⁶And that is how Saul, his three sons, and the young man died; all of Saul’s men died that day. ⁷When the Israelites on the other side of the Valley of Jezreel and east of the River Jordan heard that the Israelite army had fled and that Saul and his sons had been killed, they abandoned their towns and fled. Then the Philistines came and occupied them.

⁸The day after the battle the Philistines went to plunder the corpses, and they found the bodies of Saul and his three sons lying on Mount Gilboa. ⁹They cut off Saul’s head, stripped off his armour, and sent messengers with them throughout Philistia to tell the good news to their idols and to their people. ¹⁰Then they put his weapons in the temple of the goddess Astarte, and they nailed his body to the wall of the city of Beth Shan.

¹¹When the people of Jabesh in Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, ¹²the bravest men started out and marched all night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall, brought them back to Jabesh, and burnt them there. ¹³Then they took the bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in the town, and fasted for seven days.

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