1 Chronicles 10

⁸The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.

¹Now the Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled before them, and many fell slain on Mount Gilboa.

²The Philistines hotly pursued Saul and his sons, and they killed Saul’s sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua.

⁶“I happened to be on Mount Gilboa,” he replied, “and there was Saul, leaning on his spear, with the chariots and the cavalry closing in on him.

⁴The Philistines gathered together and camped at Shunem, while Saul gathered all Israel and camped at Gilboa.

²¹O mountains of Gilboa, may you have no dew or rain, no fields yielding offerings of grain. For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, no longer anointed with oil.

¹Now in those days the Philistines gathered their forces for warfare against Israel. So Achish said to David, “You must understand that you and your men are to go out to battle with me.”

³⁹Ner was the father of Kish, Kish was the father of Saul, and Saul was the father of Jonathan, Malchishua, Abinadab, and Esh-baal.

¹The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one considers that the righteous are taken away from the presence of evil.

²Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest, lying down in death.

⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

³³Ner was the father of Kish, Kish was the father of Saul, and Saul was the father of Jonathan, Malchishua, Abinadab, and Esh-baal.

⁷And they slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon.

²⁹During Josiah’s reign, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt marched up to help the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River. King Josiah went out to confront him, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.

³When the battle intensified against Saul, the archers overtook him and wounded him critically.

⁴Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and run me through with it, or these uncircumcised men will come and run me through and torture me!” But his armor-bearer was terrified and refused to do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it.

⁴“What was the outcome?” David asked. “Please tell me.” “The troops fled from the battle,” he replied. “Many of them fell and died. And Saul and his son Jonathan are also dead.”

⁵Then David asked the young man who had brought him the report, “How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?”

¹⁴Escape will fail the swift, the strong will not prevail by his strength, and the mighty will not save his life.

²³The archers attacked him with bitterness; they aimed at him in hostility.

²⁴Yet he steadied his bow, and his strong arms were tempered by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, in the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel,

⁴Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and run me through with it, or these uncircumcised men will come and run me through and torture me!” But his armor-bearer was terrified and refused to do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it.

¹⁸(Now with the reward for his wickedness Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong and burst open in the middle, and all his intestines spilled out.

³⁶Your servant has killed lions and bears; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.”

²³Now the lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. They rejoiced and said, “Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hands.”

²⁴And when the people saw him, they praised their god, saying: “Our god has delivered into our hands our enemy who destroyed our land and multiplied our dead.”

²⁰Tell it not in Gath; proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, and the daughters of the uncircumcised exult.

⁵⁴He quickly called his armor-bearer, saying, “Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say of me, ‘A woman killed him.’” So Abimelech’s armor-bearer ran his sword through him, and he died.

¹⁰Where is your king now to save you in all your cities, and the rulers to whom you said, “Give me a king and princes”?

¹¹So in My anger I gave you a king, and in My wrath I took him away.

²⁵But if you persist in doing evil, both you and your king will be swept away.”

¹So I took all this to heart and concluded that the righteous and the wise, as well as their deeds, are in God’s hands. Man does not know what lies ahead, whether love or hate.

²It is the same for all: There is a common fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as it is for the one who makes a vow, so it is for the one who refuses to take a vow.

¹⁸As soon as the ark of God was mentioned, Eli fell backward from his chair by the city gate, and being old and heavy, he broke his neck and died. And Eli had judged Israel forty years.

¹⁰So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and each man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great—thirty thousand foot soldiers of Israel fell.

¹¹The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

⁶Seeing that they were in danger because their troops were hard-pressed, the men of Israel hid in caves and thickets, among the rocks, and in cellars and cisterns.

⁷When the Israelites along the valley and those on the other side of the Jordan saw that the army of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons had died, they abandoned their cities and ran away. So the Philistines came and occupied their cities.

⁴³The foreigner living among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you sink down lower and lower.

³³A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed.

³⁶As for those of you who survive, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that even the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. And they will flee as one flees the sword, and fall when no one pursues them.

