1 Chronicles 10

3. Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land. And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her. And his servants said to 8 him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night : and he said, Divine unto me, I pray thee, by the familiar spirit, and bring 9 me up whomsoever I shall name unto thee. And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land : wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die? 10 And Saul sware to her by the LORD, saying, As the LORD liveth, there shall no punishment 11 happen to thee for this thing. Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? 12 And he said, Bring me up Samuel. And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice : and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul. 13 And the king said unto her, Be not afraid : for what seest thou? And the woman said unto 14 Saul, I see a god coming up out of the earth. And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up ; and he is covered with a robe. And Saul perceived 15 that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance. And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed ; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams : therefore I have called thee, 16 that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. And Samuel said, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the LORD is departed from thee, and is become thine adversary? 17 And the LORD hath wrought for himself, as he spake by me : and the LORD hath rent the 18 kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbor, even to David. Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the LORD, and didst not execute his fierce wrath upon Amalek, there- 19 fore hath the LORD done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover the LORD will deliver Israel also with thee into the hand of the Philistines : and to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be 20 with me : the LORD shall deliver the host of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines. Then Saul fell straightway his full length upon the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel : and there was no strength in him ; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all 21 the night. And the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was sore troubled, and said unto him, Behold, thine handmaid hath hearkened unto thy voice, and I have put my life in my 22 hand, and have hearkened unto thy words which thou speakest unto me. Now therefore, I pray thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of 23 bread before thee ; and eat, that thou mayest have strength, when thou goest on thy way. But he refused, and said, I will not eat. But his servants, together with the woman, constrained him ; and he hearkened unto their voice. So he arose from the earth, and sat upon the bed. 24 And the woman had a fatted calf in the house ; and she hastened, and killed it ; and she took 25 flour, and kneaded it, and did bake unleavened bread thereof : and she brought it before Saul, and before his servants ; and they did eat. Then they rose up, and went away that night.

At this point the history is suspended for the purpose of narrating the experiences of King Saul. Saul had mustered his army on the mountains of Gilboa which skirt the eastern portion of the great plain of Esdraelon. H. C. — Three miles north of them is the parallel chain of Little Hermon. These two heights mark the position of the two armies ; Saul and his men on the western heights of Gilboa ; the Philistines on those of Hermon. Endor is beyond Hermon on the northern slope. Coleman. — The Philistine army was encamped at Shunem, now Solam, on the northern side of the valley, while the Israelites “pitched by a fountain which is in Jezreel,” the spring which rises up at the foot of the mound on which the city of Jezreel was built ; and it was while the two armies were thus mutually facing each other that Saul made his adventurous night journey to visit the witch at Endor, which lay on the farther side of Little Hermon in rear of the Philistine camp. Wilson.

5. About forty years have come and gone since, as their first elected king, he had led out the Israelites to raise the siege of Jabesh Gilead. More than half of that time has passed with the awful doom—“the kingdom has been rent from thee and given to another”—hanging over his head, drinking up his spirit, unsettling reason on her throne. Ten of these years have been spent in the unreasonable, ungenerous blood-thirsty persecution of David. All the time he has been trying to reign without God over Israel — too often has been engaged in direct attempts to resist God’s will. It has been a long and weary conflict ; for woe ever is to the man that striveth with his Maker; and, strong man as he was, Saul is well-nigh worn out. Jaded, hopeless, heartless, he surveys that widespread camp of the bold enemies of Israel, and his heart trembles. Hanna.

There were three courses open to him: he might sit down in quiet hopelessness, and let the evil come; or he might in faith and penitent submission commit the whole matter to God, even amid the awful silence; or he might betake himself to hell for counsel, since heaven was deaf. He chooses the last! “God has cast me off; I will betake myself to Satan. Heaven’s door is shut; I will see if hell’s be open.” Bonar.

7. Aindur, as the home of Saul’s far-famed witch is now called, is a wretched-looking place, and yet the position, at the northeast corner of Little Hermon, facing Tabor, and overlooking the valley between them, is really beautiful. The declivity of the mountain is everywhere perforated with caves, and most of the habitations are merely walls built around the entrance to these caverns. The “witch” doubtless occupied one of these caves. Thompson.

