CHAPTER SUMMARY--THE DEATH OF SHAUL

I sometimes feel guilty about my willingness to see flaws in characters in Tanakh, both because I make no claims to any greater level of righteousness than they, and because I am not sure that I am as adept at picking up on their many good qualities. In particular, we have found Shaul lacking in many ways in our study of the first part of the Book of Shmuel. As we study this last chapter, our recognition of how he has brought much if not all of this upon himself might lead us to adopt a harsh pose towards Shaul, and ignore the tragedy of his death.

David haMelekh does not see the issue that way. In the beginning of II Shmuel, he composes a beautiful and heartfelt elegy for Shaul and Yonatan upon hearing of their deaths (you could look it up). I wanted to pause here to insure that I not be less sensitive to the tragic in our chapter than was David, who clearly was as aware of Shaul’s flaws as are we. A harsher person might think to say this was just a sinner getting punished for his sins. That may be true, but we should be careful to realize that that in and of itself is a tragic event (as the navi Yehezkel says in the name of God, that God does not want sinners to be punished, but to repent their ways and live). This week’s lesson is, therefore, a lesson in tragedy.

The literal events are fairly simple: the war goes badly for the Jews, who begin to flee and to lose. The archers’ arrows start coming close to Shaul, who realizes he is going to die, and decides to commit suicide rather than be slowly tortured to death by the Plishtim. He tries to convince his arms-bearer to kill him, but he refuses. He then falls on his sword, as does the arms-bearer. When the people hear of his death, they completely fall apart, abandoning whole cities to the Plishtim.

The next morning, when the Plishtim are going through the battlefield, they find Shaul’s corpse, and mistreat it horribly, cutting off the head, removing the clothing, and then sending it throughout their country to let everyone know of their victory. Afterwards, they put Shaul’s arms in their house of idol worship and hung his body on a public wall.

The people of Yavesh Gilead (remember Yavesh Gilead—there’s a story about Yavesh Gilead) hear of what has happened, and go on a daring raid to retrieve Shaul’s body, which they burn and then bury the bones. They then fast seven days for Shaul. And that is how the book ends.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WAR

The Talmud (Sotah 44b) cites the opening verse of this chapter as part of its proof that fleeing is the first step in getting killed in war, meaning that flight is itself a contributing factor to loss of life, not just a symptom of a heavy military defeat. That contributes to an explanation for the Torah’s reasoning that one who is afraid should be excused from the battlefield, since not only is he more likely to be killed, but his fear will lead to his flight, which will lead to general defeat and death. Taking the Talmud’s reading at face value, the opening verse of our chapter means to say that the Jews were psychologically outmatched in the present battle at least as much as physically.

For Shaul, of course, the distinction is too subtle to have mattered, since either way the people have been badly defeated and he finds himself under fire from Plishti archers, with every reason to expect that they will soon find him and kill him, slowly and mockingly, to underline their victory. To avoid this eventuality, he calls on his arms-bearer to kill him. The boy refuses, at least according to the verse because of fear.

Shaul then falls on his own sword. Interestingly, the Talmud (Sotah, 10a) includes Shaul in a group of five people who had a particular physical characteristic of extraordinary beauty—the Talmudic phrase is that five had a body part that was created according to the form in Heaven. That probably means that that body part was perfectly formed in these people. The Talmud goes on to point out, however, that for each of the five, the body part in question eventually became their downfall. For a clearer example, David’s son Abshalom is seen as having hair of that sort, and it was his hair that got caught on a tree and stopped him from fleeing Yoav at the end of his rebellion against his father.

For Shaul, his neck was the outstanding characteristic, and Hazal assume that it was his neck that his sword pierced. The merits of the Midrash as exegesis aside (it seems physically difficult to fall on your sword on your neck, for one thing), Hazal’s point in this comment is unclear. We might think that they meant to show that people misuse extraordinary gifts, but there is little evidence that Shaul misused his neck or his height for that matter (but see Tsits Eliezer 15:4, who struggles to find a sin that would make this middah ke-neged middah).

Perhaps instead of Hazal saying that these five were punished for their use of their gifts, they were only saying that these Heavenly gifts became the vehicle for punishment when things went wrong in their lives. If so, we might not need to claim that Shaul’s height, Abshalom’s hair, or Tsidkiyah’s eyes were part of their owner’s life failures, but it was still through these Heavenly aspects that their punishment came. Perhaps since they were more connected to Heaven it was "easier" for Providence to use those for punishment. Either way, the statement hints that even extraordinarily good gifts might not be solely a blessing in someone’s life.

WAS SUICIDE ACCEPTABLE FOR SHAUL?

Shaul here clearly commits suicide, or at least tries to. Radak accepts the possibility that he had not actually killed himself because in the beginning of II Shmuel, an Amaleki tells David that he had killed Shaul (which was a mistake, since David puts him to death). Radak is unsure as to whether that Amaleki was telling the truth or was falsely trying to curry favor with David. If the first was true, then Shaul only tried to kill himself, but did not actually do so.

