The death of Saul 1SA 31:4

The Israelite army was broken and Saul's three sons, including Jonathan, were killed in the fighting. Philistine archers found Saul and wounded him severely. Rather than be captured, he asked his armor-bearer to kill him, and when the man refused, Saul fell on his own sword.

Saul feared that the Philistines would capture him alive and make sport of him, a common practice with defeated enemy kings in the ancient Near East. He preferred a quick death to humiliation and abuse at the hands of his enemies. His armor-bearer, however, was too afraid to kill the king and refused.

The text describes Saul falling on his own sword, which by modern definition is a suicide, carried out to avoid capture and mockery. Christian readers differ on how to judge this act: some see it as a gesture of despair and the tragic end of a life marked by disobedience, while others read it as an understandable choice by a mortally wounded man facing a cruel enemy, with the passage itself offering no explicit moral verdict.

Despite the years he spent pursued by Saul, David's reaction according to the narrative will be grief, torn clothing, and a lament, not relief. This reflects the respect David held for Saul as the Lord's anointed king, and for Jonathan, his close friend. It also foreshadows David's rise to the throne without any spirit of vengeance toward Saul's household.