I’m going to veer just a smidge from the reading plan this week. Reasons:
- The narrative begun in 1 Samuel 31 finds its conclusion in 2nd Samuel 1 (and even in 2 Sam. 21) and I think it’ll be helpful to get the whole account at once.
- I’m grouping more of the “Acent Psalms” or “Psalms of Degrees” together.
- Psalm 18 is special and feels better to me to be paired with 2nd Samuel 2. You’ll see why when we get there.
THE DEATH OF SAUL
Locations: (L to R in back) Israel’s camp near Jezreel Spring, Direction of retreating Israelite army, Battle location, Philistine camp in Shunem, Mt. Moreh, Saul seeks Endor witch advice, Mt. Tabor. Foreground locations: slopes of Gilboa where Saul & sons are killed, town of Bet Shan where the Philistines fasten their bodies.
Now that we have a sense of location, let’s remember that Saul has just met with the Witch of Endor. Samuel appears from the grave and told Saul of his (and his sons’) impending death.
I rather doubt Saul would’ve told Jonathan or his other sons. Imagine how demoralized he would be going into battle knowing he would not survive and that his sons would not survive. This is the end of his dynasty.
The battle does not go well. The army of Israel is in retreat and falling before the Philistines. Saul’s sons fall one by one. Brave and good Jonathan falls. Abinadab and Melchishua fall. And finally Saul.
But Saul is rather like Boromir in the Fellowship of the Ring.
Remember, Saul is a BIG man. It takes a lot to stop him. And this is why we need to read 1st Samuel 31 AND 2nd Samuel 1 together.
“The fighting grew very fierce around Saul, and the Philistine archers caught up with him and wounded him severely. Saul groaned to his armor bearer, “Take your sword and kill me before these pagan Philistines come to run me through and taunt and torture me.” But his armor bearer was afraid and would not do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When his armor bearer realized that Saul was dead, he fell on his own sword and died beside the king.” 1 Samuel 31:3-5 NLT
Only… Saul wasn’t actually finished…
A man escapes from the battle and finds David, who has just returned from his own battle with the Amalekites to rescue their wives and children. He tells David that Saul and his sons are dead.
“How do you know Saul and Jonathan are dead?” David demanded of the young man. The man answered, “I happened to be on Mount Gilboa, and there was Saul leaning on his spear with the enemy chariots and charioteers closing in on him. When he turned and saw me, he cried out for me to come to him. ‘How can I help?’ I asked him. “He responded, ‘Who are you?’ “‘I am an Amalekite,’ I told him. “Then he begged me, ‘Come over here and put me out of my misery, for I am in terrible pain and want to die.’ “So I killed him,” the Amalekite told David, “for I knew he couldn’t live. Then I took his crown and his armband, and I have brought them here to you, my Lord.”
2 Samuel 1:5-10 NLT
When it says that Saul was “leaning on his spear” it doesn’t mean this:
Saul is not just chillin’. He’s lying on the weapon upon which he has fallen – a sword or spear or lance – whatever… a sharp pointy thing. And along comes – of all possible people – an Amalekite who puts him out of his misery.
If Saul had only obeyed the LORD all those years before and hadn’t spared the best of the Amalekites… It’s heartbreaking. The very thing that Saul had been soft on was the thing that dealt him the death blow.
Our Bible college president (and one of my favorite teachers) preached this passage to warn us about being soft on sin in our own lives. The Amalekites are everything that is self-serving, fleshly, power-hungry, sensual, and pleasure-seeking. They are an ancient problem, just like sin. And the people of God are commanded to be RUTHLESS with them. Israel was told to even execute the women and children and animals. They were to keep no spoils, but burn it all to the ground.
The spiritual parallel for us is that we don’t spare even the cute little sins. Cute little sins grow into tyrannical brutes that will not hesitate to end your life. It may seem all innocent fun and games now, but if you do not defeat it while it is small, you will find yourself its slave and not its master. We do not spare the most gorgeous, pleasurable sins, the sins that make us feel powerful or competent or significant. We do not allow the “spoils” to remain to feed lust and greed and pride; or even just to prop up misplaced faith in things over the Provider Himself.
No… The Amalekites must go.
Every. Last. One.
It’s not a coincidence that while David and his men are recovering their families from the Amalekites, Saul is dying at the hands of an Amalekite.
Sin (pride, selfishness, the flesh – call it what you will), will plunder your home and carry off your marriage and children and you’ll be left with nothing but ashes. It’s sin that does that. And the only way to stop it is to be absolutely ruthless with it.
Oh – and just like we’ve seen the Amalekites coming back over and over and over since Genesis, you’ll have to battle this foe many times until the Son of David comes to finally conquer it all and rid the land of it. But the battle begins in our hearts and minds.
“If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.”
1 John 1:8-9 NLT
I’ve heard 1 John 1:9 described as “the Christian’s bar of soap.” 🧼🛀😏
“My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.”
1 John 2:1-2 NLT
“So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.”
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.”
Galatians 5:16-17, 24 NLT
Saul was pierced by the arrows of the Philistines and finally by the sword of an Amalekite. We are called to pierce the sinful nature to the cross of Christ.
The Philistines decapitate Saul. (This is reminiscent of David decapitating Goliath.) Just as they put the Ark in the temple of Dagon to celebrate the perceived victory of their god over Israel’s God, they put the impressive armor of Saul in the temple of Asherah and impale his and his sons’ bodies to the wall of their nearby city of Bet-Shan.
