1 Samuel 31:1 - Meaning and Application

The day of repayment has now come. Saul must answer for the blood of the Amalekites, whom he spared in sin, and for the priests, whom he murdered with greater sin. Even David’s blood, which he wanted to spill, must also be counted. So the day David had foretold has arrived, when Saul would go into battle and die (1 Samuel 26:10). Come and see the righteous judgments of God.

First, he sees his soldiers fall around him. We are not told whether the Philistines were larger in number, better placed, or better led, but they seem to have fought more fiercely, because they attacked first. They fought against Israel, and Israel fled and fell. The best troops were thrown into confusion, and many were killed, likely including those Saul had used in hunting David. In this way, the men who had followed Saul in sin went before him in his fall and shared in his punishments.

Second, he sees his sons fall before him. The victorious Philistines pressed hardest on the king of Israel and the men around him. His three sons were likely near him, and all three were killed in front of him, which brought him deep grief, since they were the hope of his family. It also filled him with fear, because they had been guarding him, and he could only expect that his own turn would come next. Their names are given later (1 Samuel 31:2), and it hurts us to find Jonathan among them, that wise, brave, good man who was David’s friend, though Saul’s enemy. Yet he too falls with the rest.

Jonathan’s duty to his father would not let him stay home or leave when the battle began. Providence orders that he should die in the common fate of his family, even though he never shared its guilt. So Eliphaz’s saying does not hold here, “Who has ever perished being innocent?” (Job 4:7). What should we say about this? God was completing Saul’s grief in his dying moments, and carrying out judgment on his house. If the family had to fall, Jonathan, one of it, had to fall with it.

God also used this to make David’s path to the throne clearer. Jonathan himself would likely have gladly given up every claim to David, and we have no reason to doubt that. But many of the people might have used Jonathan’s name to support Saul’s house, or at least they might have come to David more slowly. If Ishbosheth, Saul’s son who stayed at home because he was unfit for battle, had so many supporters, what would Jonathan have had? He had been the people’s favorite and had never lost their affection. Those who wanted a king like the nations would have strongly backed Saul’s family, especially if the crown had seemed ready to fall on Jonathan. That would have made David’s path harder.

If Jonathan had brought all his influence to David, people might have said that Jonathan made David king, when God alone should have the glory. This is the Lord’s doing. So even though Jonathan’s death was a great sorrow to David, it helped him in two ways. It reminded him how fragile human life is, and it made his rise to the throne easier.

God also shows us here that the difference between the godly and the wicked is often shown in the next world, not in this one. All things happen alike to all. We cannot judge a person’s spiritual state, or their eternal end, by the way they die, because one event comes to the righteous and the wicked alike.

Third, Saul is badly wounded by the Philistines and then killed by his own hand. The archers hit him (1 Samuel 31:3), so he could neither fight nor escape. That meant he would surely fall into their hands. In this way, his destruction comes little by little, making his misery greater, and he dies while feeling himself die. He is brought so low that he wants to die by the hand of his own servant rather than the Philistines, so they will not abuse him as they had abused Samson.

Poor man, he is only concerned with keeping his body out of Philistine hands, instead of caring to give his soul back to God, who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). He lived proud and suspicious, and he died the same way, a burden to himself and everyone around him. Those who understand this rightly know that it matters little, compared with eternity, how death itself goes, as long as things are well after death. Truly miserable are those who are bitter in soul and long for death, but it does not come (Job 3:20, Job 3:21), especially those who, like Judas, despair of God’s mercy and rush into a hell ahead of them to escape the hell within them.

When Saul could not get his servant to kill him, he killed himself, thinking to avoid shame. Instead, he committed a terrible sin and brought a lasting stain on his name, as a self-murderer. Jonathan received his death wound from the Philistines and died bravely in war, on the bed of honor. But Saul died like a fool dies, like a coward dies, as a proud fool and a sneaking coward. He died like a man with no fear of God, no hope in God, no true reason as a man, and no faith as an Israelite, much less the dignity of a prince or the courage of a soldier. Let us all pray, “Lord, do not lead us into this temptation.”

His armor-bearer refused to run him through, and that was right. No servant should become a slave to his master’s lusts or passions. He was afraid, though not of death, since Saul rushed toward that willingly. Rather, he seems to have had such respect for his king that he could not bring himself to harm him. Or perhaps he feared that a trembling hand would only wound Saul partly and make his suffering worse.

Fourth, Saul’s armor-bearer refused to kill him, but he did not refuse to die with him. He fell on his sword too (1 Samuel 31:5). This made Saul’s death worse, because by his own wicked example of self-murder, he drew his servant into the same sin, and he did not perish alone in his wrongdoing. The Jews say Saul’s armor-bearer was Doeg, whom Saul had raised to that honor for killing the priests, and if that was so, then violence truly came back on his own head. David had foretold that God would destroy Doeg forever (Psalm 52:5).

Fifth, the whole country was thrown into confusion by the defeat of Saul’s army. The people of the nearby cities, on the other side of the Jordan, fled, and for a time the Philistines took over those places, until matters were settled in Israel (1 Samuel 31:7). Saul’s wickedness had brought his country to such a sad state that it might have stayed in the hands of the uncircumcised, if God had not raised up David to repair its broken walls.

See what kind of king they ended up with, the one they chose when they rejected God and Samuel. They had also kept doing evil, it is to be feared, just as Saul had, and so both they and their king were destroyed, as the prophet had warned them earlier (1 Samuel 12:25). This lesson is taken up again much later (Hosea 13:10-11): “Where are your kings now, the ones you asked for when you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’? I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” In other words, Saul was a burden to them in life and in death, and they could expect no better from such a choice.