1 Chronicles 10 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Around 1010 BC, at the end of Saul's reign
Location
Mount Gilboa, a ridge overlooking the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel, with the Philistine cities lying to the southwest along the coast
Audience
Post-exile Judeans reading a history written to explain how their nation rose and fell
Situation
The first narrative in the book is a defeat. The Philistines break Israel's army on Mount Gilboa, Saul's sons are killed, Saul takes his own life, and the enemy displays his head and armour in their temples until the men of Jabesh-Gilead recover the bodies.
Key Background
The Philistines were a coastal people with better metalworking and chariot forces, and the Jezreel Valley was flat ground where those advantages told against Israel's hill fighters. Displaying a defeated king's armour in a temple was a normal ancient claim that one nation's god had beaten another's, which is why recovering the bodies mattered so much to the men of Jabesh-Gilead, a town Saul had rescued early in his reign. The writer starts the story here, skipping Saul's whole career, because he wants a single explanation on the table before David appears: the kingdom changed hands because Saul was unfaithful.
The went to war against Israel, and the men of Israel ran from the and fell dead on
The Philistines closed in on and his sons, and the Philistines killed Abinadab, and Malchi-shua — Saul's sons.
The battle pressed hard against Saul, and the found him and wounded him.
Saul told his "Draw your sword and run me through with it, or these men will come and me." But his wouldn't do it — he was too terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it.
When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his own sword and died.
So Saul died — he and three sons and They all died together.
When all the men of Israel in the saw that the army had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their towns and ran. Then the Philistines came and occupied them.
The next day, when the Philistines came to the they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.
They stripped him, took his head and his armor, and sent word throughout the land of the Philistines to spread the news to their and to the people.
They put his armor in the temple of their gods and fastened his head in the temple of
When everyone in heard everything the Philistines had done to Saul,
all their warriors went and retrieved the bodies of Saul and his sons. They brought them to Jabesh, buried their bones under the in Jabesh, and for seven days.
Saul died because of his — he was unfaithful to Yahweh. He did not keep Yahweh's word, and he even a to seek guidance,
instead of from Yahweh. So Yahweh put him to death and the to of