Either way, was this another error of Shaul’s? The Midrash Rabbah (in Bereshit 34:5) derives the prohibition against suicide from God’s command to Noah in the aftermath of the flood, where the Lord informs Noah that akh et dimkhem le-nafshoteikhem edrosh, I will inquire after your blood for your souls, meaning that God will expect us to take proper care of ourselves. The Midrash Rabbah notes, however, that akh means to exclude a certain case, and points to Shaul (and to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, but that's another story) as one such exception.

Radak suggests that since Shaul knew he was going to die anyway, and that the Plishtim would make it significantly more painful and drawn out, that then it was ok. Whether or not he was right about the Midrash's reason for making an exception for Shaul, we would not apply that reasoning to people nowadays (and, indeed, in the Middle Ages, when people applied that reason to allow themselves to commit suicide rather than be caught by Crusaders, it was only accepted as a way not to have to point to those who killed themselves as sinners). Shaul seems to simply be an exception to the ordinarily stringent rules against suicide.

THE DEATH OF SHAUL’S SONS

Some point out that while we know, from other events in the book, why Shaul was going to die, we have no understanding of why his sons have to die, especially Yonatan (who was, after all, a study in goodness in all of the incidents where we have seen him). The Midrash sees the death of Shaul's kids as an expression of the middat hadin, the Attribute of Strict Justice, and sees it as Shaul's punishment for having had improper mercy for Agag and improper harshness with Nov, the city of priests he put to the sword for helping David.

That suggests that the middat hadin would hold us responsible for the actions of those close to us-- it is not that Yonatan and his brothers committed a sin, but that the middat hadin being applied to their father caught them up in his death. Possibly, the Midrash is assuming that sons can legitimately be punished for sins of the father; but other verses in Tanakh see the death of sons for sins of the father as a problem, as an example of lack of justice.

I suspect that here the middat hadin is noting that Shaul blamed an entire town for the actions of one priest. That sense of corporate responsibility blames the others for failing to effectively stop the one sinner in their midst (by Shaul's standards). So, too, the middat hadin will take a harsh stance towards those around Shaul who might, with some effort, have more effectively stopped Shaul from his various failings. Yonatan one time managed to turn Shaul away from his chase of David; the pure middat hadin-- and ordinarily we don't experience the pure middat hadin, since humans need their justice administered with mercy--could fault him and his brothers for not having continued on that path.

THE STORY IN SHMUEL AND IN DIVREI HAYAMIM

Radak notes that there is a slight difference between how the story of the Plishtim taking Shaul's body is told here and in Divre haYamim (I:10). There, the verse mentions that the Plishtim put his head in Beit Dagon, whereas here it says they nailed his body on a public wall. Radak says both are true. I note that here, because Beit Dagon should remind us of the incident with the Aron when it was taken captive and taken to Beit Dagon, back in Chapter 5. It almost seems like at the end of Shaul's life, having been victorious over the Jews once again, the Plishtim forget the lessons they once learned about God's power, and resume giving their booty to Dagon.

ALL MY LIFE’S A CIRCLE--YAVESH GILEAD REMEMBER SHAUL

Another part of this story that hearkens back to earlier parts of the book is the people of Yavesh Gilead coming to save Shaul. You may recall that Shaul's first kingly act was rescuing the people of Yavesh Gilead from Nahash, who had threatened to remove their right eyes. That was the one war where the verse specifically notes that the spirit of God came upon Shaul, as if that was an example of his pure action that was sadly all too rare in his life. This incident seems to be a repayment for his actions then; indeed, Radak sees their seven-day fast as a memory of the 7 days that Nahash allowed them to seek help.

The Yavesh Gileadites' having a chance to repay that kindness now brings this story to a kind of closure-- Shaul, king of Israel, had fought the Plishtim all his life, after making his name first with a victory over Nahash on behalf of Yavesh Gilead. The Plishtim part of his efforts seems to end in failure, as he loses his last war against them horribly, so much so that they get a chance to resume their service of Dagon as the god who helps them win wars.

BURNING A KING’S BODY

The last issue to raise--briefly-- is what they were doing when they burned Shaul's body. Hazal assumed they did not actually burn the body, but they burned his various accoutrements, as a sign of respect (that no one else could use them now that he is dead). Radak thinks they might have actually burned him because his flesh already had contracted worms or maggots, so that burning off the meat was actually more respectful than putting him in the ground like that. The problem with Radak's view is that it would suggest that we burn everybody before putting them in the ground; I recognize that Radak could mean that we rarely come across corpses when the decay and bug infestation are in progress, and that the rules change at that point, but I think the problems with that view are also clear.

Which really brings us to the end of Sefer Shmuel I. I have enjoyed working through the various themes of the sefer-- Shmuel's role, the anointing of Shaul, his success and failure, David's selection, rise to fame and power, troubles with Shaul, relationship with Shaul, Shmuel, and Yonatan, Shaul's descent into sin, obsession, and madness, and so on.