2 Samuel 1

1. AND it came to pass after the death of Saul, when David was returned from the slaughter of 2 the Amalekites, and David had abode two days in Ziklag; it came even to pass on the third day, that, behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head: and so it was, when he came to David, that he fell to the earth, and did obeisance. 3 And David said unto him, From whence comest thou? And he said unto him, Out of the 4 camp of Israel am I escaped. And David said unto him, How went the matter? I pray thee, tell me. And he answered, The people are fled from the battle, and many of the people also 5 are fallen and dead; and Saul and Jonathan his son are dead also. And David said unto the 6 young man that told him, How knowest thou that Saul and Jonathan his son be dead? And the young man that told him said, As I happened by chance upon mount Gilboa, behold, Saul 7 leaned upon his spear; and, lo, the chariots and the horsemen followed hard after him. And when he looked behind him, he saw me, and called unto me. And I answered, Here am I. 8, 9 And he said unto me, Who art thou? And I answered him, I am an Amalekite. And he said unto me, Stand, I pray thee, beside me, and slay me, for anguish hath taken hold of me; 10 because my life is yet whole in me. So I stood beside him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen: and I took the crown that was upon his head, 11 and the bracelet that was on his arm, and have brought them hither unto my lord. Then David took hold on his clothes, and rent them; and likewise all the men that were with him: 12 and they mourned, and wept, and fasted until even, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of the LORD, and for the house of Israel; because they were fallen by the sword. 13 And David said unto the young man that told him, Whence art thou? And he answered, I 14 am the son of a stranger, an Amalekite. And David said unto him, How wast thou not afraid 15 to put forth thine hand to destroy the LORD’s anointed? And David called one of the young 16 men, and said, Go near, and fall upon him. And he smote him that he died. And David said unto him, Thy blood be upon thy head; for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the LORD’s anointed. 17, 18 And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son: and he bade them teach the children of Judah the song of the bow: behold, it is written in the book of Jashar.

19. Thy glory, O Israel, is slain upon thy high places!

How are the mighty fallen!

20. Tell it not in Gath,

Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon;

Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,

Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

21. Ye mountains of Gilboa,

Let there be no dew nor rain upon you, neither fields of offerings:

For there the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away,

The shield of Saul [as of one], not anointed with oil.

22. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty,

The bow of Jonathan turned not back,

And the sword of Saul returned not empty.

23. Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives,

And in their death they were not divided; They were swifter than eagles,

They were stronger than lions.

24. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,

Who clothed you in scarlet delicately,

Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel.

25. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

Jonathan is slain upon thy high places.

26. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan:

Very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

Thy love to me was wonderful,

Passing the love of women.

27. How are the mighty fallen,

And the weapons of war perished!

The Second Book of Samuel continues and almost concludes the life of David. He is the central figure throughout. Round him are grouped many remarkable men, but no one of those times makes such an impression on us as David himself, through the force of his character, the versatility of his mind, and the variety of incidents and experience through which he passed. The narrative is worthy of its place in the canon of Scripture, not only for its biography of this great king, but also for its intimations of Messiah to come, its practical teachings concerning the way of patience and faith, and its piercing exposure of the lustings of the flesh, which war against the soul. There are fascinating passages in the book, and splendid bursts of poetry, but there are pages that we read with pain and shame, for the ways of David in prosperity were not close with God as in the earlier days when he bore the yoke in his youth. D. F.

It was at Ziklag, in the land of the Philistines, that David heard of the issue of the battle on Mount Gilboa. He received the tidings of a disaster which involved the ruin of his enemy, if it also inflicted a terrible blow on his country, in no unworthy spirit. That David’s mourning for Saul, no less than for Jonathan, was heartfelt, cannot be doubted. He had no purpose to serve in paying insincere honors to the memory of a king who had already lost his hold on the affections of his former subjects. And every word of the magnificent elegy which he composed on the occasion bears testimony to the depth of the emotions by which it was inspired. W. Lee.—It must have been a very wonderful heart that could so soon rid itself of every shred of bitter feeling to Saul—that could blot out, in one great act of forgiveness, the remembrance of many long years of injustice, oppression, and toil, and leave no feelings but those of kindness, admiration, and regret, called forth by the contemplation of what was favorable in Saul’s character! Does not this show forgiveness to be a Divine spirit? W. G. B.

2. On the third day. The exact position of Ziklag in the Negeb, or “South country,” has not been determined. But if we may place it in the neighborhood of Beersheba, the distance from the battle-field of Gilboa was about ninety or one hundred miles as the crow flies, between two and three days’ journey for an active runner, so that the battle probably took place about the same time as David’s return home.

3-10. The Amalekite’s story was clearly a fabrication. In wandering over the field of battle he had found the corpse of Saul and stripped it of its ornaments. With these he hastened to David, and invented his fictitious story in the hope of securing an additional reward for having with his own hand rid David of his bitterest enemy and removed the obstacle which stood between him and the throne. A. F. K.

