1 Chronicles 10:8 - Meaning and Application

From the Philistines’ victory over Saul’s body, we learn that the higher a person is raised, the greater the shame if he falls. Saul’s dead body, because he had been king, was treated more disgracefully than the bodies of the others who were slain. Promotion can make a person a special target for hatred.

We also learn that if we do not give God the glory for our victories, even the Philistines will rise up against us and condemn us. After they won the battle over Saul, they sent the news to their idols, those worthless gods who knew nothing of what had happened a few miles away until someone told them, and even then they knew nothing at all. They also placed Saul’s armor in the house of their gods (1 Chronicles 10:10). Should Dagon, their false god, get such an honored share in their triumphs, while the true and living God is forgotten in ours?

From the people of Jabesh-Gilead, who recovered the bodies of Saul and his sons, we learn that the dead deserve respect, especially dead rulers. We do not need to decide their eternal condition, since that belongs to God. But we should treat a dead body with care, remembering that it was joined to an immortal soul and will be joined to it again.

From God’s justice in Saul’s ruin, we learn several things. The sin of sinners will surely find them out, sooner or later, because Saul died for his wrongdoing. No one’s rank can protect them from God’s judgment. Disobedience is deadly, and Saul died because he did not obey the Lord’s command to destroy the Amalekites. Consulting witches is a sin that quickly fills up the measure of evil. Saul asked a woman with a familiar spirit, a medium, and did not seek the Lord, and for that the Lord killed him (1 Chronicles 10:13, 1 Chronicles 10:14).

Saul killed himself, and yet Scripture says God killed him. What wicked hands do, God still does according to his own wise plan and foreknowledge. Those who give themselves over to the devil will be given over to him in the end. That will be their judgment. It is said in 1 Samuel 28:6 that Saul asked the Lord and the Lord did not answer him. Here it says Saul did not seek God, because he did not truly seek him until he was at the very end, and then it was too late.