8. As the journey was very dangerous, Saul disguised himself, and went by night, accompanied only by two men; and nothing could more plainly set before us his mental anguish, and also his intense desire to pry into the secrets of futurity, than this strange journey. All faith and hope are gone, and a feverish excitement, ready to catch at any aid, however lawless and untrustworthy, had taken their place. R. P. S.—It was eight miles round the eastern shoulder of Hermon to Endor; and he has to steal round the back of the position of the Philistines, who lie on the front slope of Hermon. A. E.

Two hundred years before the battle in which Saul was slain, another leader of Israel had stood upon that same battle-range of Gilboa. A like innumerable hostile array was encamped below, or upon the opposite slope of Little Hermon. But Gideon, to meet the enemy, had only three hundred men; Saul had “all Israel.” Yet Gideon made ready for the onset, hopeful and stout-hearted, while Saul “greatly trembled,” because Gideon’s sword was also “the sword of the Lord,” while from Saul the Spirit of God had long since departed. Within twenty-four hours preceding either battle, both these chieftains had taken brief excursions from their camps. Both were attended by only one or two retainers. Both stole away by night clandestinely. Both went where it was peril to go: Gideon within the enemy’s lines, Saul into a witch’s den. Yet Gideon returned exultant, while Saul “fell all along on the earth, sore afraid,” because Gideon went where God had sent him; Saul against God’s express statute. Jerome.

9-11. With unendurable remorse within, and a vague premonition of doom blackening the very night which overhung his secret, silent steps, Saul sought from the woman at Endor that knowledge of the future which he could no longer receive from a rejected God. And, strangely enough, too, it is Samuel, God’s prophet, that he would see and hear—a fact which shows where his inmost belief has rested all through his evil career—a fact which includes confession with conviction of guilt, but the confession of remorse, like that of Judas, leading only to self-murder. B.—All human history has failed to record a despair deeper or more tragic than his, who having forsaken God and being of God forsaken, is now seeking to move hell, since Heaven is inexorable to him; and, infinitely guilty as he is, assuredly there is something unutterably pathetic in that yearning of the disanointed king, now in his utter desolation to change words once more with the friend and counsellor of his youth, and if he must hear his doom, to hear it from no other lips but his. Trench.

15. We hear the wail of a perturbed spirit—“I am sore distressed;” but no confession of sin, no accent of repentance. Saul never fairly faces the question of his own misconduct, always palliates his sin, always evades self-judgment and self-reproach. D. F.—“What shall I do?” The silence of God and the words of Samuel show that practically this was a question for which no answer was possible. The day for doing was in the past, when Samuel delivered instructions in the name of God. Years of persistent impenitence for disobedience and of self-willed warring against the purposes of God had brought the unhappy man to a time and position in which no action on his part could reverse the judgment impending. Too late! So is it in human life still. Men may persist in evil ways till ruin is inevitable, and no course is open for retrieval. Chapman.

16-25. The time for doing was now past. In quick succession it comes, like thunderbolt on thunderbolt: “Jehovah thine enemy;” “Jehovah hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to David;” “thy sins have overtaken thee!” All this Saul knew long ago, although he had never realized it as now. And then as to his fate: to-morrow—defeat, death, slaughter, to Saul, to his sons, to Israel! One by one, each stroke heavier than the other, they had pitilessly fallen on the kneeling king, weary, faint from want of food and smitten to the heart with awe and terror; and now he falls heavily, his gigantic length, to the ground. The woman and Saul’s companions had stood aside, nor had any heard what had passed between the two. But the noise of his fall brought them to his side. With difficulty they persuade him to eat ere he starts on his weary return to Jezreel. At last he yields; and, rising from his prostrate position, sits down on the divan, while they wait on him. But he has no longer speech, or purpose, or thought. As one driven to the slaughter, he goes back to meet his doom. It must have been early morning when once more he reached Gilboa—the morning of the dread and decisive battle. A. E.

19. To-morrow shall thou and thy sons be with me. The case does not require us to press the words beyond the sense of being in the state of the dead. There was no occasion then and there to indicate whether his condition in that state would be happy or miserable. It was enough for his purpose then to apprise Saul that he and his sons must die on the morrow and pass into the state of the dead. Samuel, however, did say enough to show that in his belief and certain knowledge, there could be neither fellowship nor sympathy in either this or any other world between such a spirit as that of Saul and his own.

