October 15, 2019: Day 31 – I Samuel 31

We come to the end of the chapter and we come to the end of the life of Saul.  He does go into battle against the Philistines and he loses that battle handily, to the point where he and his sons are all killed.  Israel was conquered and Saul was able to see that he did not have a chance so instead of being taken alive he asked his trusty armor bearer to kill him.  That didn’t go over well, he said no, so Paul killed himself and the armor bearer also killed himself.  

Notice when the Philistines realized that they had killed King Saul.  It wasn’t until the next day in vs. 8.  They took his body and cut off his head and used it as a trophy to display for whoever would see that they were able to do this.  They also attributed their victory to one of their gods, Astarte, who happened to be the goddess of war and sexual love.  They put  Saul’s body in her temple.

There were some Israelites, we assume, from Jabesh-gilead who saw the atrocities the Philistines were committing and they took down Paul’s body and those of his sons and gave them the proper cremation burial and fasted as they were supposed to.  So ends the life of Saul, but also of his son Jonathan which, as we will see later, really bothers David.