1 Samuel 31:4 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Samuel 31:4
Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.
to fear · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Saul
שָׁאוּל֙sha.'Ul
H7586
Shaul · proper noun, a man's name
took
וַיִּקַּ֤חvai.yi.Kach
H3947
to take (in the widest variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
sword
הַחֶ֔רֶבha.Che.rev
H2719
drought · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
fell
וַיִּפֹּ֖לvai.yi.Pol
H5307
to fall · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Judges 9:54 Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman…
2 Samuel 1:6 And the young man that told him said, As I happened by chance upon mount Gilboa, behold, Saul leaned upon his spear; and, lo, the chariots a…
2 Samuel 1:9-10 He said unto me again, Stand, I pray thee, upon me, and slay me: for anguish is come upon me, because my life is yet whole in me.
2 Samuel 1:20 Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the unci…
2 Samuel 17:23 And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and pu…
Judges 14:3 Then his father and his mother said unto him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou…
1 Samuel 14:6 And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that t…
1 Samuel 17:26 And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproa…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 31:1-7
The day of recompence has now come, in which Saul must account for the blood of the Amalekites which he had sinfully spared, and that of the priests which he had more sinfully spilt; that of David too, which he would have spilt, must come into the account. Now his day has come to fall, as David foresaw, when he should descend into battle and perish, Sa1 26:10. Come and see the righteous judgments of God.
I. He sees his soldiers fall about him, Sa1 31:1. Whether the Philistines were more numerous, better posted, and better led on, or what other advantages they had, we are not told; but it seems they were more vigorous, for they made the onset; they fought against Israel, and the Israelites fl…
the battle went sore against Saul, &c.--He seems to have bravely maintained his ground for some time longer; but exhausted with fatigue and loss of blood, and dreading that if he fell alive into the enemy's hands, they would insolently maltreat him (Jos 8:29; Jos 10:24; Jdg 8:21), he requested his armor bearer to despatch him. However, that officer refused to do so. Saul then falling on the point of his sword killed himself; and the armor bearer, who, according to Jewish writers, was Doeg, following the example of his master, put an end to his life also. They died by one and the same sword--the very weapon with which they had massacred the Lord's servants at Nob.
Adam Clarke on 1 Samuel 31:4
Draw thy sword, and thrust me through - Dr. Delaney has some good observations on this part of the subject: "Saul and his armor-bearer died by the same sword. That his armor-bearer died by his own sword is out of all doubt; the text expressly tells us so; and that Saul perished by the same sword is sufficiently evident. Draw Thy sword, says he to him, and thrust me through; which, when he refused, Saul, says the text, took The sword, (את החרב eth hachereb, the very sword), and fell upon it. What sword? Not his own, for then the text would have said so; but, in the plain natural grammatical construction, the sword before mentioned must be the sword now referred to, that is, his armor-bearer's…
And Saul said to his armor-bearer: Draw your sword, etc. The armor-bearer of Saul signifies the doctors of the law; for just as the arms and arrows of the Philistines are the deceits of the wicked, so on the contrary, the arms of the Israelites ought to be mystically understood as the words of spiritual doctrine, by which the people of God had to fortify themselves against all dangers. But Saul, wounded unto desperation by the archers, preferred to die by the sword of his armor-bearer rather than by that of the uncircumcised, because the rulers of the kingdom of the Jews, once having set the purpose of dying in their sins, preferred to be destroyed by their doctors who were dissolving the commandments of the law and thus teaching them, rather than to be polluted by the company of the gentiles, whom they called common and unclean. Moreover, they feared to enter the praetorium of a gentile, so that they would not be contaminated, but could eat the Passover (John XVIII). Nevertheless, they did not fear to contaminate that same Passover, turned for their ruin by the law, which they had received, with the blood of the innocent.