The leading facts of this narrative are clearly stated and easily understood. I take the most obvious sense to be the true one, and must believe, therefore, that the sorceress called for Samuel, and that Samuel in fact came and talked with Saul, uttering words most true and terribly appalling. H. C.—The gravity and sultableness of the answer show that it was the spirit of Samuel himself; and the event shows that it was from God. Bp. Wilson.—The narrator all along says it was Samuel, which is better authority for the fact than the assertion of the woman, or the impression of Saul. The latter, indeed, forthwith bent himself low in humble obeisance, which he was not likely to have done unless he saw the figure visibly before him, and felt assured that it was Samuel. The historian says that it was Samuel whom he saw, Samuel to whom he spoke, Samuel who spoke to him. All the circumstances agree with this, and are unaccountable under any other hypothesis; the woman had no time for collusive arrangements; the answer given by the apparition was true, was fulfilled to the letter. Kit.—The history appears to leave us in no doubt, namely, that, though not through the incantations of the wretched enchantress, but to her own unaffected surprise no less than terror, and only by the will of God, Samuel himself, under whatever inexplicable conditions, delivered the dread message which is put into his lips. The importance of that message—its importance in relation to the whole history of Saul—justified any means, however extraordinary, which might be required to invest it with due authority and impressiveness. W. Lee.

That the spirit of Samuel himself appeared was the view of the ancient Jewish church. This is attested (a) by the Sept. addition in 1 Chron. 10 : 13; “Saul asked counsel of her that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of her; and Samuel made answer to him: (b) by the Book of Ecclesiasticus (46 : 20); “After his death [Samuel] prophesied, and showed the king his end, and lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy:” (c) by Josephus; and the generality of Jewish commentators. The same opinion was maintained by early Christian writers—e.g., Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, and others. Unquestionably it is the plain and natural meaning of the narrative. The expressions in verse 15, “Samuel said to Saul;” verse 16, “Then said Samuel;” verse 20, “the words of Samuel;” leave no doubt of this. A. F. K.

The most terrible fact of all is the total absence of all penitence on the part of Saul. He was clear of offences which make some pages in David’s history nothing better than one huge blot. But oh! how much better it would have been to have sinned like David, if only he had repented like David; if a temper resembling at all the temper which dictated the fifty-first Psalm had found place in him. But all this was far from him. Darkness is closing round him; anguish has taken hold of him; but the broken and the contrite heart, there is no remotest sign or token of this; no reaching out after the blood of sprinkling. We listen, but no voice reaches us like his who exclaimed, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow;” but dark and defiant and unbelieving, he who had inspired such high hopes, he who for awhile seemed about to justify them all, goes forward to meet his doom. Abp. Trench.

Saul’s history is a stern warning of the fatal consequences of uncontrolled self-will, of the inevitable descent of an unrepentant heart from bad to worse, of the hopeless hardening which results from neglect to use grace given. A. F. K.—How many who have despised the advice of a father or a mother, and grieved them by opposition and disobedience, long bitterly to bring them back when they have gone down to the grave, that they may have the benefit of the counsel which they once slighted and scorned! If they could go to the necromancer in the hour of their distress, it would not be, “Bring me up the companion who cheered me in my gayeties;” but, “Bring me up the father or the mother who with weeping eyes and broken voice admonished me against sinful indulgences.” . . . And yet, if you neglect the Lord and continue to resist the strivings of his Spirit, so that at length he departs from you as he departed from Saul, what would it avail that the grave could give up its inhabitant—if the parent, the friend, or the minister should return at your bidding? Melvill.

The spirits of the departed live in the region that God hath given them—out of the body we know; but whether by knowledge and sympathy in any close connection with the living, we cannot tell. But across the gulf that divides us and them, one utterance of theirs falls upon our listening ear—“To-morrow,"—they say to us—a few more days—a few more years it may be to us—to-morrow to them,—“thou, too, shalt be with us.” Let us drink the message in; and as we know that the passage into the world of spirits is so near, and shall bring with it such solemn issues, so let this short day of life be spent by each of us humbly, watchfully, prayerfully, dutifully, that when that morrow cometh, instead of lost spirits rising to mock our advent with the scornful question, “Art thou also become one of us?” happy spirits with outstretched arms may welcome us to the sunbright shores of an unshadowed eternity. Hanna.

