1 Samuel 31

In 1 Samuel 31, we encounter the conclusion of King Saul’s story. Join Pastor Marty as he delves into the lessons of humility, the consequences of disobedience, and the hope found in the Lord. Let this message throughout 1 Samuel remind us that even in defeat, God’s purpose prevails and His grace sustains us.

I love crape myrtle trees. Their frilly, colorful flowers are a pleasure to look at all summer, and those smooth wooden trunks are simply classy. Yet, here in Northern Virginia, they are prone to being attacked by scale, an invasive insect that attaches to the tender branches (Acanthococcus lagerstroemiae, for the Master Gardeners among us).

Once affixed to the tree, the insect beings to slowly suck the life out of the tree, while excreting a black soot on the bark and surrounding plants. It also forms a cotton-like, scaly substance over its body to protect it from, let’s say, things like insecticides. (Oh, and this, according to evolution, just all happened by chance. Sure.) If left untreated, flowers diminish, the tree and the surrounding area look unsightly, all while the insect population explodes. The scale will also move from tree to tree, causing damage and eventual death.

How do you battle this foe? You can, and should, use a multi-pronged approach. First, use soap, water, and a brush to remove the scale when you see it. Second, spray the infected areas with a mineral dormant spray. This will essentially suffocate the invaders. Third, in the fall or early spring, you would be wise to drench the soil with chemicals containing products such as imidacloprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, or thiamethoxam. As these chemicals are sucked up into the tree through the root system, it keeps the pesky insects from having your tree or trees for a snack.

While you are having an “aha” moment because you know what’s going on with your crape myrtle, think of how this gardening issue relates to the sin of compromise. If you allow this sinful insect to land on your life, and you fail to treat it with confession and a deep commitment to follow hard after Christ, it will proliferate. It will also make your life quite unsightly because everyone else near you will see its adverse effects, and it will jump to nearby trees, or should I say, people. Ultimately, if pride keeps you from permitting the Spirit of God to help you rid your life of this invader, it can and will cost you dearly.

If you don’t believe me, study the life of King Saul. From the beginning of his reign until the end, he lived a life of compromise.

• God told him to eliminate the Amalekites, and he balked (1 Sam. 15).
• God removed His blessing and placed it on David, and Saul permitted his jealousy to cause him to compromise his regal role by constantly attempting to murder the man.
• He compromised his role as family protector when he attempted to kill his son, Jonathan, for his allegiance to David.
• He allowed Doeg the Edomite to murder 85 innocent priests, including the High Priest, Ahimelech, for their food support of David’s hungry soldiers (1 Sam. 21:1-9; 22:6-19).
• When the Philistine army amassed in the Valley of Jezreel in a quest to annihilate him, instead of turning to God for guidance, he slipped out under the cover of darkness and confided in a witch from Endor (1 Sam. 28).

As we turn to study the final chapter of his fateful life, we will quickly discover how the sinful scale of compromise sucked the hope and life out of his body. For years, the God he had mocked permitted his sin to judge him most definitively (Heb. 12:5-11). As the Word says, a man reaps what he sows (Hos. 8:7). In chapter 31, the Reaper showed up on a battlefield to remove a diseased spiritual tree before it infected more trees, and so that a mighty new regal tree might grow and flourish in the form of David, God’s new anointed one. Put differently, chapter 31 is a statement of stark contrasts. Up north, God will remove an unworthy king, while in the south, near Ziklag, God will ready the worthy king. This truth can also be stated in this fashion: God is working to cause great spiritual light to break out in a time of great personal or national darkness. Will you trust Him? And if you have a love affair with compromise, will you finally lay it at the feet of Jesus before its scales do untold damage to your life?

From Saul’s activity in this closing chapter of this fine book, we learn the sober truth that he did not repent and submit to God’s leadership, which cost him dearly. What will you do? That is the question you must pose to yourself as we sink our interpretive spade into this final historical account.

Saul’s shocking encounter with the “resurrected” prophet Samuel while with the witch in the dark pit near Endor left him with God’s final word:

¹⁷ “And the LORD has done accordingly as He spoke through me; for the LORD has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David.