16. This self-convicted, wretched Amalekite died for a crime which he had not committed; yet he well deserved to die for taking the guilt of it upon him. David rightly judged that Saul had no power over his own life, and consequently should not have been obeyed in such a command. Besides, it behooved David to vindicate his own innocence to the world by this public execution, since otherwise he might have been branded with the guilt of employing that wretch to murder his persecutor. Delaney.

David’s Elegy upon the Slain.

Verses 17-27.

The song of lamentation or elegy, composed by David upon occasion of the death of Saul and Jonathan has been admired in all ages for its touching pathos and exquisite beauty. “David lamented with this lamentation.” He not only composed this elegy, but sung it; not only sung it himself, but gave command that it be taught to the sons and daughters of “Judah”—of Judah specially because they were of his own tribe; because then and for the ensuing seven years he was king of Judah only; and because his magnanimous soul discarded all tribal jealousies, and would have the men of Judah mourn for Saul no less than the men of Benjamin. “He bade them teach Judah” the bow-song—this very song in which “the bow of Jonathan” holds a sufficiently prominent position to supply a distinctive name for this song. The Hebrews were accustomed to designate their songs by some such catch-words, of which we have instances apparently in the Psalms. H. C.

The elegy is not a Divine hymn, nor given to be used in Divine service; nor is there any mention of God in it; but it is a human composition, and therefore was inserted, not in the Book of Psalms, which, being of Divine original, is preserved; but in the Book of Jasher, which, being only a collection of common poems, is long since lost. H.—The elegy was included in the volume known as The Book of Jasher, or, the Upright. This book is mentioned only here and in Josh. 10 : 13. All that can be inferred from the references to it is that it contained a collection of ancient poems, commemorating remarkable events or great heroes of the national history; so that it formed a “book of Golden Deeds” for the instruction of posterity, a “national anthology” to which additions would be made from time to time as occasion offered. A. F. K.

The poem opens with verse 19. “The beauty of Israel”—her warrior king and his noble sons—“are slain upon the high places of Israel” [Mount Gilboa]. The key-note of the song is in the refrain—“How are the mighty fallen!” repeated in verses 25, 27. “Tell it not in Gath”—for David had spent years in Gath, and knew but too well how its sons and daughters would catch up these tidings, and hasten to their idol temples with jubilant songs of triumph. He knew how the streets of Askelon would re-echo with rejoicings; and this thought was bitter to his soul. “Ye mountains of Gilboa, let no dew or rain fall on you,” henceforth forever! Let there be no fields rich with products for sacrificial offerings. Let everlasting bright mar you former glory! It would be painfully incongruous to see those hill-tops smiling again in verdure and beauty after having been the theatre of scenes so mournful. To the sad heart of mourners it seems some relief to imprecate desolation on the localities which have become associated with the death of the loved and the brave. All this is touchingly true to nature. These imprecations were felt to be the more appropriate, because on those heights the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away as if of one who had never been anointed king of Israel. Yet let it not be hastily assumed that Saul and Jonathan were not brave and successful warriors. The bow of Jonathan never turned back from before the mighty; the sword of Saul never returned from battle without being laden with trophies of the slain. Moreover, Saul and Jonathan were not only valiant in war; “they were lovely and pleasant in their lives.” Of Jonathan’s amiable and noble spirit, David never could say too much. He had profound reason to appreciate him, and he was of a nature too appreciative, too noble and magnanimous, not to reciprocate such love. As to Saul, David cherished a profound regard for him as his anointed sovereign, and, no doubt, saw much (in some aspects of his character) that he could both esteem and love; but Saul’s manifestations were strangely mixed; and David leaves us a little in doubt how much of this touching elegy of Saul and Jonathan was indebted to Jonathan rather than to Saul for its tenderness and pathos, and its unsurpassed appreciation of amiable qualities. In verse 24, Saul stands out in his distinctive personality as king of Israel. The daughters of the land might fitly bewail the death of their king, remembering how he had ministered to their adornment—the ruling passion in the oriental woman’s heart being recognized here as in the song of Deborah (Ju. 5 : 30). But when the poet’s thought turns to Jonathan (verses 25, 26), his tones tremble with most touching pathos:—“I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been to me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Thus the loving heart of David bewails what seemed to him the untimely death of his dearest friend. All his fond hopes that Jonathan might survive his father, and stand beside himself in the honors or the cares of Israel’s throne, are dashed suddenly and forever. The joys of a friendship so deep, so self-sacrificing, so noble, and so pure, have passed away, to return no more! H. C.

In some respects, Jonathan stands without a rival in all history, sacred or profane. Had we known him better, no doubt we might have found some faults in him, and said that it was true of him as of the best of fallen men, that the brightest sun is dimmed by spots. Yet there is no fault recorded of Jonathan; and conferring on him more honor than on any one else whose name stands in this sacred book, God has not left a stain to blot his memory. If there ever was friendship in this world, pure, unalloyed by any inferior metal, disinterested, free of envy, without an element of selfishness, incapable of harboring a suspicious thought, and capable of rejoicing in another’s gain, even to his own loss, it had glowed in the bosom that now lay cold on Gilboa’s mountains. Battle spear never pierced such a generous heart; nor had war ever such a graceful victim offered at her blood-stained shrine. Man never possessed a friend such as David lost in Jonathan; and none with a head and heart can read his tragic history without feeling that he was worthy of this extraordinary, but not extravagant, laudation: “Thy love to me was wonderful.” Guthrie.

