And he said to me, ‘Stand beside me and kill me, for anguish has seized me, and yet my life still lingers.’
A stranger arrives at David's camp with a story, and verse 9 is its heart. He says the dying king turned to him and asked for the final blow. Whether Saul ever spoke those words shapes all that follows.
The Messenger and His Motive
He arrives carrying proof, and expecting a welcome.
Samuel RidoutThe young man who claimed to have made an end of Saul takes his crown and his bracelet and brings them to David. He plainly thinks that he is the bearer of good news. The crown and signet prove his report is true, and he expects it to win him some special reward from David, and possibly a position of honour.
Lie or Last Request
Commentators differ on whether verse 9 records real words. Some hold that the man invented the whole speech, and that the earlier account of Saul's death exposes it detail by detail.
H. L. RossierDavid, a spiritual man, already suspects how unlikely this story is: "By chance I happened to be on Mount Gilboa." What? By chance — in the thick of battle? "There was Saul leaning on his spear, and behold, the chariots and the horsemen were close upon him." Here the Word itself convicts this man of lying. Saul had leaned on his sword, and it was not the horsemen but the archers who had threatened him (1 Sam. 31:3-4). The rest of his account is a bare-faced lie. Saul could not have asked the Amalekite to end his life. The king's armour-bearer, after all, did not kill himself until he had seen that Saul was dead (1 Sam. 31:5).
Others read the two accounts as fitting together. On this view, Saul's own hand left the work unfinished.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThis is not a contradiction at all, as some have claimed. First Saul asked his armour-bearer to kill him; he refused. Then he fell on his sword, but he did not die. In anguish he leaned on his spear. When the Amalekite came along, Saul told him that his life was still in him (2 Sam. 1:9), and the man killed him.
On that reading, verse 9 is the third time Saul sought his own death — and it shows what drove him:
Samuel RidoutPride clings to poor Saul to the last. In this hour of hopeless distress, he does not turn to God. Three times he showed a settled purpose: he would not fall alive into the hands of the Philistines. Three times he was a responsible suicide. The first was when he begged his armour-bearer to kill him. The second was when he fell on his own sword. The third was when he asked the Amalekite to finish him.
Killing Called Kindness
The verse gives a reason for the request: pain. David does not accept it as a defence.
Leslie M. GrantDavid would by no means agree to a so-called "mercy killing." This was not actual mercy. It was a clear lack of faith in God, who is the Giver and Sustainer of life. So David instructs one of his young soldiers to kill the Amalekite, which he does (v.15). Whether the man had lied or not about killing Saul, his own words condemned him (v.16).
An Amalekite at the End
One detail decides the meaning of the scene: which nation the man belonged to.
Samuel RidoutIt was an Amalekite who killed Saul. This suggests what we have already seen: sin is self-destruction. One of the very nation he had failed to destroy completely now rises up to make an end of him. Truly, God's ways are fair. In this way He links for us the beginning and the ending of sin. A spared Amalekite stands for some desire of the flesh indulged and allowed. It may look harmless in itself. But a deliberate sparing of evil opens the way for this closing act of shame.
The Crown Refused
The report was meant to hand David a throne.
The Bible TreasuryWhen judgment from God falls on His people, it is always solemn and moving to the godly. That holds however much they deserve it, and however plainly the faithful predicted it. At such a moment no true David could think of the benefit the event might bring him. The soul enters instead into the reason for God's intervention, and the sense that God is acting silences self.
Behind the man's offer, one writer sees an older strategy at work — a kingdom handed over by the wrong hand:
H. L. RossierThis lying spirit comes from that great enemy. Above all he was trying to lure David into taking Saul's crown — the sign of being made king — from his hand. His plot is foiled. Later, he will carry the Messiah, David's Son, to the top of a very high mountain. There he will offer Him all the kingdoms of the world, on condition that He pay him homage. In this he will suffer a new and final defeat.
Summary
- Claim. The man says the dying king asked him for the final blow. He brings the crown and bracelet as proof, sure of a reward.
- Contradiction. Commentators differ. Some call the speech a lie, exposed by the earlier account. Others call it Saul's third try at his own death.
- Compassion refused. Pain was the reason given. But killing to end pain shows no faith in the God who gives and sustains life.
- Consequence. The nation Saul spared supplies the man who stands over him — spared evil returns to finish the work.
- Crown declined. David will not take a kingdom from that hand. He mourns instead of counting his gain. The enemy later offers kingdoms to David's Son, who also refuses.