28 4 And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem : and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa.

29 1 Now the Philistines gathered together all their hosts to Aphek : and the Israelites pitched by the fountain which is in Jezreel.

31 1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel : and the men of Israel fled from before the 2 Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa. And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons ; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchi-shus, 3 the sons of Saul. And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers overtook him ; and 4 he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers. Then said Saul to his armor-bearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith ; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armor-bearer would not ; for he was sore afraid. Therefore 5 Saul took his sword, and fell upon it. And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, 6 he likewise fell upon his sword, and died with him. So Saul died, and his three sons and 7 his armor-bearer, all his house and all his men, that same day died together. And when the men of Israel that were on the other side of the valley, and they that were beyond Jordan, saw that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook the cities, and fled ; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them.

8. And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they 9 found Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa. And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armor, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry the tidings unto 10 the house of their idols, and to the people. And they put his armor in the house of the 11 Ashtaroth : and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan. And when the inhabitants 12 of Jabesh-gilead heard concerning him that which the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons 13 from the wall of Beth-shan ; and they came to Jabesh, and burnt them there. And they took their bones, and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.

1. Chron. 10 13 So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the LORD, because of the word of the LORD, which he kept not; and also for that he asked counsel of one 14 that had a familiar spirit, to inquire thereby, and inquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.

In the great plain of Esdraelon, the most signal battle-field of the world from the days of Joshua to those of Napoleon, extending almost from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, in the southern part of Galilee, in a locality where places are found still bearing the names of Gilboa and Endor, this greatest and most decisive conflict between Saul and the Philistines was fought. B.—Jews, Gentiles, Saracens, Crusaders, Egyptians, Persians, Druses, Turks, Arabs, and French, warriors out of every nation under heaven, have pitched their tents upon the plains of Esdraelon, and have beheld their banners wet with the dews of Tabor and Hermon. Clark.

28 : 4. The Philistines broke in upon Israel in an unexpected quarter. Instead of advancing upon their enemies’ territory directly from the west, and up through the mountains, they made a long détour to the north, advancing along the plain of Sharon to Mount Carmel, thence turning eastward and passing from Carmel into the plain of Esdraelon, and thence pursuing their march through that plain to the edge of Little Hermon—to a point on the north side of the valley of Jezreel, by the town of Shunem. Here was an admirable field for the employment of their horses and chariots, and doubtless they fully availed themselves of it. Saul and his forces, marching, in all probability, directly northward from about Gibeah, encamped on the northern edge of Gilboa, by the fountain of Jezreel. The two armies were thus on opposite sides of the valley of Jezreel, the Philistines on the north, the Israelites on the south, with a level grassy plain between. N. C. B.

Gilboa is still a barren, bleak, and desolate range. It is about ten miles long, and not more than 500 or 600 feet above the plain, reaching from near Jezreel in the west to Bethshan at the eastern extremity. It separates the southern plain of Jezreel from the central portion, which slopes between Gilboa and Little Hermon to the Valley of the Jordan. On the top of the mountain, at the east end, a village called Jelbon preserves the old name of Gilboa. The battle of Gilboa was fought on the northern slopes of the mountain. The Philistines had collected their army at Shunem, now Salem, under the hill Moreh (Little Hermon), on the opposite side of the middle portion of the eastern plain (28 : 4), and pitched in Aphek (29 : 1) a place we cannot now identify; while Saul gathered the troops of Israel opposite to them at the fountain of Jezreel, the same as the spring Harod of Gibeon. H. B. T.

(See cut, p. 355, and other maps, pp. 184, 213. B.)

Though wearied with the long night journey and broken in spirit, Saul drew up his troops in the morning at the fountain of Harod. The position was badly chosen. The ground slopes down from Shunem, and the Philistines had thus all the advantage for attack; while both front and flanks of the Israelites were exposed, and flight all but impossible, owing to the steepness of the mountain behind. The Israelites were broken by the first impetuous charge of the enemy, and the slaughter was dreadful as they attempted to flee up Gilboa. Porter.

