'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 uncircumsised 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. 8. And 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. 9. And they out 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. 10. And
they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his
body to the wall of Beth-shan. 11. And when the inhabitants of
Jabesh-gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul; 12.
All the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of
Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and came to
Jabesh, and burnt them there. 19. And they took their bones, and buried
them under a tree at Jabesh. and fasted seven days.'--1 Samuel xxxi.
1-13.
The story of Saul's tragic last days is broken in two by the account,
in chapters xxix. and xxx., 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 1 Samuel xxix. 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 of verse 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.'
There seems to have been a close encounter with some of the pursuers,
and a hand-to-hand fight, in which Jonathan and his two brothers fell,
and the rest of the bodyguard were slain or scattered. The prophecy of
that mantle-swathed shape last night was in part fulfilled--'To-morrow
shalt thou and thy sons be with me.' They lay stark at his feet, and he
knew that he would soon join them. The last heart that loved him had
ceased to beat in Jonathan's noble breast, and his own crimes had slain
his sons. Who can paint the storm of contending passions in that lonely
black soul? or were they all frozen into the numbness of despair?
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 verse 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 (v. 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 verse 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 1 Chronicles x. 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.