The Kingdom · c. 1010 BC
Chapter 7
Mount Gilboa
Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives.In their death, they were not divided.They were swifter than eagles.They were stronger than lions.
For parents
King Saul goes to a medium and asks her to bring up the dead prophet Samuel, and Samuel speaks to him; it is told as the Bible tells it, without explanation (1 Samuel 28). Raiders burn David’s town and carry off the families, and David and his men kill the raiders (1 Samuel 30). In battle the Philistines kill Saul’s sons, and Saul and his armor bearer take their own lives by falling on their swords. The Philistines cut off Saul’s head and fasten his body to a city wall, and David has a man put to death who says he killed Saul (1 Samuel 31; 1 Chronicles 10; 2 Samuel 1). None of it is told in gory detail.
was living in the land of the . He had gone over to , the king of , with his six hundred men and their households, and Achish had given him the town of to live in. David lived in the Philistines’ country a year and four months in all.
In those days the Philistines gathered their armies to go to war against Israel. Achish said to David, “Be sure of this: you and your men will march out with me in the army.”
“Then you will know what I can do,” David said to Achish.
“Then I will make you my bodyguard forever,” Achish told him.
By now was dead. All Israel had mourned for him, and they had buried him in , his own town. And had driven the and the out of the land.
The Philistines came together and set up camp at . Saul gathered all Israel, and they camped on . When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart shook with fear.
Saul asked the Lord for an answer, but the Lord gave him none, not by dreams, not by the , and not by .
Then Saul told his servants, “Look for a woman who is a medium. I will go to her and ask her.”
“There is a woman at who is a medium,” they told him.
Saul disguised himself in other clothes and set out with two men, and they came to the woman by night. “Please ask the spirit for me,” Saul said, “and bring up whoever I name to you.”
The woman said to him, “Look, you know what Saul has done. He has rid the land of mediums and wizards. So why are you setting a trap for me, to have me put to death?”
Saul swore an oath to her by the Lord. “As the Lord lives,” he said, “you will not be punished for this.”
“Who should I bring up for you?” the woman asked.
“Bring up Samuel for me,” he said.
When the woman saw Samuel, she let out a loud cry. “Why have you tricked me?” she said to Saul. “You are Saul!”
The king said to her, “Don’t be afraid! What do you see?”
“I see a god coming up out of the earth,” the woman said.
“What does he look like?” he asked her.
“An old man is coming up,” she said. “He is wrapped in a robe.”
Saul knew then that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground to show respect.
Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you troubled me and brought me up?”
“I am in terrible trouble,” Saul answered. “The Philistines are making war against me, and God has gone away from me. He doesn’t answer me anymore, not by prophets and not by dreams. So I have called you to let me know what I should do.”
“Why do you ask me, then,” said Samuel, “when the Lord has gone away from you and turned against you? The Lord has done to you just what he said through me. He has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David.
“You did not obey the Lord. You did not carry out his fierce anger against . That is why the Lord has done this thing to you today. What is more, the Lord will hand Israel over to the Philistines along with you, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The Lord will hand the army of Israel over to the Philistines as well.”
At once Saul fell full length on the ground, terrified by Samuel’s words. There was no strength left in him, because he had not eaten any bread all day or all night.
The woman came to Saul and saw how troubled he was. “Look,” she said, “I listened to you. I put my life in danger to do what you asked. Now please listen to me too. Let me set a piece of bread in front of you. Eat, so that you will have strength when you go on your way.”
But he refused. “I won’t eat,” he said. His servants joined the woman in urging him to eat, and at last he did as they said. He rose from the ground and sat on the bed.
The woman had a fattened calf in the house. She quickly killed it, and she kneaded some flour and baked bread without yeast. She set the food in front of Saul and his servants, and they ate. Then they got up and went away that same night.
The Philistines gathered all their armies at , and the Israelites camped by the spring in . The Philistine rulers marched past by hundreds and by thousands, and David and his men marched at the back with Achish.
“What are these doing here?” the Philistine commanders asked.
Achish said to them, “Isn’t this David, the servant of Saul king of Israel? He has been with me for days now, or rather for years, and from the day he joined me until today I haven’t found a thing wrong with him.”