A person who compares the Bible account of this battle with the region around Gilboa, has the same sort (if not degree) of evidence that the account relates what is true, that a person would have that such battles as those of Yorktown or Waterloo really took place, who should compare the current histories of those achievements with the places where they were performed. Gilboa, as the name of a hamlet on the ridge of mountains anciently known under that appellation, as well as Jezreel, Shunem, Endor, Bethshan, are all found still bearing the same names. They lie almost within sight of each other. A person can start from any one of them and make the circuit of them all in a few hours. Aphek is the only one of the cluster not yet identified. Jezreel is on the northern slope of Gilboa, and at the distance of twenty minutes to the east is a large fountain, and a smaller one still nearer; just the position which a chieftain would select, both on account of its elevation and the supply of water needed for his troops. Opposite to Jezreel, across a narrow valley, on the side of a parallel ridge, is Shunem, where the Philistines could watch the movements of the enemy with great advantage. Again, a village—Endor—lies on the northern side of the same ridge; so that Saul, leaving his camp at Jezreel, could steal his way under cover of the night across the intervening valley, and over the moderate summit which he would have to ascend, and, after his consultation with the woman of Endor could return to his forces without having been missed by any, except

PLAIN OF ESDRAELON, OR JEZREEL, WITH PLACES NOTED IN THE BATTLES OF BARAK, GIDEON, AND SAUL.

those in the secret. Finally, Bethshan (now Beisan) a little to the east in the Valley of the Jordan, visible from Jezreel, must have been, judging from its natural facilities, a strong place; and hence the Philistines, after the battle, would naturally take possession of such a town; so that we find them intrenched precisely where we might expect, when we read of their mutilating there the body of Saul, as a part of their barbarous celebration of the victory. Hackett.

Saul’s forces were gathered about the fountain of Jezreel; and the Philistines were encamped across the valley of Jezreel northward, under Little Hermon—just as the Midianites had been, only farther west, near Shunem. Endor, on the northern slope of Little Hermon, east of Shunem, where Saul by night consulted the witch; the heights of Gilboa, on which the principal slaughter of the Israelites occurred, and on which Saul and his sons perished; Bethshan, a few miles to the east, the town occupied by the Philistines after the battle, and on whose walls the headless bodies of Saul and his sons were exposed; all these places, as well as Shunem and the fountain of Jezreel, being well identified, mark the history of this battle with a vivid distinctness even surpassing that of its predecessors. N. C. B.

2. 3. Saul’s three sons are slain, and Saul himself is mortally wounded. The fate of his sons is almost of necessity bound up with that of Saul. Nobly and valiantly they met that fate, Jonathan, the faithful, royal son and friend, with his brothers. If truth and courage, excellence of character and faith in God, could have averted the stroke, then Jonathan had not fallen, but lived to share in the prosperity and rejoice in the friendship of David. But God willed it thus, and “the arrows of the Philistines dismissed his princely spirit to a more exceeding weight of glory than that which he relinquished to the brother of his love.” By his death, too, we can see in the light of subsequent events, how the providence of God made the way of David to the kingdom more clear and open, by removing the only son of Saul whom the people loved and would have constrained to assume the throne. B.

That death on Gilboa was a fitting finish to his career! It was well that he who in life had given the world its greatest example of faithfulness to a friend should in death show to all sons, down to the end of time, that neither a father’s failings, nor even a father’s crimes, must be allowed to quench filial affection and fidelity. It was a noble thing in Jonathan that when sin had come with its desolating hand and destroyed the beauty of his father’s character, he carried himself as one who would say, “He is my father still; I will live for him; and, if need be, I will die for him.” C. Vince.—Jonathan’s history shows the beauty, the excellence, and the power of single-hearted trust in God, and the joy and helpfulness of mutual trust in man. It affirms that such trust in God will stand trial without being cast down; nay, will help a weaker brother whose fortitude is feebler than his courage. And it shows how beautiful and helpful may be the ministry of human friendship if the Lord be a party to its covenant of affection and service. B.

