1 Samuel 31:13

1Sa 31:13 And they took their bones, and buried [them] under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.

Ver. 13. And they took their bones.] Half calcinated.

And buried them under a tree.] Sub ulmo, some render it, under an elm: others, under a terebinth, as under a monument.

And fasted seven days.] To show their great grief, as Job 2:13, all which while they fasted, non a toto, sed a tanto et tali, as Dan 10:3, and prayed doubtless for the public wellfare.

Soli Deo Gloria

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Sa 31:13. And fasted seven days — To testify their sorrow for the loss of Saul, and of the people of God; and to entreat God’s favour to prevent the utter extinction of his people. But we must not understand this word of fasting strictly, as if they ate nothing for seven whole days; but in a more large sense, as it is used both in sacred and profane writers; that they did eat but little, and that but mean food, and drank only water for that time. This book began with the birth of Samuel, and ends with the death of Saul. The comparing these together will teach us to prefer the honour that comes from God before all the honours of the world. The reader will do well to observe also that in this book we have two such examples of piety and virtue in Samuel and David as we cannot too frequently make the subject of our consideration. On the other hand, in the example of Saul we have a picture of the miserable state of that man who forgetteth God, and turneth aside from his commandments. May God, through Jesus Christ, send down his grace into our hearts, that, through our whole lives, we may be inclined to imitate the first, and may always dread to fall into the state of the latter, and, as the only way to escape it, make it our chief study and delight to please God, and do his will; for this is the whole of man: in which all his happiness, all his peace consists. For that there is no peace to the wicked, hath been pronounced by Him who knoweth the nature and frame of man; by the Lord himself, who cannot lie. “The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked,” Isa 57:20-21.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

31:13 bones . . . Jabesh: This was not the final resting place of Saul’s remains (see 2 Sam 21:12-14). • The ending of 1 Samuel brings Israel’s history back to the situation at the end of Judges, when “Israel had no king.” Once again, the Philistines were in control. David had God’s anointing but no crown. He had wives but no sons. His affiliation with the hated Philistines might jeopardize his standing among his own people. David’s future path would be challenging, but God was clearly with him.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

According to the custom of mourners.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 13. And fasted seven days.] To testify their sincere regret for his unfortunate death, and the public calamity that had fallen upon the land.

THUS ends the troublesome, and I had almost said the useless, reign of Saul. A king was chosen in opposition to the will of the Most High; and the government of God in effect rejected, to make way for this king.

Saul was at first a very humble young man, and conducted himself with great propriety; but his elevation made him proud, and he soon became tyrannical in his private conduct and in his political measures. His natural temper was not good; he was peevish, fretful, and often outrageous; and these bad dispositions, unchecked by proper application to the grace of God, became every day more headstrong and dangerous. Through their violence he seems at times to have been wholly carried away and deranged; and this derangement appears to have been occasionally greatly exacerbated by diabolical influences. This led him to take his friends for his foes; so that in his paroxysms he strove to imbrue his hands in their blood, and more than once attempted to assassinate his own son; and most causelessly and inhumanly ordered the innocent priests of the Lord at Nob to be murdered. This was the worst act in his whole life.

Saul was but ill qualified for a proper discharge of the regal functions. The reader will remember that he was chosen rather as a general of the armies than as civil governor. The administration of the affairs of the state was left chiefly to Samuel, and Saul led forth the armies to battle.

As a general he gave proof of considerable capacity; he was courageous, prompt, decisive, and persevering; and, except in the last unfortunate battle in which he lost his life, generally led his troops to victory.

Saul was a weak man, and very capricious; this is amply proved by his unreasonable jealousy against David, and his continual suspicion that all were leagued against him. It is also evident, in his foolish adjuration relative to the matter of the honey (see 1Sa 14:24-30; 1Sa 14:38-44) in which, to save his rash and nonsensical oath, he would have sacrificed Jonathan his son!

