First Book of Chronicles 10

¹ The Philistines made war on Israel, and the Israelites fled from the Philistines and were slaughtered on Mount Gilboa.

² The Philistines pressed Saul and his sons hard and killed Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchi – shua, the sons of Saul.

³ The fighting grew heavy about Saul; the bowmen took him off his guard, so that he fell wounded by the bowmen.

⁴ Then Saul said to his armour-bearer, ‘Draw your sword and run me through with it. I do not want these uncircumcised men to come and gloat over me’. But his armour-bearer was afraid and would not do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it.

⁵ His armour-bearer, seeing that Saul was dead, fell on his sword too and died with him.

⁶ And so Saul died, he and his three sons and all his House together.

⁷ When all the Israelites who were in the valley saw that the men of Israel had taken to flight and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their towns and fled away. The Philistines then came in and occupied them.

⁸ When the Philistines came on the following day to strip the dead, they found Saul and his sons lying on Mount Gilboa.

⁹ They stripped him and, taking his head and his armour, had them carried round the land of the Philistines to proclaim the good news to their idols and their people.

¹⁰ They placed his armour in the temple of their god, but his head they nailed up in the temple of Dagon.

¹¹ When all the inhabitants of Gilead heard all that the Philistines had done to Saul,

¹² all the warriors set off; and they took the bodies of Saul and his sons away and, bringing them to Jabesh, they buried their bones under the tamarisk of Jabesh; and they fasted for seven days.

¹³ Saul died because he had shown himself unfaithful to Yahweh: he had not kept the word of Yahweh; he had even questioned and consulted a necromancer.

¹⁴ He had not consulted Yahweh, who therefore put him to death and transferred the monarchy to David son of Jesse.