The genealogies are finished. Chronicles finally tells a story, and it chooses to start with an ending — Saul dead on Gilboa, his sons dead beside him, his body mutilated by the very Philistines he spent his reign fighting. 1 Samuel already told this story in full, witch of Endor and all. Chronicles retells it in half the space and then adds two verses 1 Samuel never wrote: its own verdict on why.
A study in 1 Chronicles 10 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
So Saul Took A Sword, And Fell Upon It
“Then said Saul to his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. So Saul took a sword, and fell upon it. And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise on the sword, and died. So Saul died, and his three sons, and all his house died together.”
1 Chronicles 10:4-6
1 Samuel spends four chapters getting here — the medium at Endor, the sixteen months at Ziklag, the burning of David’s own city (David encouraged himself in the LORD his God) — before the armies ever meet on Gilboa (so Saul died, and his three sons). Chronicles skips straight to the field. Even a request as small as asking his armorbearer for a mercy killing is refused — the young man is “sore afraid,” not of the enemy, but of laying a hand on the king himself. Saul dies by his own sword because no one else, to the very end, will do it for him.
They Fastened His Head In The Temple Of Dagon
“And when they had stripped him, they took his head, and his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry tidings unto their idols, and to the people. And they put his armour in the house of their gods, and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon.”
1 Chronicles 10:9-10
Israel’s first king, anointed by Samuel and stood a head taller than his people, ends up a trophy nailed inside a fish-god’s temple — the same god whose statue once fell face-down before the captured ark (1 Samuel 5:1-4) now credited with Israel’s own king’s death. It is the ugliest picture in the whole book, and Chronicles does not soften it. The man who would not wait for Samuel, who spared what he was told to destroy, ends his life as an offering on the wrong altar entirely.
They Arose, All The Valiant Men
“And when all Jabesh-gilead heard all that the Philistines had done to Saul, they arose, all the valiant men, and took away the body of Saul, and the bodies of his sons, and brought them to Jabesh, and buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.”
1 Chronicles 10:11-12
Jabesh-gilead had a debt to pay. Saul’s very first act as king, before he had built or lost anything, was riding to their rescue when an Ammonite king threatened to gouge out every right eye in the city (1 Samuel 11). Decades later, with everything else about Saul’s reign in ruins, that one act of deliverance is still remembered — risked at night, under enemy control, to give a disgraced king’s bones a decent burial. Even a failed reign can leave behind one debt someone is still willing to repay.
He Died For His Transgression
“So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the LORD, even against the word of the LORD, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it; And enquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.”
1 Chronicles 10:13-14
Nothing in 1 Samuel’s own account of Saul’s death says this in so many words. Chronicles adds it as its own closing verdict — and names the séance at Endor without retelling a word of it, trusting its readers to already know the story. Two failures, stacked together: he did not keep the word of the LORD, and when he needed guidance most, he went looking for it from a source that was never the LORD at all. Ellen White quotes this exact verse to settle a question the Endor narrative itself leaves open — whether Saul really spoke with Samuel that night:
“The act of Saul in consulting a sorceress is cited in Scripture as one reason why he was rejected by God and abandoned to destruction… Here it is distinctly stated that Saul inquired of the familiar spirit, not of the Lord. He did not communicate with Samuel, the prophet of God; but through the sorceress he held intercourse with Satan.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 683
The last clause of verse 14 is the hinge the rest of this book turns on: “therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse.” One king’s transgression becomes another man’s throne. Everything from here to the end of 1 Chronicles is the story of what David does with a kingdom that came to him because Saul threw his away.
