Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
1 Samuel 31:8-10
Saul's Body Is Humiliated And The Tidings Concerning Saul's Death And Defeat Are Spread Among The Philistines (1 Samuel 31:8).
As Saul had anticipated, the Philistines sought to humiliate what remained of him. They cut off his head and sent it throughout the land of the Philistines in triumph, prior to setting it up in the temple of their god Dagon (1 Chronicles 10:10). This was similar to the treatment meted out to the head of Goliath by David (1 Samuel 17:54). (There was no thought of honouring a fallen foe. It was intended as an indication of the respective triumph of their deities). They stripped off his armour and set it up in the house of their goddess Ashtaroth, probably in Bethshan. And they displayed his body on the walls of Bethshan. This was the only way of ensuring that all knew that he really was dead. Verse 12 informs us that they did the same with the bodies of his sons for a similar reason. But there was no doubt that there was also in it an intention to gloat over their dead enemies. It was a display of their triumph, and a warning to all who opposed them.
We should note how the writer actually refrains from mentioning what happened to Saul's head, except indirectly. This suggests that he was writing within a time span when reverence for YHWH's anointed as king of Israel prevented him from wishing to do so. The thought of it being hung in a Philistine temple filled him with repugnance (just as he also shortly gleefully describes how Saul's body was saved from humiliation in 1 Samuel 31:11). The chronicler, who considered that Saul had shamed himself (1 Chronicles 10:13), had no such inhibition hundreds of years later.
Analysis.
a And it came about on the next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen on mount Gilboa (1 Samuel 31:8).
b And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour (1 Samuel 31:9 a).
c And they sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry the news to the house of their idols, and to the people (1 Samuel 31:9 b).
b And they put his armour in the house of the Ashtaroth (1 Samuel 31:10 a).
a And they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan (1 Samuel 31:10 b).
Note that in ‘a' they discovered his body, and in the parallel they fastened it to the wall of Bethshan. In ‘b' they stripped off his armour, and in the parallel they put it in the house of Ashtaroth. Centrally in ‘c' they sent the tidings of the victory into all the land of the Philistines, informing both their idols and their people of it. This included sending Saul's head with the messengers, (which was the purpose of cutting it off - compare 1 Samuel 17:54 where David took Goliath's head to Judah's sanctuary). 1 Chronicles 10:10 tells us that it was placed in the temple of Dagon, which was where they had previously first placed the captured Ark in the time of Eli (1 Samuel 5:2). It was an act of worship to their god.
‘ And it came about on the next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen on mount Gilboa.'
The day after the battle the Philistines returned to the battlefield to survey the dead and strip from them anything that might have value. This was the normal practise after a victorious encounter. And there, on Mount Gilboa, above the plain of Jezreel, they found the bodies of Saul and his three sons.
‘ And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry the news to the house of their idols, and to the people.'
Their main activity was aimed at Saul. For many years he had proved a thorn in their sides, and had prevented them from encroaching far into Israelite territory. Saul ‘had slain his thousands', and many of them had been Philistines. But now at last they had thoroughly routed his forces and had killed him. So they cut off his head and bore it into their land to hang it in the Temple of Dagon (1 Chronicles 10:10), probably in Ashdod (1 Samuel 5:1), but some consider it to have been one of the two temples revealed archaeologically in Bethshan. There would be a number of temples of Dagon. They also stripped him of his armour and put it in the house of Ashtaroth (a Canaanite goddess represented by many images). And they sent the news of his death and of their victory over the Israelites to the house of their idols and to their people.
For the cutting off of the head compare 1 Samuel 17:51; 1 Samuel 17:54, and see also 1 Samuel 5:4. For the stripping of the armour compare 1 Samuel 17:54. These were clearly seen as the normal things to do to a prominent foe who had been defeated and slain. Many would have been appalled that this could happen to the ‘Anointed of YHWH'. But we are already in on the secret that he was no longer the Anointed of YHWH in God's eyes, for he had been rejected and replaced by David. This was but the final proof of that fact.
‘ And they put his armour in the house of the Ashtaroth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.'
1 Chronicles 10:10 says that ‘they put his armour in the house of their gods'. This may have been in Bethshan which was a Canaanite city with Philistine connections by the Valley of Jezreel, but others see it as having in mind the great house of Ashtaroth in Ashkelon. The former view is seen as supported by the fact that the site of the temple is unnamed and by the parallelism:
“They put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth,
And they fastened his body to the walls of Bethshan.”
That Ashkelon is in mind might be seen as supported by the reference to Ashkelon in David's lament (2 Samuel 1:20), and the fact that Ashkelon was in Philistia proper. That was not important to the writer, however. What he was concerned about was that Saul was being shamed and humiliated. Thus came to the end a reign which had begun gloriously and had descended into tragedy.
Ashtaroth is a plural word and may simply indicate the fact that the goddess Ashtoreth/Astarte had many images. Alternately it may be that we are to translate as ‘the houses of the Ashtaroth' indicating that Saul's weapons were widely distributed around different Philistine temples as tokens of victory, or borne triumphantly from one to the other.