1 Samuel 31:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And the archers hit him— Houbigant renders this verse thus, Then the battle going hard against Saul, the archers rushed upon him, from whom he received a great wound. Saul, says he, would hardly have commanded his armour-bearer to kill him, if he had not been in a desperate state. The words, lest they thrust me through and abuse me, are not to be separated. Saul was not so much afraid of being killed, as of being abused, by these insulting enemies. Commentators observe, that there is no mention of any archers in any of the Philistine armies or battles before this. The use of the bow, however, was not unknown: Jonathan is celebrated for his skill and dexterity in it, and so were some of the worthies who resorted to David; but it seems not to have been yet brought into common practice, if, as it has been collected from 2 Samuel 1:18., David after this battle had the Israelites taught the use of it. If this was so, it seems to prove that they gained in this battle great advantage by means of their archers: for, doubtless, he would have taught it them much sooner, when he commanded the armies of Saul against the Philistines, had they then gained any advantage over the Israelites by means of these weapons. Sir Isaac Newton tells us, that those mighty numbers of men who aided the Philistines against Saul in the beginning of his reign, were the shepherds expelled from Egypt by Amasis; some of whom fled into Phoenicia, and others into Arabia Petraea. Now his son Ammon conquered Arabia. Why then may we not fairly presume, that these archers, who now aided the Philistines, were either Arabs who fled thither from Ammon, or those Egyptians who fled before to Arabia, and learned archery there from the natives, who were allowed to be the best bowmen in the world: since the time and circumstances suit, the conjecture will not, I believe, be thought ill-grounded. The Cherethites, so often mentioned in the following books, were of these archers whom David employed in his armies.