But the commanders were angry with him. “Send the man back,” they said, “back to the place you gave him. Don’t let him go down with us into battle, or in the battle he may turn against us. How could this fellow make peace with his master again? Wouldn’t it be with the heads of our men here? Isn’t this the David they sang about as they danced: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”
So Achish called David. “As the Lord lives,” he said, “you have done what is right, and I am pleased to have you serving with me in the army. Since the day you came to me, I have found nothing bad in you. But the rulers don’t think well of you. So go back now, and go in peace, and don’t do anything to upset the Philistine rulers.”
“But what have I done?” David asked Achish. “From the day I came into your service until now, what have you found against me? Why can’t I go out and fight the enemies of my lord the king?”
“I know that you are as good as an of God to me,” Achish answered David. “Even so, the Philistine commanders have said, ‘He is not to go up with us into battle.’ So now, get up early in the morning with your master’s servants who came with you. As soon as you are up and it is light, go.”
So David and his men got up early, to leave in the morning and go back to Philistine country. And the Philistines went up to Jezreel.
On the third day, David and his men reached Ziklag. The had made a raid on and on Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it. They had taken the women and everyone else in the town captive, young and old. They had killed no one, but carried them all off and gone on their way.
When David and his men came to the town, they found it burned down, and their wives, sons and daughters carried off as captives. David and the people with him wept out loud until they had no more strength to weep.
David’s two wives had been taken captive too: from Jezreel, and , who had been the wife of Nabal of Carmel.
David was in great distress, because the people were talking of stoning him. Every one of them was grieving for his sons and daughters. But David took strength from the Lord his God.
David said to the priest, the son of , “Please bring the here to me.” And Abiathar brought the ephod to David.
Then David asked the Lord, “If I go after this raiding band, will I catch up with them?”
“Go after them,” came the answer. “You will certainly catch up with them, and you will certainly recover everything.”
So David set out with his six hundred men, and they came to the brook , where some stayed behind. Two hundred of them were so worn out that they couldn’t cross the brook, and they stayed there, while David kept up the chase with four hundred.
In a field they came across an Egyptian, and they took him to David. They gave him bread to eat and water to drink, and then a piece of fig cake and two bunches of raisins. Once he had eaten, his strength came back. He hadn’t had any bread or water for three days and three nights.
“Who do you belong to?” David asked him. “Where are you from?”
“I’m a young man from Egypt,” he said, “the servant of an Amalekite. My master left me behind when I fell sick, three days ago. We raided the part of the South where the Cherethites live, the land that belongs to , and the part of the South that belongs to . And we burned Ziklag.”
“Will you lead me down to this raiding band?” David asked.
“Swear to me by God that you will not kill me, and will not hand me over to my master,” he said, “and I’ll lead you down to them.”
So he brought David down, and there were the raiders, spread out everywhere, eating, drinking and dancing over all the great plunder they had carried off from Philistine country and from Judah.
David struck them down from the twilight right up to the evening of the next day. Not one man escaped, except four hundred young men who rode on camels and fled.
David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his two wives. Not a thing was missing, small or great: no son or daughter, no plunder, nothing they had taken. David brought it all back.
David took all the flocks and herds as well. They drove them along in front of the other animals and said, “This is David’s plunder.”
Then David came to the two hundred who had been left at the brook Besor, too weak to follow him. They came out to meet David and the people with him, and as David came near, he greeted them.
But some of the men who had gone with David, all the wicked and worthless ones, spoke up. “Since they didn’t go with us,” they said, “they get none of the plunder we won back. Each man can take his wife and children and go, but nothing more.”
“My brothers, don’t do this with what the Lord has given us,” David said. “He has kept us safe, and he has put the raiders who attacked us into our hands. Who would listen to you on this? The man who stays with the baggage gets the same share as the man who goes down into the battle. They will all share alike.”
From that day on, David made this a rule and a law for Israel, and so it has been to this day.
When David came to Ziklag, he sent some of the plunder to the elders of Judah, his friends, with a message: “Here is a present for you from the plunder of the Lord’s enemies.” He sent it to Bethel, Ramoth in the South, Jattir, Aroer, Eshtemoa, Hormah and , to several other towns, and to the towns of the Jerahmeelites and the Kenites. It went to every place where he and his men used to stay.
Now the Philistines fought against Israel. The men of Israel ran from the Philistines and fell dead on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines chased hard after Saul and his sons and caught up with them, and they killed Saul’s sons , Abinadab and Malchishua.
