1 After that, the Philistia mob fought with the Israel mob. They fought on the hill called Gilboa. Lots of Israel soldiers died there, and the other soldiers got frightened and ran away. 2 The Philistia mob chased Saul and his sons, and they got closer and closer. Then they killed dead Saul’s sons, Jonathan, Abinadab and Malkishua. 3 The soldiers that were close to Saul fought hard. The Philistia mob shot Saul lots of times with bows and arrows, and they hurt him very badly. 4 Saul talked to one of the soldiers there, the one that carried his shield for him. He said, “Get your long knife and stab me. I don’t want that mob to kill me dead. They don’t know God. They might make fun of me as they kill me.”

The soldier was frightened and did not want to stab him. So Saul got the knife and stabbed himself in his belly and killed himself. 5 Then that soldier saw that his boss was dead, so he stabbed himself and died too. 6 That’s how Saul died, and his sons, and the man that carried his shield, and his soldiers. They all died on that day.

7 The people that saw what happened told this bad news to everybody along the Jezreel Valley and across the Jordan River. The Israel mob in all those places heard it, and they ran away frightened. They left their towns empty, and the Philistia mob went and lived in those towns.

8 The next day, the Philistia mob went back up the hill at Gilboa to get stuff from the dead bodies. They saw the dead bodies of Saul and his 3 sons there. 9 They cut off Saul’s head and took off his heavy iron plates. Then they sent messengers to every place in Philistia, to tell the story to the people and in the houses of their gods. 10 They put Saul’s iron plates in one of those houses, the house of the female god called Astarti. At Beth-Shan they hung Saul’s dead body on the wall that was around the town.

11 The people from another place called Jabesh, in the Gilead country, they heard the bad news too. They remembered that Saul helped them before. They were very upset about the bad things the Philistia mob did to Saul. 12 So that night lots of brave men from Jabesh walked all night to Beth-Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall, and they carried them back to Jabesh. They burned the bodies 13 and buried the bones under the big tree there. For the next 7 days they ate no food. They just sat sadly together and felt sorry for Saul.[a]

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