¹⁸ “As you did not obey the LORD and did not execute His fierce wrath on Amalek, so the LORD has done this thing to you this day. ¹⁹ “Moreover the LORD will also give over Israel along with you into the hands of the Philistines, therefore tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. Indeed the LORD will give over the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines!” (1 Sam. 28)

The promise of what Saul’s life could have been would now be reduced to his humiliating defeat and death. It could have been so different, but he chose compromise over obedience to God. He would lose his life over this, but in the midst of the divinely ordered chaos, God maneuvered another man to take his place on Israel’s throne. We all know his name. This is how God works. He effaces the stiff-necked and elevates the humble.

Saul’s final days on planet earth at the helm of Israel’s kingdom start to unravel quickly in what I call . . .

The Rout (1 Sam. 31:1-3)

Chronologically, the battle here most likely coincided with David’s battle with the Amalekites. This serves as a powerful contrast between the two leaders.

• David listened to God before he struck the Amalekites.
• Saul listened to a witch before he engaged the Philistines.
• David sought to fulfill God’s command to destroy the Amalekites.
• Saul partially fulfilled God’s command.
• David’s confessional life led to a life of great options.
• Saul’s self-centered life led to a life with no options.
• Saul’s regal line was eliminated.
• David’s regal line was elevated.
• David’s humble obedience to God led to a blessing.
• Saul’s haughty disobedience to God led to cursing and judgment.
• David’s life honored God (for the most part).
• Saul’s life constantly dishonored Go.

The two men could not have been more different, and this final episode underscores this reality. It also prepares us for David’s rise to power when we turn the page and encounter the continuing story in 2 Samuel chapter 1. I’ll leave that for you to investigate.

For now, our story recounts how God removed his scale-laden leader, Saul.

¹ Now the Philistines were fighting against Israel, and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. ² And the Philistines overtook Saul and his sons; and the Philistines killed Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchi-shua the sons of Saul. ³ And the battle went heavily against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was badly wounded by the archers. (1 Sam. 31)

The Philistine chariots of iron outmatched Israel’s military on the valley floor; so they quickly and hastily retreated south to Mount Gilboa’s hilly, rocky terrain. Scampering up the mountain provided some cover, but not enough. The Philistines sent teams of well-trained, seasoned archers to pepper the hillside with arrows. In a flash, Saul watched as three of his sons were hit and bled out from the relentless barrage. Three sons, for reasons unknown to us, did not die that day: Ish-bosheth (who reigned shortly as king after Saul’s death), Armoni, and Mephibosheth. The fact of their deliverance, I’m sure, didn’t console Saul as he witnessed the inglorious demise of his three strong boys. As he watched them fall, never to get up, suddenly, arrows penetrated his regal uniform and armor. He stumbled and fell. His breathing became labored, but his mind was still active. Looking down on the valley floor, he saw the fulfillment of Samuel’s words as the bodies of his valiant, courageous troops lay everywhere, distorted and motionless. Focusing now on the hillside, he watched in horror as the Philistine soldiers rushed his indefensible position. Did he turn to God, then? No. He made a final request to his new armor bearer.

The Request (1 Sam. 31:4-7)

This sad request came out of absolute desperation from a man who had no further military options.

⁴ Then Saul said to his armor bearer, “Draw your sword and pierce me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and pierce me through and make sport of me.”

Saul knew what the bloodthirsty, amoral Philistines would do with him if they seized him, and he wanted no part of it. He didn’t want to be tortured for sport and then slowly killed. He wanted to die on his own terms, so he asked the armor bearer to do the unthinkable: kill the king of Israel. What did this unnamed man do? He acted like David:

But his armor bearer would not, for he was greatly afraid. So Saul took his sword and fell on it.

In five short words in Hebrew, we read that Saul killed himself before the Philistines could reach him. In five short words, the man in whom Israel had originally placed much hope died utterly hopeless:

‎וַיִּקַּ֤ח שָׁאוּל֙ אֶת־הַחֶ֔רֶב וַיִּפֹּ֖ל עָלֶֽיהָ׃ (1 Sam. 31:4 WTT)

Seeing this motivated the armor bearer to follow suit:

⁵ And when his armor bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died with him.⁶ Thus Saul died with his three sons, his armor bearer, and all his men on that day together.