This ode is a lamentation equally pathetic and heroic, the lamentation of a brave man over brave men. The bursts of sorrow in it are so strong and sudden; so short, various, and unconnected, that never perhaps was grief painted in more living and lasting colors. It affords a beautiful proof that David’s heart was so softened and melted by grief as to lose every trace of Saul’s cruelty to him. He remembered nothing in him now but the brave man, the valiant leader, the magnificent prince, the king of God’s appointment, his own once indulgent master; the father of his Jonathan. Delaney.—In his circumstances, the utmost required of David would have been to preserve a decent and becoming silence about Saul, burying all recollections of him in the grave. But he was incapable of this; he was cast in a finer mould; he was made of nobler metal. His generous heart, forgiving and forgetting every wrong, warmed at the recollection of those early, happy days, when the king drew the shepherd boy from obscurity, received him into the bosom of his family, showered royal favors on his head; and when, harp in hand, he threw the chains of music over Saul’s stormy passions, bidding the waves be still. David has buried Saul’s faults in the grave, “earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.” But while he leaves the dross to lie undisturbed among the cold embers, he brings out the gold—the finer elements of Saul’s character; and without, after the fashion of many lying tombstones, imputing to him virtues which he never possessed, he tells all the good of Saul he can, and crowns his memory with the honors due to a king, a dutiful son, a kind-hearted father, and a man as brave as ever faced a foe. Guthrie.—Peculiarly touching is the absence in this elegy of even the faintest allusion to David’s painful relations to Saul in the past. All that is merely personal seems blotted out, or, rather, as if it had never existed in the heart of David. In this respect we ought to regard this ode as casting most valuable light on the real meaning and character of what are sometimes called the vindictive and imprecatory Psalms. Nor should we omit to notice what a German divine has so aptly pointed out: that, with the exception of the lament of Jabesh-gilead, the only real mourning for Saul was on the part of David, whom the king had so bitterly persecuted to the death. A. E.

Its poetic beauty is the least merit of this exquisite ode. It is as an effusion of the heart, the spontaneous expression of a spirit the most noble, the most generous, the most forgiving, the most affectionate, that we value it the most. What profound sympathy for the fallen king, what remembrance of every virtue, what a veil drawn over every fault, and, above all, what a sinking out of sight of all bygone injuries, an utter wiping of them out of the memory, does this sublime elegy exhibit! We believe that David not only wrote here exactly as he thought and felt; that there had been so much in Saul in his intercourse with Jonathan of the pleasant and the lovely, as fully to sustain what was thus said of him, and to keep the people that sang this funeral dirge from thinking that they were chanting an untruth over the dead. The Scriptural narrative of the life and reign of Saul was intended to represent him in his character and conduct as the first anointed king of God’s chosen people. It traces the false steps which in that character he took. It unfolds the fearful evils, both personal and national, that the taking of these steps produced. But it covers only a very small portion of the forty years of his lengthened reign. It gives us, after all, but a few glimpses of him as a man. We see especially but very little of his domestic life and habits—his intercourse with his children. We take David’s testimony for it, that in these large intervals, uncovered by the Scripture story, in those quiet domestic scenes that brought him and his children together, there was a power in the love of Jonathan and the rest, that did all, perhaps more than all, that David’s harp had done in earlier years—that under its spell, the cares of the kingdom for the time thrown off, the moody monarch forgot his melancholy, and—the evil spirit far away—became all as a father that he had promised to be when himself a son. Hanna.

We have a wonderful variety in the Bible. Had the Bible (which is an inspired library rather than an inspired book) been put together by men, no matter how learned and holy, this variety would have been wanting. We should have had a more or less useful and edifying, but probably more rather than less insipid volume, suited at best to the needs of the generation in which its compilers lived, and probably of only a limited portion of that. Instead of this, we have, both in form and in matter, a many-sidedness and variety of which the world has never wearied, and in which every person can find something to delight his taste, and every soul something to satisfy its needs. Side by side with the stormy and blood-stained pictures of the Book of Judges we have had the bright oasis of the Book of Ruth; the vile conduct of the sons of Eli is narrated in the same chapter with the sweet innocence of the child Samuel; and as the reign of Saul darkens through his withdrawing more and more from God, and God at last withdrawing His Spirit from him, we have bright lights constantly breaking in from the life of the young son of Jesse. His guileless youth, the gloomy king’s love for him, never quite quenched even in Saul’s darkest days, the touching friendship with his persecutor’s son, the exquisite lament over Saul and Jonathan, all these things are a relief and a refreshment in the midst of such scenes as Saul’s bloodthirsty hunt after David, the massacre of the priests, the night visit to Endor, the suicide on Mount Gilboa. Plummer

DAVID ANOINTED AT HEBRON AS KING OVER JUDAH. ISHBOSHETH MADE KING OVER ISRAEL BY ABNER. CONFLICT OF FORCES UNDER ABNER AND JOAB.