CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1 Samuel 31:9. “And sent.” Hebrew scholars here read sent them, i.e., the weapons and the head of Saul and probably those of his sons.
1 Samuel 31:10. “Ashtaroth.” The plural form of Ashtoreth, the principal female divinity of the Phœnicians, as Baal was the principal male divinity, identical with the Astarte of the Greeks and Romans, who was by many ancient writers identified with the goddess Venus, as well as also with the planet of that name. (See Smith’s Bib. Diet.) “Beth-shan.” The present Beisan, in the Jordan valley, twelve miles south of the Sea of Galilee and four miles west of the Jordan. The royal heads, we learn from 1 Chronicles 10:10, were fixed in the temple of Dagon. “Thus the trophies of their great victory were divided among their several deities.” (Jamieson.)
1 Samuel 31:11. “Jabesh-Gilead.” See on 1 Samuel 11:1.
1 Samuel 31:12. “Went all night.” “Considering that Bethshan is about three hours distance, and by a narrow upland passage to the west of the Jordan, the whole being a journey of about twelve miles, they must have made all expedition to travel thither, to carry off the headless bodies and return to their own side of the Jordan in the course of a single night.” (Jamieson.) “Burnt them.” This was not a Hebrew custom, and was either resorted to to prevent any further insult from the Philistines or, more likely, seeing that only the flesh was burned, because of the mangled and decomposed condition of the corpses.
1 Samuel 31:13. “A tree,” rather the tamarisk, the article indicating that the site was well-known. David afterwards caused the bones to be removed to Saul’s family burial place (2 Samuel 21:11-14).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 31:8-13
THE GRATITUDE OF THE MEN OF JABESH GILEAD
I. The courageous impulses of grateful hearts. Gratitude may be almost regarded as an instinct of human nature, for it springs up spontaneously in the breast of man in answer to benefits received. He who does not experience this emotion must be hardened below the brute, for even some of the lower animals will remember benefits conferred, and love him who has done them a service, But the strength and length of the gratitude will depend much on the disposition and character. All men are prone to forget benefits conferred long ago, and only true and loyal hearts keep their memory green, and are found willing to recognise them at their own risk. Many years had passed since Saul earned the gratitude of the men of Jabesh Gilead, and his later life had tended rather to efface than to perpetuate the recollection of that act of bravery. And very considerable must have been the danger which they now encountered in rendering. him this last service—the only one which could now be rendered to one who had put himself beyond any other. But their gratitude and courage were equal to the occasion, and shed the only ray of light that brightens this dark picture.
II. The lasting influence of a good deed. The life that had begun in so much promise had ended in gloom, and it seems almost impossible to recognise in this fearful and despairing man the brave soldier-king by whom, at Jabesh, “the Lord had wrought salvation in Israel” (1 Samuel 11:13). But in this day of his shame, and when he is justly reaping the reward of his evil deeds, this good one is not to be forgotten but receives its reward. Truly,
“The evil that men do lives after them,”
but so also, happily, does the good.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
This book began with the birth of Samuel, but now it ends with the death of Saul, the comparing of which two together will teach us to prefer the honour that comes from God before any of the honours which this world pretends to have the disposal of.—Henry.
In the greatness and the reverse of the house of Saul is the culmination and catastrophe of the tribe of Benjamin. The Christian fathers used to dwell on the old prediction which describes the character of that tribe, “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and in the evening he shall devour the spoil.” These words well sum up the strange union of fierceness and of gentleness, of sudden resolves for good or evil, which run, as hereditary qualities do often run, through the whole history of that frontier clan. Such were its wild adventures in the times of the Judges; such was Saul, its first king; such was Shemei, of the house of Saul, in his bitterness and his repentance; such was the divided allegiance of the tribe to the rival houses of Judah and Ephraim; such was the union of tenderness and vindictiveness in the character of Mordecai and Esther, if not actual descendants of Shemei and Kish, as they appear in the history of Saul, at least claiming to be of the same tribe, and reckoning among the list of their ancestors the same renowned names. And is it a mere fancy to trace with those same Christian writers the last faint likeness of this mixed history, when, after a lapse of many centuries, the tribe once more for a moment rises to our view; in the second Saul, also of the tribe of Benjamin? Saul of Tarsus, who, like the first, was at one time moved by a zeal bordering almost upon frenzy, and who, like the first, startled all his contemporaries by appearing among the Prophets the herald of the faith which once he destroyed; but, unlike the first, persevered in that faith to the end the likeness in the Christian Church, not of what Saul was, but of what he might have been.—Stanley.