Truly, this was one of Israel’s darkest national days. They asked for a king, and, boy, did they get one. He was tall, dark, handsome, and physically powerful, but He proved to be everything God didn’t want him to be, and in the end, the Lord worked through the Philistines to remove him. The scales of compromise in his spiritual walk were just too much for a leader of God’s people to evidence; hence, he left God with no choice.

The sad impact of Saul’s compromised life caused ripples after his death:

⁷ And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley, with those who were beyond the Jordan, saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned the cities and fled; then the Philistines came and lived in them. (1 Sam. 31)

Not only did Israel now have the Philistines living in and dominating the middle of their country, Israelites across the Jordan River in Gilead, which was located east of the Valley of Jezreel, folded in fear, deserted their cities, thus allowing the Philistines to move right in and set up shop in this fertile land given to the Israelites by God after the battles of Joshua (Josh. 13:8-13; 22:1-34). Courage is contagious, but so, too, is cowardice. And to think that after 365 years of owning this wonderful land per God’s design (viz., the end of the period of Joshua’s war campaigns, 1375 B.C., and the end of Saul’s reign, 1010 B.C., give us this number), pockets of it fell into the hands of Satan’s people. Sad and shocking. Sin always has a terrible cost that spreads like white scale on crape myrtle trees.

Speaking of the Devil, his Philistine troops couldn’t have been more elated or drunk with their victory:

The Reveling (1 Sam. 31:8-10)

Like the world will party down during the middle of the tribulation when God permits them to finally kill the two powerful witnesses (Moses & Elijah? Rev. 11), the Philistines couldn’t wait to exploit Saul’s body.

⁸ And it came about on the next day when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. ⁹ And they cut off his head, and stripped off his weapons, and sent them throughout the land of the Philistines, to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people. ¹⁰ And they put his weapons in the temple of Ashtaroth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan. (1 Sam. 31)

The irony of this shouldn’t be missed. David cut off the head of the Philistine killing machine, Goliath, and now the Philistines decapitate Israel’s king and use his head as a trophy to highlight their stunning victory.

Additionally, the Hebrew text is somewhat ambiguous here, which permits us to posit that the Philistines may have sent Saul’s head and armor around Philistia before they deposited it all in the temple of Ashtaroth, their war and fertility goddess. This, in and of itself, is another irony in the plot. The book that started Israel out in the tabernacle/temple of the living God ends with Israel’s dead king’s armor being showcased in the temple of a vile and vacuous goddess from the Canaanite pantheon. It is sad how far the nation had fallen because of their inept leader.

In any event, whatever happened with Saul’s head and armor, it is essential to note the Philistines viewed this as their gospel, their good news. The Greek text, or the LXX, even employs the word for gospel, euaggelizontes (a participle), or euaggelizo (the root verbal form).

1 Samuel 31:9 καὶ ἀποστρέφουσιν αὐτὸν καὶ ἐξέδυσαν τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀποστέλλουσιν αὐτὰ εἰς γῆν ἀλλοφύλων κύκλῳ εὐαγγελίζοντες τοῖς εἰδώλοις αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ λαῷ αὐτῶν (1 Sam. 31:9 BGT)

What gospel did these despots declare? They smiled, sneered, and stated that their god(s), who was/were really made of hands and merely mirrored the limitations and perverse sexual appetites of their worshippers, had finally defeated the God of Israel. Gone was the fear of the Israelite God that had dominated their god, Dagon, when the Ark of the Covenant was captured. Gone was the fear of the Israelite God who sent painful hemorrhoids/tumors among them when they sought to hold onto the holy Ark (1 Sam. 5). Affixing Saul’s headless, helpless body to the wall of the mighty fortress in Bet She’an served to underscore the prowess of their pantheon. Like all non-believers who revel when it appears they have gained an upper hand over Christianity, these ancient polytheists couldn’t have been more wrong. They would live to encounter the living God with their lifeless gods on another day.