4. The heavy cloud which had brooded so long over the doomed Saul broke in lightning crash on the disastrous field of Gilboa. Where is there a sadder and more solemn story of the fate of a soul which makes shipwreck “of faith and of a good conscience,” than that awful page which tells how, godless, wretched, mad with despair and measureless pride, he flung himself on his bloody sword, and died a suicide’s death, with sons and armor-bearer and all his men, a ghastly court of corpses, laid round him? He had once been brave, modest, and kind, full of noble purposes and generous affections—and he ended so. Into what doleful regions of hate and darkness may self-will drag a soul when once the reins fall loose from a slackened hand! A. M.—Without trace of repentance or any fear of God, with no thought of the eternal result to his soul, at the instigation of pride and fear and shame as to the consequences of his capture by the Philistines, he proved the tremendous force of a hardened, reckless will by self-destruction. Some would call this courage, but courage is a reasonable, principled thing, which may lead to endurance of death by the stake or the battle, but never to self-murder. This is only an effect of cowardice and an act of guilt, for it is a desertion of the post assigned us of God, it is a presumptuous assumption of God’s sole right as the arbiter of life. Saul “played the fool,” as he said to David, in his life, but he crowned his folly with cowardice and the deepest guilt, in his self-inflicted death. B.—His end was in wild and awful keeping with the whole of his kingly career. So true is it that as men live they die; nor is it the most fearful and affecting of incidents, nor the known and felt approach of death in its most terrible form, that can of themselves turn any human spirit to God. Hanna.—As a man sows he reaps. As a life is shaped, so is the death determined. We speak of the penalty on evildoers, but it is no mere arbitrary infliction; it is the natural fruit and necessary result of the

misconduct. One leads a sensual life, and the penalty on him is that of exhaustion, disease, and premature decay. One leads a selfish life, hardening his heart against appeal or reproach, and his doom is to lose all power and experience of sympathy, to pass through the world winning no love, and pass out of the world drawing after him no regret. D. F.

5-13. The final result of the battle and treatment of Saul’s body. The neighboring cities were forsaken by the men of Israel, and permanently occupied by the Philistines, from which they were not dislodged for a considerable period. From the following chapter (2 S. 1) we learn that an Amalekite, who had witnessed the death of Saul and his armor-bearer, and who professed to have aided in Saul’s self-destruction, took the crown and the bracelets, the ancient and still subsisting insignia of royalty, from the body of the king, and brought them to David at Ziklag. Then followed the savage mutilation and maltreatment of the bodies of Saul and his sons by the Philistines. Severing the head from the body of Saul, they bear it, with his royal armor, in triumph through their cities, afterward putting the head in the idol temple of Dagon, and hanging the armor as a trophy and offering in the house of Ashtaroth. His body and the bodies of his sons were nailed upon the wall of Bethshan, from whence they were soon after taken down by the loyal warriors of Jabesh and honorably buried there. B.

7. The plain of Esdraelon is interrupted, and in a sense divided into two, by three hills—Tabor, Gilboa, and Little Hermon. On the eastern side of these hills the plain is continued on to the Jordan Valley. The effect of the battle of Gilboa was that all the rich settlements in that part of the plain had to be forsaken by the Israelites and given up to the Philistines. W. G. B.

11,12. There was still truth, gratitude, and courage in Israel. And the brave men of Jabesh-gilead marched all the weary night; they crossed Jordan; they climbed that steep brow, and silently detached the dead bodies of Saul and his sons from the walls of Bethshan. Reverently they bore them across the river for burial, and ere the morning light were far out of reach of the Philistines. A. E.—For this act of loyalty David sent special messengers to bless them (2 S. 2 : 5). Some years afterward David removed the bones and buried them in Saul’s ancestral sepulchre at Zelah (2 S. 21 : 12). H. B. T.

In the character of Saul and that of David we find great and marked changes brought about by different agents and causes, and through various occasions and instruments. In each we can mark distinct periods of progress, in evil or good. The characters, too, while each to some extent is mixed, are opposed—evil predominating in the one, and good in the other. And there is a difference in the preparation for the kingdom. Saul was subjected to no previous discipline, no trial which might lead to self-knowledge and self-struggle. Yet God had given him a bright, genial, kindly nature, which, if he had only yielded to the Spirit of the Lord (also given him at his anointing), might have been developed into true spiritual nobleness, and made his reign a joy to himself and a glory to Israel. But he had a crown without a cross, and his career is simply typical of all that attain to any of earth’s prizes without previous struggle or denial. His elevation did but act upon the uncrucified selfish principle in his heart, stimulated an unhumbled self-will to supplant God’s will, and made self-interest the supreme object of thought, purpose, and seeking. Long as He could, the Spirit of God wrought with Saul, by kindness, bounties, successes, by instruction, entreaty, and warning, striving to hold him or bring him back to obedience—but with no avail. Then the good Spirit departed, and the evil spirit, the same who since the fall has “worked in the hearts of the children of disobedience,” entered in. No peace had he while living, and there was no hope in his death. B.

