1Now the Philistines fought against Israel. The men of Israel fled from the Philistines and were killed on Mount Gilboa.
2The Philistines caught up with Saul and his sons. They killed Saul's sons: Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua.
3The battle was fierce against Saul. The archers found him, and he was gravely wounded by them.
4Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and stab me with it, so that these uncircumcised Philistines don't come and stab me and humiliate me." But his armor-bearer refused because he was terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it.
5When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died with him.
6So Saul, his three sons, his armor-bearer, and all his men died together that same day.
7When the men of Israel on the other side of the valley, and those beyond the Jordan, saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their cities and fled. The Philistines then came and lived in those cities.
8The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons lying on Mount Gilboa.
9They cut off Saul's head, stripped off his armor, and sent them around to the land of the Philistines to spread the news in the temples of their idols and among the people.
10They put Saul's armor in the temple of the Ashtaroth, and they nailed his body to the wall of Beth Shan.
11When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul,
12all their brave men got up, traveled all night, and took the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan. They came back to Jabesh and burned the bodies there.
13They took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, then fasted for seven days.