All of this, of course, is a taste of what is to come when the Anti-Christ, in the spirit of the Philistines, rises to power and is almost unstoppable at the end of time in his persecution of Jews and Christians. Regarding this domination, which is forming even as we speak around the world, Daniel prophesied five hundred years before Christ:

²⁴ ‘As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings will arise; and another will arise after them, and he will be different from the previous ones and will subdue three kings. ²⁵ ‘And he will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. ²⁶ ‘But the court will sit for judgment, and his dominion will be taken away, annihilated and destroyed forever. ²⁷ ‘Then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him.’ (Dan. 7)

The senseless and brutal genocide of Nigerian Christians by Boko Haram, the Islamic radical terrorists, is but a taste of what is to come in the future when the man of sin, the Anti-Christ, arrives. Yet, the advance of the godless is always short-lived, and at the end of time it will be terminated altogether by THE Davidic King of Kings, Jesus, the Christ (Rev. 19). Hence, the momentary victory of the forces of evil in Saul and David’s day was merely a foretaste of what is to come as the Lord works to finalize His kingdom plans through the line of David. Saul had to fall, and David had to rise, for the geo-political stage to be set for the final Davidic king’s arrival. And once he is here, the words of Paul will be fulfilled:

⁹ Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2)

I, like you, can’t wait for this day. In the meantime, we must be patient as God slowly and surely unfolds His intricate, highly complicated kingdom plan. There will be many ups and downs, losses and gains; however, in the final analysis, the kingdom will come. Jesus promised us this much:

²⁹ But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, ³⁰ and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. (Matt. 24)

Will you be in the kingdom when the King returns? Or will you be barred from the kingdom because you gave your allegiance to an earthly and temporal kingdom? The choice is yours.

The Respect (1 Sam. 31:11-13)

News that Saul’s body hung from a wall in Bet She’an traveled quickly east across the Jordan River to the valiant men who still resided in Jabesh-gilead. Not everything Saul, God’s first anointed king of Israel, did was wrong. They remembered how he had delivered them from the iron-fisted grip of Ammonite military power years prior (1 Sam. 11). How did he do it? He did it when the Spirit of God came upon him, and when God sent fear among the Ammonite forces (1 Sam. 11:6-7). True, the compromises of Saul’s life caused God to remove him finally; however, as bad and sad as his death was to the nation, the divinely inspired chapter ends with rightful honor being shown to Saul for something he did do right.

¹¹ Now when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, ¹² all the valiant men rose and walked all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and they came to Jabesh, and burned them there. ¹³ And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days. (1 Sam. 31)

There is no telling what the Philistines did to Saul’s decomposing, rigor mortis-ridden body. This is probably why these men burned what was left of him and then buried it. This rightfully honored the king, preventing a contagion from spreading from his corpse. And these men did this courageous act to say “good-bye” and “thank-you” to a king who had, for a moment, been there for them. Their honor also merely sets the reader up for David’s response when he gets the news of Saul’s death in 2 Samuel 1. David could have been elated and gleeful when he, too, heard the news of Saul’s demise, but he wasn’t. In a classy, godly fashion, David joined and even led the way in honoring God’s first anointed king. By so doing, he exhibited the traits of King Jesus, who taught us all to bless when we are cursed, and not to return insult for insult, but to be people of peace and thanks.

Looking at how 1 Samuel ends and how 2 Samuel begins, we should realize the main spiritual principle embedded here transcends time and speaks to us in our day and age, a time that is also riddled with Saul and Philistine types:

Main Idea:

Disobedience leads to degradation, but obedience leads to elevation.

So, what will it be in your life? Will the Lord be moved to discipline you because of the compromise you have permitted to spread unabated (Heb. 12:5-11), or will you be one, like David, who will live a confessional life and live to see God turn degradation into elevation and blessing? Dark times are usually brought about by dark living; however, even in the darkness God is always at work to bring light to the world through saints, like David, who pursue hard after Him. Will you be God’s light in our dark day (Matt. 5:14-15)?