¹And 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 hit him, and he was 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 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. ⁶So Saul and his three sons died, and all his household died together. ⁷And when every man of Israel who was in the valley saw that they had fled, and that Saul and his sons had died, they left their 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 sons lying fallen at Mount Gilboa. ⁹And they stripped him and removed his head, and his weaponry, and they sent messengers into the land of the Philistines round about to bring the good news to their idols and to the people. ¹⁰And they put his weaponry in the house of their gods, and they mounted his skull in the house of Dagon. ¹¹And when all of Jabesh-Gilead heard everything that the Philistines had done to Saul, ¹²every valiant man arose and removed Saul's corpse and his sons' corpses and brought them to Jabesh, and they buried their bones under the terebinth tree in Jabesh. And they fasted for seven days. ¹³So Saul died for his treachery which he committed against the Lord, against the word of the Lord, which he did not keep, and also for consulting a necromancer to make an inquiry. ¹⁴But he did not inquire of the Lord, so he killed him, and he directed the kingdom to David the son of Jesse.