SAUL AND HIS SONS DIE AT GILBOA

1 Samuel 29, 31

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The mountain on which Jezreel stood was called Gilboa, and it was here that the Philistines cornered King Saul.  The wounded king saw his three sons killed one by one, including David's one-time friend Jonathan.

Then, mortally wounded himself, he prepared to die. 

Above all, he dreaded being taken alive. If the Philistines captured him they would torture him before they killed him.

Saul knew he must die, but he did not want to be humiliated by his enemies, so he begged his armor-bearer to finish him off. He wanted to die like a Japanese samurai - an honorable death hastened by the hand of a friend. 

But the armor-bearer would not do it - this was not ancient Japan, and he feared he would be blamed for killing his king.

In desperation Saul propped his sword in an upright position and fell forward onto the point, so that it pierced his chest. When the armor-bearer saw that his king was dead, he too fell on his sword.

The Philistines soon found the bodies. They

• cut off Saul's head and stripped his armor from his body
• gave the armor as a gift to their god Ashteroth
• placed his severed head in the temple of Dagon
• reserved a more gruesome fate for the bodies of Saul and his sons, hanging them from the walls of one of their cities, to stink and rot. 

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This was more than just gruesome savagery. Severing the head from the body separated the soul from its home, so that the person who died could not find rest in eternity.

It was ritual revenge - still practised in some countries today.

Saul's Israelite soldiers could not accept this. They went in secret during the night and pulled down the mangled bodies, then took them to their own town, Jabesh.

Here they cremated the bodies and gave the bones an honorable burial.

  ______________________

Hundreds of years passed. 

Israel, with Jezreel as its capital, broke away from the Kingdom of Solomon and formed a separate, northern Kingdom.

One of the kings of this northern kingdom was Ahab, whose wife was Jezebel.

                She was not a woman to be crossed....