The question, "Was Saul a good king?" has already in effect been answered. He was on the whole a good man, as far as we know, in private life; but he was a bad king; for he endeavoured to reign independently of the Jewish constitution; he in effect assumed the sacerdotal office and functions, and thus even changed what was essential to that constitution. He not only offered sacrifices which belonged to the priests alone; but in the most positive manner went opposite to the orders of that God whose vicegerent he was.

Of his conduct in visiting the woman at En-dor I have already given my opinion, and to this I must refer. His desperate circumstances imposed on the weakness of his mind; and he did in that instance an act which, in his jurisprudential capacity, he had disapproved by the edict which banished all witches, c., from Israel. Yet in this act he only wished to avail himself of the counsel and advice of his friend Samuel.

To the question, "Was not Saul a self-murderer?" I scruple not to answer, "No." He was to all appearance mortally wounded, when he begged his armour-bearer to extinguish the remaining spark of life and he was afraid that the Philistines might abuse his body, if they found him alive; and we can scarcely say how much of indignity is implied in this word; and his falling on his sword was a fit of desperation, which doubtless was the issue of a mind greatly agitated, and full of distraction. A few minutes longer, and his life would in all probability have ebbed out; but though this wound accelerated his death, yet it could not be properly the cause of it, as he was mortally wounded before, and did it on the conviction that he could not survive.

Taking Saul's state and circumstances together, I believe there is not a coroner's inquest in this nation that would not have brought in a verdict of derangement; while the pious and the humane would everywhere have consoled themselves with the hope that God had extended mercy to his soul.

MILLBROOK, June 11, 1818.

Ended this examination August 13, 1827. - A.C.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(13) A tree in Jabesh.—A tree, that is “the well-known” tamarisk (êshel). For Saul’s love for trees see as an instance 1Sa_22:6. The men of Jabesh-Gilead well remembered this peculiar fancy of their dead king, and under the waving branches of their own beautiful and famous tamarisk they tenderly laid the remains of their dead hero and his princely sons.

Evidently King David, at a subsequent period, fetched away these royal remains, and had them reverently interred in the family sepulchre of Kish, the father of Saul, in Zelah of Benjamin (2Sa_21:12; 2Sa_21:14).

And fasted seven days.—This was the period the sons of Israel mourned for Jacob at the threshing floor of Atad beyond Jordan (Gen_1:10). The grateful men of Jabesh-Gilead thus paid the last honours to the fallen Saul.

It is probable that the Talmudic rule which enjoins strict mourning for seven days (fasting was mourning of the strictest kind) was originally based on these two historic periods of mourning recorded in the case of the great ancestor of the tribes, Jacob, and of the first King Saul, although the curious tradition preserved in the Babylonian Talmud gives a special reason for the period—seven days. Rav. Chisda said: The soul of the deceased mourns over him the first seven days; for it is said, Job_14:22, “and his soul shall mourn over him.” Rav. Jehudah said: If there are no mourners to condole with, ten men sit down where the death took place. Such a case happened in the neighbourhood of Rav. Jehudah. After the seven days of mourning, the deceased appeared to Rav. Jehudah in a dream, and said “Mayest thou be comforted as thou hast comforted me.”—Treatise Shabbath, fol. 152, Colossians 2.

To this day among the Jews ten men are hired to perform the usual daily prayers during the seven days of mourning at the house of the deceased.

On the reason for the number seven being fixed for the period of mourning, we read again in the Seder Moed of the Babylonian Talmud, “How is it proved that mourning should be kept up seven days? “It is written, Amo_8:10 : “I will turn your feasts into mourning,” and these (usually) lasted seven days.—Treatise Moed Katon, fol. 20, Colossians 1.

“Again a long draught of my soul-wine! Look forth o’er the

years!

Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the

seer’s!

Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb, bid

arise

A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till built to the

skies.

Let it mark where the great First King slumbers; whose fame

would ye know?

Up above see the rock’s naked face, where the record shall go,

In great characters cut by the scribe. Such was Saul, so ne

did;

With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid—

For not half, they’ll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to

amend,

In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall

spend

(See, in tablets, it is level before them) their praise, and record,

With gold of the graver, Saul’s story—the statesman’s great

Word

Side by side with the poet’s sweet comment. The rivers

a-wave

With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet

winds rave:

So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part

In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou

art !”

