12All 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 came to Jabesh, and burnt them there. 13And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.
Of all the towns in Israel, it is Jabeshgilead that rises in the dark - and that is the whole meaning of the scene. When the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul (v. 11), they did not stay safe behind their walls across the Jordan. They remembered. At the very beginning of his reign, this was the town Saul had saved. The Ammonite king Nahash had besieged Jabesh and demanded the right eye of every man as the price of surrender; and the Spirit of God came upon the newly chosen Saul, and he gathered Israel and broke the siege and delivered the city. Now, a lifetime later, with Saul's house in ruins and his name a Philistine trophy, the people of Jabesh pay back that first kindness in the only coin left to give. The whole book has shown Saul's slow descent; here, in its last verses, it lets one early grace come full circle. The good a man did in his best hour is not always lost; sometimes it waits, years on, in the memory of those he helped, and rises to honour him when he can no longer help himself.
What the men of Jabesh do is costly and brave at every step. They arose, and went all night - a long march under cover of darkness, through territory the Philistines had just overrun - and they took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Bethshan (v. 12), pulling the king's corpse down from the place of its shame while the enemy slept. Then they came to Jabesh, and burnt them there. Burning the dead was not the ordinary practice in Israel, which buried its dead whole, and the early commentators weighed the act with care. The likeliest reason is the very tenderness of it: the bodies had been mutilated and exposed and were past the point where they could be carried home intact, and burning preserved what dignity remained and put the remains forever beyond the reach of further desecration. This was an act of guarding, not scorn. Whatever the Philistines had done, they would do no more. Then they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh (v. 13), giving to the king the resting place in the earth that the wall of Bethshan had denied him.1
Further study
- The Hebrew text of 1 Samuel 31 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators alongside - useful for the verb chalal behind “sore wounded” (v. 3), for kol 'ish chayil, “all the valiant men” (v. 12), and for the question the early rabbis weighed over the men of Jabesh burning rather than burying the bodies (vv. 12-13).
- 1 Samuel 31 ↔ 2 Samuel 1 · 1 Chronicles 10 · Hosea 10Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying this chapter to the rest of Scripture - Saul's fall retold in 1 Chronicles 10 with the LORD's own verdict attached (he enquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him), David's lament over Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1, and the prophet's “king cut off as the foam upon the water” (Hos. 10:7).
- 1 Samuel 31 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on 1 Samuel 31 - the rout on Gilboa and the death of Saul's sons (vv. 1-2), the archers and the king's mortal wounding (v. 3), the armourbearer's refusal and Saul's death (vv. 4-6), the desecration at Bethshan (vv. 8-10), and the geography of Jabeshgilead's night rescue (vv. 11-13).
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Battle on Mount Gilboa
- 1 Samuel 15:23Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.The word long since spoken over Saul, coming due on Gilboa (vv. 1-6).
- 1 Chronicles 10:13-14So Saul died for his transgression... and enquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David.The verdict this chapter leaves unspoken, supplied by the parallel account of verse 6.
- John 10:17-18I lay down my life... No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.The true King who does not fall on his sword but gives his life freely - set against verse 4.
- Hosea 10:7As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water.The fate of a throne raised in self-will - the pattern of Saul’s end.
- Matthew 26:52Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.Christ refusing the sword Saul fell upon - a kingdom not defended by the blade.
- Luke 22:42saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.The willing surrender that answers Saul’s self-willed end (v. 4) - a King who bends to the Father.
- Hebrews 1:8But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.The throne Gilboa leaves empty (v. 6), filled at last by the Son of David whose reign does not fall.
The Cities Forsaken; the Dead Dishonoured
- 2 Samuel 21:12David... took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from the men of Jabeshgilead... which had stolen them from the street of Bethshan.The wall of Bethshan (v. 10) remembered - David later gathers Saul’s bones to a final rest.
- Galatians 3:13Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.The body hung up in shame (v. 10) answered - the curse borne willingly on the tree.
- 1 Samuel 17:46that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.David’s answer to the Philistine boast - set against the idols’ triumph published in verse 9.
- Psalm 79:2-3The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven... and there was none to bury them.The horror of the unburied dead (v. 10) - the shame the men of Jabesh will undo.
- Deuteronomy 21:22-23his body shall not remain all night upon the tree... for he that is hanged is accursed of God.The Law on a body hung up - the backdrop to both Bethshan’s wall and the cross.
The Valiant Men of Jabeshgilead
- 1 Samuel 11:1-11And the Spirit of God came upon Saul... and he came... and slew the Ammonites... So the men of Jabeshgilead were delivered.The first kindness the men of Jabesh now repay (vv. 11-13) - Saul’s rescue of their town.
- 2 Samuel 1:25-26I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan... thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.The grief over the dead of Gilboa - David’s lament for the friend who fell in verse 2.
- 2 Samuel 2:4-5David sent messengers unto the men of Jabeshgilead... Blessed be ye of the LORD, that ye have shewed this kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul.David himself blessing the burial of verses 12-13 - mercy that does not go unseen.
- John 19:38-42Joseph of Arimathaea... took the body of Jesus... There laid they Jesus... in the sepulchre.The same loyalty as the men of Jabesh - a body taken down and honoured, this time the King who would rise.
- Matthew 28:6He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.The word that answers every burial in Scripture - the tree at Jabesh held bones; the tomb gave up the King.