The fatal defect in Saul was the want of true piety. It was never the first law of his soul to obey God in everything, with no possible exception. In this point he was in utter contrast with David. Help from God toward self-control and toward the formation of a noble character, Saul never sought. He was never a man of prayer. David was. In this one vital and fundamental respect they stand before us in total contrast with each other. True, Saul sought after the Lord in his great distress when overwhelmed with fear; but never in other circumstances. The great moral lesson which Saul’s history leaves for the instruction of mankind is, therefore, precisely this: That without true piety, the finest qualities of character and the highest position in society will fail utterly to make a true and noble man. If Saul’s heart had been true to God he would have been one of the grandest specimens of humanity. But, lacking this true obedience to God, he made his life an utter failure, and his character a moral wreck. H. C.—His own sorrowful verdict upon his life we read in ch. 26 : 21: I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly. At the outset never was a life so fair in its promise, ample in its resources, and grand in its opportunities. At its close never was a life so full of remorse in the retrospect, so desolating in its waste, and awful in its misuse of means and opportunities. Never a career that illustrated so pointedly the effects of prosperity upon a selfish spirit; the length in wickedness to which the unrestrained human heart will go. Never a career that showed so conclusively how the principle of evil, acting through ambition, vanity, avarice, and passion, will crush every natural and kindly feeling, debase every fine and ennobling element, and finally lead, through almost every crime, to utter destruction. And the saddest recorded history of man is that of Saul’s closing years—abandoned of God, beset and tormented by the Evil Spirit before his time, and, finally, in the very anguish of despair, rushing suicidally into the eternal darkness. B.

The history of Saul brings home to us these facts: That the life we now live is a life of probation; that God takes men and puts them in certain conditions to try them. We are each upon our trial as certainly as Saul was upon his. All the finer qualities of Saul display themselves at the outset of his career; they gradually fade and fail from him, pride, meanwhile, and defiance of God coming in their room, until at last caprice, and jealousy, and envy, and an open contempt of all the high qualities which he once owned, only the courage, last gift to forsake a man, often abiding when every other has departed—until this only remains. We learn from Saul not to build on any good thing which we have in ourselves. Let us bring that good thing to God and receive it back from God, with that higher consecration which He alone can give. Trench.

In the career of Saul we find the most signal example on record of the natural and inevitable tendencies of determined self-rule and self-seeking. There is but one right rule, and that the rule of God; but one right aim, and that the service of God. When once the man has deliberately swung loose from God’s commands, wilfully forsaken His service, and determinedly turned aside from His ways, then begins a deterioration of character that ceases not until transformation into the likeness of the Arch-spirit of evil is complete; then the soul enters upon a course of evil-doing which leads irresistibly downward with ever accelerating speed; a course which, while it deadens the heart to all influences of good, quickens every sensibility to “the fearful looking for of judgment,” and at length, anticipating very doom, fills the conscience with an anguishing foretaste of “the undying worm and unquenchable fire.” So “the wicked is driven away in his wickedness,” driven away, utterly and forever, from peace and hope, driven into unmitigated misery and despair! So “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death!” We read in this history, further, a signal illustration of God’s entire dealing with the self-willed, self-abandoned soul; on the one hand, multiplying blessings, exhortations, warnings, helps to good and hindrances to evil; and on the other hand, when all these have failed, interposing to overrule and restrain the outacting of evil by the determined, hardened sinner. One only parallel we find, a striking one in all these points if closely traced, in the case of Judas. Differing widely, indeed, in all its incidents, and differing in its subordinate motives, but alike in the spirit of the actors, in resistance to the Spirit of God, and in breaking away from all Divine restraint, alike in the Divine overruling of their deeds, and alike in the closing act! B.