1 Samuel 31:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me He was afraid they might put him to some ignominious death, or make sport with him, as they did with Samson. But his armour-bearer would not, for he was sore afraid He dreaded to think of killing his king. Saul took a sword, and fell upon it “A truly brave man,” says Delaney, “would have died fighting, as Jonathan did, or would, at worst, have gloried at being abused, and even tortured, for having done his duty! Saul then died, not as a hero, but a deserter. Self-murder is demonstrably the effect of cowardice: and it is as irrational and iniquitous as it is base. God, whose creatures we are, is the sole arbiter, as he is the sole author of our life: our lives are his property; and he hath given our country, our family, and our friends, a share in them. And, therefore, as Plato finely observes in his Phædo, God is as much injured by self-murder, as I should be by having one of my slaves killed without my consent. Not to insist on the injury done to others, in a variety of relations, by the same act.”