³¹I will reduce your cities to rubble and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will refuse to smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices.

⁸The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.

²³“This is blood!” they exclaimed. “The kings have clashed swords and slaughtered one another. Now to the plunder, Moab!”

²⁵Then Jehoshaphat and his people went to carry off the plunder, and they found on the bodies an abundance of goods and valuables—more than they could carry away. They were gathering the plunder for three days because there was so much.

²⁰Tell it not in Gath; proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, and the daughters of the uncircumcised exult.

⁹They cut off Saul’s head, stripped off his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news in the temples of their idols and among their people.

¹⁰They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shan.

²³Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven. The vessels from His house were brought to you, and as you drank wine from them with your nobles, wives, and concubines, you praised your gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you have failed to glorify the God who holds in His hand your very breath and all your ways.

²Under the influence of the wine, Belshazzar gave orders to bring in the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king could drink from them, along with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines.

³Thus they brought in the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king drank from them, along with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines.

¹¹John’s head was brought in on a platter and presented to the girl, who carried it to her mother.

²³Now the lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. They rejoiced and said, “Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hands.”

²⁴And when the people saw him, they praised their god, saying: “Our god has delivered into our hands our enemy who destroyed our land and multiplied our dead.”

²carried it into the temple of Dagon, and set it beside his statue.

³When the people of Ashdod got up early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen on his face before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and returned him to his place.

¹⁰They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shan.

⁴Then the men of Judah came to Hebron, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah. And they told David, “It was the men of Jabesh-gilead who buried Saul.”

⁵So David sent messengers to the men of Jabesh-gilead to tell them, “The Lord bless you, because you showed this kindness to Saul your lord when you buried him.

¹¹When the people of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul,

¹²all their men of valor set out, journeyed all night, and retrieved the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth-shan. When they arrived at Jabesh, they burned the bodies there.

¹Then Nahash the Ammonite came up and laid siege to Jabesh-gilead. All the men of Jabesh said to him, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.”

²But Nahash the Ammonite replied, “I will make a treaty with you on one condition, that I may put out everyone’s right eye and bring reproach upon all Israel.”

¹²he went and took the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan where the Philistines had hung the bodies after they had struck down Saul at Gilboa.

¹³So David had the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan brought from there, and they also gathered the bones of those who had been hanged.

³⁵Then all the people came and urged David to eat something while it was still day, but David took an oath, saying, “May God punish me, and ever so severely, if I taste bread or anything else before the sun sets!”

⁸Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel. So Jacob named it Allon-bacuth.

¹⁰When they reached the threshing floor of Atad, which is across the Jordan, they lamented and wailed loudly, and Joseph mourned for his father seven days.

⁶Whoever turns to mediums or spiritists to prostitute himself with them, I will also set My face against that person and cut him off from his people.

³¹You must not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out, or you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.

²³For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance is like the wickedness of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king.”

¹⁹When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists who whisper and mutter, shouldn’t a people consult their God instead? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?

¹⁰Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, practices divination or conjury, interprets omens, practices sorcery,

¹¹casts spells, consults a medium or spiritist, or inquires of the dead.

⁷Then Saul said to his servants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I can go and consult her.” “There is a medium at Endor,” his servants replied.

⁸So Saul disguised himself by putting on different clothes, and he set out with two of his men. They came to the woman at night, and Saul said, “Consult a spirit for me. Bring up for me the one I name.”

²⁸So Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you.

¹⁴But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought a man after His own heart and appointed him ruler over His people, because you have not kept the command of the Lord.”

¹Now the Lord said to Samuel, “How long are you going to mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have selected from his sons a king for Myself.”

¹⁷He has done exactly what He spoke through me: The Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor David.

⁹May God punish Abner, and ever so severely, if I do not do for David what the Lord has sworn to him:

¹⁰to transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul and to establish the throne of David over Israel and Judah, from Dan to Beersheba.”

²³Now these are the numbers of men armed for battle who came to David at Hebron to turn Saul’s kingdom over to him, in accordance with the word of the Lord: