¹Then the Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled from the Philistines, and they fell as casualties on Mount Gilboa. ²And the Philistines hotly pursued Saul and his sons, and the Philistines struck down Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchi-Shua, Saul's sons. ³And the war went heavily against Saul, and the archers – men of the bow – hit him, and he was severely wounded by the archers. ⁴And Saul said to his arms-bearer, “Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised men do not come and thrust me through or ill-treat me.” But his arms-bearer was not willing to do so, because he was very afraid. So Saul took his sword and fell on it. ⁵Then when his arms-bearer saw that Saul had died, he too fell on his sword and died with him. ⁶So Saul and his three sons died, as did his arms-bearer, and all his men together on that day. ⁷And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and on the other side of the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled, and that Saul and his sons had died, they left the cities and fled, and the Philistines came and lived in them. ⁸And it came to pass, on the next day when the Philistines came to strip the fallen, that they found Saul and his three sons lying fallen at Mount Gilboa. ⁹And they cut his head off and stripped his weaponry, and they sent messengers into the land of the Philistines round about to bring the good news to the house of their idols and to the people. ¹⁰And they put his weaponry in the house of images of Astarte, and they fastened his corpse to the wall of Beth-Shan. ¹¹And when the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead heard of it – of what the Philistines had done to Saul – ¹²every valiant man arose and went all night and took down Saul's corpse and his sons' corpses from the wall of Beth-Shan, and they went to Jabesh and burnt them there. ¹³And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh. And they fasted for seven days.