June 05, 2024 | Be God's Light
Saul Commits Suicide in Defeat to Philistines
Scripture: 1 Samuel 31 (NIV)
1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel; the Israelites fled before them, and many fell dead on Mount Gilboa. 2 The Philistines were in hot pursuit of Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malki-Shua. 3 The fighting grew fierce around Saul, and when the archers overtook him, they wounded him critically.
4 Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me.”
But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. 5 When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him. 6 So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together that same day.
7 When the Israelites along the valley and those across the Jordan saw that the Israelite army had fled and that Saul and his sons had died, they abandoned their towns and fled. And the Philistines came and occupied them.
8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9 They cut off his head and stripped off his armor, and they sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news in the temple of their idols and among their people. 10 They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan.
11 When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 all their valiant men marched through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan and went to Jabesh, where they burned them. 13 Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and they fasted seven days.
Devotional
King Saul’s life came to a sad and inglorious end. His army was fleeing, his sons were killed in battle, and he was critically wounded. After committing suicide, his severed head was dishonored by being paraded on a Philistine victory march, his armor was defiled by being placed in a pagan temple, and his body was disgraced by being fastened to a wall for public humiliation.
1 Chronicles 10:10 tells us that eventually they “hung up his head in the temple of Dagon,” their pagan, false god. Not long before Israel made Saul their first king, the Philistines had captured the ark of God and placed it in the temple of Dagon. Overnight, the Dagon statue fell on its face, head and hands broken off, with only its body remaining (see 1 Samuel 5:1-5). Now the head of Saul was placed before the headless body of Dagon as the ultimate insult. Encounters with Dagon were bad bookends to Saul’s troubled life.
The people of Israel had asked for a king, like the other nations had, to solve their domestic and international problems. Instead, they got a paranoid monarch who led them away from dependence upon God and into dependence upon Philistine false deities.
The Bible says, “So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then” (1 Peter 1:14, NLT).
What are the “gods” in your life that never seem to go away? Are there any sins or temptations you just can’t shake? What is the Lord asking you to do about it?
Poem
We Stand Here Today
We stand here today by the body of Saul
A youth filled with promise, admired by all
A young king beset with depression and rage
A man trapped and locked up in jealousy’s cage
A person so scattered in mind with blind hate
Who instead turned on friends, reason could not abate
Who gave up his kingdom and lost his own soul
Because he lost sight of his God and God’s goal
He never would listen to those he should trust
A truly sad life now returns to the dust