BROWNING’S Saul.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. under a tree] Under the tamarisk, some well-known tree at Jabesh. Chron. reads “under the terebinth,” (êlah). David removed the bones to the family sepulchre at Zelah (2Sa_21:12-14).

fasted seven days] A sign of general mourning. Cp. 2Sa_1:12; 2Sa_3:35, &c.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh,.... For though they burned the bodies, yet so as to preserve the bones; and these, together with the ashes of the parts burnt, they gathered up, and buried under a tree near this city; this tree is said to be an oak, Ch1 10:12; so Deborah, the nurse of Rebekah, was buried under an oak, Gen 35:8. The Jews generally interred their dead under some oak, as aforementioned writer observes (q); pleased perchance with the parallel, as he expresses it, that as these plants, seemingly dead in winter, have every spring an annual resurrection, so men's dry bones shall have new sap put into them at the day of judgment:

and fasted seven days; not that they ate and drank nothing all that time, but they fasted every day till evening, as the Jews used to do; so long it seems a man may live without eating, but not longer; See Gill on Exo 24:18 and see Gill on Kg1 19:8; this they did, as Kimchi thinks, in memory of the seven days Nahash the Ammonite gave them for their relief, in which time Saul came and saved them, Sa1 11:3.

(q) Pisgah-Sight of Palestine b. 2. ch. 2. p. 82.

Next: 2 Kings (2 Samuel) Introduction

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Under a tree - Rather, “Under the tamarisk,” a well-known tree at Jabesh which was standing when this narrative was written.

They fasted seven days - In imitation of the mourning for Jacob (marginal reference). They would give full honor to Saul though he was fallen.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Wood. 1 Paralipomenon x. 12., under the oak. --- Days, at their own option. David fasted one day, (Calmet) as he did for Abner. (Salien) --- There was no obligation of mourning for the kings, though it is probable that those near the royal city, would shew this mark of attention to the deceased monarch. See Jeremias xxxiv. 5., and 2 Paralipomenon xxxv. 25. The usual term of mourning was seven days, Ecclesiasticus xxii. 13. (Calmet) --- It is very difficult to ascertain the length of Saul’s reign. Sanctius and Tirinus allow him only 2 years; Petau 12; Calvisius 15; Salien 18; Bucholeer, and probably Josephus, 20, though most copies of the latter have 38; St. Augustine, Serarius, Usher, &c., 40, which is the term mentioned [in] Acts xiii. 20. But most chronologers suppose that the time of Samuel’s administration is there also included. (Haydock) --- Sulpitius thinks that Saul only "reigned a very short time," as "the ark was brought to Cariathiarim before the appeared on the throne, and was removed by David, after it had been there twenty years."

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

To testify their sorrow for the public loss of Saul, and of the people of God; and to entreat God’s favour to prevent the utter extinction of his people. But you must not understand this word of fasting strictly, as if they eat nothing for seven whole days; but in a more large and general sense, as it is used both in sacred and profane writers; that they did eat but little, and that seldom, and that but mean food, and drunk only water for that time.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. Took their bones — From which it appears that they were not burned to ashes.

Buried them… at Jabesh — Where they remained until David had them removed and placed in the sepulchre of Kish at Zelah. 2Sa_21:14.

Fasted seven days — Because of their deep humiliation and grief.

Here ends the history of Saul, and at its close we may well pause to record a few additional reflections on his life and reign. We are impressed from the beginning to the end of his career with the conviction, which deepens all the way along, that he was unequal to his times. He was the center of events and persons greater than himself, and was sadly deficient in those mental and religious qualities which mark the highest style of man. He possessed, indeed, some touching and tender traits of character. In his earlier years he was meek and little in his own eyes, (1Sa_15:17,) though in the eyes of all who knew him he was a choice and noble youth. 1Sa_9:2. His emotional soul quickly caught the ecstasy of the prophetic schools, and he prophesied among them; and even in the later days of his insane persecution of David there would come moments of deep humiliation and contrition of soul, when he would melt into tearful tenderness. 1Sa_24:16; 1Sa_26:21. But he was unequal to the weight of empire. Elevation to power spoiled and finally ruined him, for there was in him a sad mental and religious incapacity for meeting the exigencies of that most trying period of Israelitish history.