Heroic men of Jabesh-Gilead go on a mission to recover the bodies.
They burned the corpses on a funeral pyre and more than likely put the bones into an ossuary – a stone box – which they interred in their town. These bones would later be exhumed on David’s orders and laid to rest in the tomb of Kish, Saul’s father, on their family land. But that’s part of a future story.
David and his men mourned for Saul and Jonathan. This shows us something of the character of these men. They had literally been hunted like deer by Saul for years. So much so that they had to go live with the enemies of Israel. But instead of having a BBQ or singing “Ding dong the wicked witch is dead,” they mourned and fasted.
Then David confronts the Amalekite:
🗡️🧔🏽♂️David: “Where are you from?”
👳🏽♂️ Amalekite: “I am the son of a stranger, an Amalekite.”
🗡️🧔🏽♂️David: “How is it you were not afraid to reach out with your hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed?”
🗡️🧔🏽♂️David to one of his soldiers: “Come forward, put him to death.” 🫡
🗡️🧔🏻🩸😵🪦
🗡️🧔🏽♂️David to the (dying) Amalekite: “Your blood is on your head, because your own mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have finished off the Lord’s anointed.’ ”
2 Samuel 1:13-16 NASB2020
HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN…
“Then David sang this funeral song over Saul and over Jonathan his son. And he ordered “The Bow” to be taught to the children of Judah. Look, it is written on the scroll of Jashar.”
2 Samuel 1:17-18 LEB
The word “Jashar” means reighteous or upright. So this was The book of the Upright or The Book of the Righteous Ones. The original one was lost and seems to have been an historical record of valiant men and extraordinary events in the time of the Judges and early kingdom period.
The Septuagint does not include anything about a “bow” in verse 17. Some translations suggest that “The Bow” is the name of the song and I lean toward this view. The Hebrew word for “bow” is qesheth and a central stanza of the song speaks of the qesheth of Jonathan. Some translations have David saying to teach the sons of Judah the use of the bow – as in, archery. But that makes little sense because they already taught archery as a military skill AND there is no phrase “the use of” in Hebrew. It’s just “the bow.” 🏹
And notice who David specifically asks to learn this song: the children of Judah. Judah is David’s tribe. They’re loyal to him. It would be easy for them to despise Saul and his family and take up an offense against Saul that not even David carried. David insists that future generations remember Saul and his family with respect for the good they did rather than the negative.
The song is full of feeling and poetry but in it David pronounces a curse on Mount Gilboa:
“O mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you or on the fields of grain for offerings, for there the small shield of the mighty was defiled, the small shield of Saul was not anointed with oil.”
2 Samuel 1:21 LEB
And apparently, Gilboa has a stubborn bald patch that many have tried (unsuccessfully) to get trees to grow on. Some wildflowers will periodically bloom, but most of the time, Gilboa looks like this:
The following is from a 2015 article in The Times of Israel:
If you visit the Gilboa in winter or spring, the mountain’s masses of wildflowers seem to belie the curse. Come in summer, however, and you can’t help but feel its effect. For aside from trees planted by the Jewish National Fund, all you find on the Gilboa are dried ferula plants, a few scattered shrubs and the hardy purple globe thistle
To wrap up, I’m gonna poke around on this word, qesheth (bow). 🏹
The bow figures prominently in the story of David and Jonathan. Recall that Jonathan used his bow to signal to David that it was not safe for him to stay in the capitol – which saved David’s life.
The first time qesheth appears in scripture is when God puts His “bow in the cloud.”
The rain-bow. 🌈
If God’s bow had an arrow, note who it would be aimed at… it’s not the earth. 👀
Interestingly, qesheth starts with the letter:
This letter even looks like a bow. 🏹
Look back at the letter quf. If you put an arrow on the modern Aramaic letter it would be shooting to the right. 🏹
The letter to the left of the quf in the word qesheth is the shin. Teeth. Destroyer. 🦷
Who is shooting the bow? The destroyer.
And the final letter tav tells us something about the destroyer. Tav looks like a cross ✝️ and is a mark, a strong indicator or indicator of strength. It’s also the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In Greek, Christ is the Alpha and Omega, but in Hebrew He is the Aleph and the Tav.
The letters together mean something like:
Day, destroyer/destruction, mark.
God put His bow in the sky after the day that was marked for destruction – the Flood. But there is another day marked for destruction.
“Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.”
Joel 1:15 ESV
“The sound of a tumult is on the mountains as of a great multitude! The sound of an uproar of kingdoms, of nations gathering together! The Lord of hosts is mustering a host for battle. They come from a distant land, from the end of the heavens, the Lord and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land. Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come!”
Isaiah 13:4-6 ESV
“But by the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people.”
2 Peter 3:7 LEB
God has long been an archer… 🏹 🎯
Here is a list of texts that depict lightening bolt the arrows from God’s bow: ⚡️
Psalms: 18:14, 64:7, 77:17, 144:6
Zechariah 9:14, Habakkuk 3:11.
“But his bow remained in a steady position; his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob. From there is the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel.”
Genesis 49:24 LEB
This verse is picturing this:
Perhaps after the final gloabal cataclysmic judgement by fire 🔥(which is the bookend to the Flood of Noah), 🌊 perhaps He will engineer a new phenomenon as a sign that the earth will never be destroyed by fire again. Wouldn’t that be cool?! 🤓
Ok. I’ve prattled on long enough. Thanks for reading. I’ll see you tomorrow.
To The Reader 