The battle went hard against Saul. The archers caught up with him, and he was in great distress because of the archers. Then Saul said to his armor bearer, “Draw your sword and stab me with it, before these men come and stab me and treat me shamefully.” But his armor bearer refused, because he was terrified. So Saul took his own life by falling on his sword.
When his armor bearer saw that Saul was dead, he did the same. He fell on his sword and died with him. So Saul died that same day, and with him his three sons, his armor bearer and all his men. 1 Chronicles says that Saul died with his three sons, and his whole household died together.
The Israelites living beyond the valley, and those across the , saw that Israel’s men had run and that Saul and his sons were dead. So they left their towns and ran away, and the Philistines came and lived in them. 1 Chronicles says it was the men of Israel in the valley who saw this.
The next day the Philistines came to strip the bodies, and they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. They cut off his head, stripped off his armor, and sent word all around the land of the Philistines, to the temple of their and to the people. They laid his armor in the temple of the , and they fastened his body to the wall of . 1 Chronicles says the armor went into the temple of their gods, and that they fastened his head in ’s temple.
When the people who lived in heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, all the brave men among them got up and traveled all night. They took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth Shan, came to Jabesh, and burned them there. Then they buried the bones under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, and for seven days they fasted, going without food. 1 Chronicles says they buried the bones under the oak in Jabesh.
1 Chronicles gives the reason Saul died: the wrong he had done against the Lord. He had not kept the Lord’s word. He had also gone to a medium for advice, and had not asked the Lord. That is why the Lord killed him. The Lord turned the kingdom over to David the son of .
Saul was dead. David had come back from striking down the Amalekites and had been in Ziklag two days. The next day a man came from Saul’s camp, with torn clothes and dirt on his head, the way people mourned. When he reached David, he bowed down to the ground to show respect.
“Where are you coming from?” David asked him.
“I’ve escaped from the camp of Israel,” he said.
“How did it go?” said David. “Please tell me.”
“The army ran from the battle,” he answered. “Many of the men fell and died. Saul and Jonathan his son are dead too.”
“How do you know that Saul and Jonathan his son are dead?” David asked the young man.
“I was on Mount Gilboa, just by chance,” the young man said, “and I saw Saul leaning on his spear. The chariots and the horsemen were coming close behind him. He looked back and saw me, and he called to me. I said, ‘Here I am.’ ‘Who are you?’ he asked, and I told him, ‘I’m an Amalekite.’
“Then he said to me, ‘Please stand beside me and kill me. I am in agony, because I am still alive.’ So I stood by him and killed him, because I was sure he couldn’t live after he had fallen. I took the crown that was on his head and the bracelet on his arm, and I’ve brought them here to you, my lord.”
David took hold of his own clothes and tore them. All his men did the same. They mourned and wept and went without food until evening, for Saul and for Jonathan his son, for the Lord’s people and for the nation of Israel, because they had been killed by the sword.
Then David asked the young man, “Where are you from?”
“I’m the son of a foreigner,” he answered, “an Amalekite.”
“Why weren’t you afraid to raise your hand against the Lord’s and destroy him?” David asked him.
Then David called one of his young men. “Go and strike him down!” he said. The young man struck him, and he died. And David said to him, “Your death is your own fault. Your own words were the witness against you, when you said, ‘I have killed the Lord’s anointed.’”
Then David sang this lament, a song of grief, over Saul and his son Jonathan. He told them to teach it to the people of Judah: the song of the bow, which is written in the .
“Israel, your glory was struck down on your heights!How the mighty have fallen!Don’t tell it in Gath.Don’t spread the news in the streets of ,or the Philistines’ daughters will be glad,the daughters of the uncircumcised will celebrate.
Mountains of Gilboa,let there be no dew on you, no rain,and no fields of offerings,for there the shield of the mighty was dishonored and thrown away,the shield of Saul was not anointed with oil.
From the blood of the slain,from the bodies of the mighty,Jonathan’s bow never turned back,and Saul’s sword never came back empty.
Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in life,and in their death they were not divided.They were swifter than eagles.They were stronger than lions.You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,who dressed you finely in scarletand put gold ornaments on your clothes.
How the mighty have fallen in the middle of the battle!Jonathan was struck down on your heights.My heart aches for you, my brother Jonathan.You were a delight to me.Your love for me was wonderful,surpassing the love of women.How the mighty have fallen,and the weapons of war have perished!”