“If Samuel is the great example of an ancient saint growing up from childhood to old age without a sudden conversion, Saul is the first direct example of the mixed character often produced by such a conversion, a call coming in the midday of life to rouse the man to higher thoughts than the lost asses of his father’s household or than the tumults of war and victory. He became ‘another man,’ yet not entirely. He was, as is so often the case, half-converted, half-roused. His mind moved unequally and disproportionately in its new sphere. Backwards and forwards, in the names of his children, we see alternately the signs of the old heathenish superstition and of the new purified religion of Jehovah. He caught the prophetic inspiration not continuously, but only in fitful gusts. Then he would be again the slave of his common pursuits. His religion was never blended with his moral nature. It broke out in wild, ungovernable acts of zeal and superstition, and then left him more a prey than ever to his own savage disposition. With the prospects and the position of a David, he remained to the end a Jephthah or a Samson, with this difference, that, having outlived the age of Jephthah and of Samson, he could not be as they; and the struggle, therefore, between what he was and what he might have been, grew fiercer as years went on; and the knowledge of Samuel, and the companionship of David, became to him a curse instead of a blessing.” — Stanley.

The true theocratic view of Saul’s reign is appropriately given in Jehovah’s own words. Hos_13:11 : “I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath.” We must not understand, then, that Saul was chosen because God saw in him the proper qualifications for a king, but quite the contrary. God wished to punish his people for their loss of the true theocratic spirit, and their blind adherence to the false principles and aims with which they thought to revolutionize their government, and the punishment came by the administration of an incompetent king. The leaders of Israel were in an almost passionate haste for change. The occasion and manner of their asking for a king was like throwing the blame of all their national misfortunes on Jehovah, and was accompanied by a suggestion that a king like one of the heathen monarchs would be better than any other kind of leader; so he gave them a king much after their fancy in order to punish them — a man of lofty stature, of splendid personal appearance, of strong heroic impulses, but sadly defective in those nobler virtues which make a man after God’s own heart.

We need not suppose that Saul was so exclusively chosen of God as that the people had no hand and voice in his election. Already, when he first appeared to Samuel, he was designated as the one above all others, “on whom was all the desire of Israel.” 1Sa_9:20. His noble presence and lofty stature, and the wealth and political influence of his family, had already led many in Israel, as they were talking up a king, to turn their eyes to Saul, the son of Kish. The sacred historian may have purposely passed over the merely human measures that were used to secure Saul’s election, and have given us, as is the design of sacred history, the working of God’s hand in the matter.

In the introduction to chapter 13, where the history of Saul’s reign properly begins, we have called attention to the fact that the first three chapters of that history (13, 14, and 15) are devoted to a detailed account of the three great errors of Saul’s life. From these three errors sprang all his after woes. They were the religious crises of his history, and at each point he failed.

But though Saul’s reign was a failure, his whole career is sketched with a plaintive tenderness. Not only did Samuel greatly mourn for Saul, (1Sa_15:11; 1Sa_15:35; 1Sa_16:1,) but the sacred historian, caught the sad, tender spirit of that saintly judge, and breathed it into his narrative. In the same spirit David pours forth his touching elegy over the fallen beauty and might of Israel. 2Sa_1:19-27. In the same spirit let us remember that “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Fasted - To testify their sorrow for the loss of Saul, and of the people of God; and to intreat God's favour to prevent the utter extinction of his people. But you must not understand this word of fasting strictly, as if they eat nothing for seven whole days; but in a more large sense, as it is used both in sacred and profane writers; that they did eat but little, and that but mean food, and drank only water for that time. This book began with the birth of Samuel, and ends with the death of Saul: The comparing these together will teach us to prefer the honour that comes from God, before all the honours of the world.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.