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But about a generation before our date the northernmost of those bold "Habiri," under an elective sheikh Saul, had pushed the Philistines out of Bethshan and other points of vantage in mid-Palestine, and had become once more free of the hills which they had held in the days of Pharaoh Menephthah.
That apparent victory of the idols and the mocking exultation over the bloody trophy and dinted armour are, to the historian, not the least bitter consequences of the battle. The last point is the brave midnight march of the men of Jabesh from their home on the eastern uplands beyond Jordan, across the river and up to Bethshan, perched on its lofty cliff, and overlooking the valley of the Jordan.
And when the men that dwelt in Jabesh-Gilead saw what the Philistines had done unto Saul, all the strongest men of them arose and went all that night and took down the bodies of Saul and of his sons from the wall of Bethshan and burned them, and took the bones and buried them in the wood of Jabesh-Gilead and fasted seven days.
The tents were pitched, the first night, under the walls of Bethshan, a fortified city of the Romans. Set on a knoll above the river Jordan, the town loomed big and threatening over the little camp of the Galilean pilgrims. But they kept aloof from it, because it was a city of the heathen. Its theatres and temples and palaces were accursed.
On the next day, the Philistines came to rob the dead, and found that Saul and his three sons had fallen on Mount Gilboa. They cut off his head and stripped off his armor and sent messengers through all the land of the Philistines to bring the good news to their idols and to the people. And they put his armor in the temple of Ashtarte and fastened his body on the wall of Bethshan.
Saul's headless and dishonoured body hangs rotting in the sun on the walk of Bethshan, while David sits a conqueror in Ziklag. The introduction of the brightness of the two preceding chapters is intended to heighten the darkness that broods over this one, and to deepen the stern teaching of that terrible death.
He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." David's patience was crowned. Another was David's continual kindness to a foe. He was even kind to Saul's memory and rewarded the men who reverently took Saul's body from the wall of Bethshan and gave it decent burial. David's chivalry was crowned.
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