And his armor-bearer did not want, etc. There is no doubt that among the reprobate teachers of the law there have been some who, through a sinister interpretation, did not want the sharpness of the word to kill their own listeners, and yet those listeners turned to their own ruin either by despising or, what is worse, by blaspheming the things rightly said by their teachers. Upon seeing their spiritual death, that is, their obstinacy in sinning, those ministers of the word, deteriorated over time, saw that the testimonies of the law, which they had feared to interpret wrongly, when contemptuously disregarded, became an occasion of downfall for them. We regret to acknowledge that the same things happen often today. But even heretics, wounded by their own sins, when they twist the words of divine scriptures into arguments for their error, surely turn their own weapons upon their own chests as they are about to die; and any brother, even remaining in the unity of the catholic Church, when he defiles any skill he has learned for the common good of the Church and those among whom he lives with the contagion of pride, arrogance, avarice, or any other vice, miserably pierces himself with his own sword, because that which ought to have been defended against the enemy, instead aided the enemy.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
David — Beloved, the eighth and youngest son of Jesse, a citizen of Bethlehem. His father seems to have been a man in humble life. His mother’s name is not recorded. Some think she was the Nahash of 2 Sam.…
Gilboa — Boiling spring, a mountain range, now Jebel Fukua’, memorable as the scene of Saul’s disastrous defeat by the Philistines. Here also his three sons were slain, and he himself died by his own hand (1…
Jezreel, Valley of — Lying on the northern side of the city, between the ridges of Gilboa and Moreh, an offshoot of Esdraelon, running east to the Jordan (Josh. 17:16; Judg. 6:33; Hos. 1:5). It was the scene of the…
Philistines — (Gen. 10:14, R.V.; but in A.V., “Philistim”), a tribe allied to the Phoenicians. They were a branch of the primitive race which spread over the whole district of the Lebanon and the valley of the…
Saul — Asked for. (1.) A king of Edom (Gen. 36:37, 38); called Shaul in 1 Chr. 1:48. (2.) The son of Kish (probably his only son, and a child of prayer, “asked for”), of the tribe of Benjamin, the first…
Sword — Of the Hebrew was pointed, sometimes two-edged, was worn in a sheath, and suspended from the girdle (Ex. 32:27; 1 Sam. 31:4; 1 Chr. 21:27; Ps. 149:6: Prov. 5:4; Ezek. 16:40; 21:3-5). It is a symbol…
Gilboa · and died — and died
Jezreel · .Place of the — .Place of the
Philistines · Israel defeated by, and Saul slain — Israel defeated by, and Saul slain
Suicide · .Saul and his armor-bearer — .Saul and his armor-bearer
Sword, The · Was used: Sometimes for self-destruction — Was used: Sometimes for self-destruction
John Gill on 1 Samuel 31:4
Then said Saul unto his armourbearer,.... Who, the Jews (b) say, was Doeg the Edomite, promoted to this office for slaying the priests:
draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; for if he was wounded, yet not mortally, and it is certain he did not so apprehend it. It is much the sword of the armourbearer should be sheathed in a battle; but perhaps he was preparing for flight, and so had put it up in its scabbard:
lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me; lest they should not dispatch him at once, but put him to a lingering and torturing death, and insult him, and mock at him, as they did Samson:
but his armourbearer would not, for he was sore afraid; to lay…
The account of the war between the Philistines and Israel, the commencement of which has already been mentioned in Sa1 28:1, Sa1 28:4., and Sa1 29:1, is resumed in Sa1 31:1 in a circumstantial clause; and to this there is attached a description of the progress and result of the battle, more especially with reference to Saul. Consequently, in Ch1 10:1, where there had been no previous allusion to the war, the participle נלחמים is changed into the perfect. The following is the way in which we should express the circumstantial clause: "Now when the Philistines were fighting against Israel, the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and slain men fell in the mountains of Gilboa" (vid., Sa1 2…
David had once held the position of armor bearer (16:21). • kill me: This is one of many parallels between the death of Abimelech in the time of the judges (Judg 9) and Saul, Israel’s first national king (cp. Judg 9:54).
Rashi on 1 Samuel 31:1
The Philistines were battling with Yisroel. As a person saying, 'Let us go back to the earlier topic.'
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
