Bible critics have long been fond of pointing out the differences in Scripture regarding how King Saul died. In fact, on most any extensive list of Old Testament “contradictions” is “the death of Saul.” In his book Biblical Errancy, Dennis McKinsey highlighted 1 Samuel 31:4, 2 Samuel 21:12, 2 Samuel 1:8-10, and 1 Chronicles 10:14 in his section titled simply “Contradictions.”1 Skeptic Steve Wells listed these verses in The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible (printed edition) as contradiction #197, asking the simple question, “How did Saul die?”2

The skeptic wants to know whether Saul killed himself, or if he was killed by the Amalekite, the Philistines, or God. How are these verses not, as Dennis McKinsey put it, “versus”?—“1 Samuel 31:4…versus 2 Samuel 21:12…versus 2 Samuel 1:8-10…versus 1 Chronicles 10:14.”3 How are these scriptures not contradictory?

The reader must keep in mind that the Bible writers recorded a number of lies made by various people: Satan lied to Eve (Genesis 3:4); Cain lied to God (Genesis 4:9); Samson lied to Delilah (Judges 16:1-22); David lied to Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1-2); the older prophet of 1 Kings 13 lied to the younger prophet—a lie that cost the younger prophet his life; Job’s “friends” repeatedly made false allegations about him throughout the book of Job; Jesus’ enemies frequently lied about Him; etc. Keep in mind that many of the lies recorded in Scripture were told without further comment by the inspired writers. That is, the writers rarely stopped to identify and condemn the lies explicitly (e.g., Moses never explicitly called Satan’s statement in Genesis 3:4 a lie). Instead, the reader is expected to fairly infer what is implied (i.e., God told the truth, while Satan lied).

The young Amalekite in 2 Samuel 1:8-10 told a story that directly contradicts the inspired writer’s account only a few verses earlier. [NOTE: 1 and 2 Samuel were originally one book. Thus, 1 Samuel 31:4 and 2 Samuel 1:10 are only separated by 20 brief verses within the same book.] Furthermore, we would not even have the young Amalekite’s words were they not written down by the writer of Samuel. Are we really supposed to conclude that the writer of Samuel could not recall who killed Saul within 20 verses?

Think about it: Who was lying in Genesis 2:17 and 3:4—God or Satan? Who was guilty of speaking falsehoods about Job—the inspired writer (Job 1:1), or Job’s “friendly” false accusers whom the writer quoted at length (e.g., Job 4-5; cf. 42:7-9)? To ask is to answer. Similarly, it should be relatively easy to differentiate between the truthful account of Saul’s death in 1 Samuel 31 and the dishonest report of the young Amalekite (recorded by the same penman) in 2 Samuel 1.

Why would the Amalekite lie, some ask? We are not told. Likely he thought his story, along with Saul’s crown and bracelet, would bring him favor with Saul’s worst enemy and the next king of Israel. He probably had in mind a reward of riches, honor, and power. Instead, David chose to execute him for having the audacity to end the life of (or at least say he ended the life of) a king previously chosen by God Himself (1 Samuel 9). The Amalekite alleged to do something that even David himself would not do (1 Samuel 24:6).

Even if 2 Samuel 1 can be logically explained, what about 2 Samuel 21:12 where the reader is reminded that “the Philistines had struck down Saul”? How can this be true if Saul killed himself (1 Samuel 31:4-6)? Two brief responses should adequately and reasonably answer this inquiry.

First, the words “struck down” (NKJV; NASB; NIV) are translated from the Hebrew nâkâh. According to Brown, Driver, and Briggs, in their respected Hebrew lexicon, nâkâh can mean everything from “to strike, smite, hit,” and “beat,” to “kill.”4 In his Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, noted Hebrew scholar William Gesenius remarked that nâkâh can mean anything from striking to killing, but it is used “mostly in the sense of hurting.”5 The King James translators used various words to translate nâkâh throughout the Old Testament, including beat, smite, strike, punish, slay, kill, etc. The simple fact is, the penman of 2 Samuel 21:12 could easily have meant that King Saul was seriously struck down on Mount Gilboa, and not that the Philistines “killed him.”

Second, even if it could be proved that 2 Samuel 21:12 means the Philistines “killed” Saul in Gilboa, is there not a legitimate, general sense in which that term could be used? Consider the 21st-century soldier who is mortally wounded in the heat of battle but makes it to a hospital in time to be hooked up to a number of machines, which help to extend his life for a few days. If doctors later remove the ventilator, feeding tube, etc., from the soldier (at the family’s request), and he quickly dies, what might people truthfully report about the man’s death? Surely that he gave his life in the line of duty—that he was “struck down in the heat of battle” while valiantly serving his country. Did the family and doctors kill the soldier, or did the enemy? In one immediate sense, the soldier finally died after being unplugged from various life-sustaining machines. Yet, most everyone would fairly and sensibly see the reality of the matter: a courageous soldier was killed in battle.

In a similar way (though not so courageously), the wicked King Saul was apparently mortally wounded by the Philistines. “The battle became fierce against Saul. The archers hit him, and he was severely wounded” (1 Samuel 31:3). He knew he was “done for.” The battle was lost to the Philistines, and he chose to inflict the final, fatal blow upon himself rather than waiting for what he knew was inevitable. In a more immediate, literal sense, did Saul kill himself? Yes. Is there also a general sense in which one might honestly say the Philistines killed Saul? Surely most fair-minded people would say so.

Many years later (between 500-450 B.C.),6 when the chronicler recorded his account of the events surrounding Saul’s death, he also wrote about the Philistine archers who struck Saul (1 Chronicles 10:3), as well as Saul’s subsequent decision to fall on his sword and die (10:4-5). However, the chronicler added the following: “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness which he had committed against the Lord, because he did not keep the word of the Lord, and also because he consulted a medium for guidance. But he did not inquire of the Lord; therefore He killed him, and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse” (10:13-14). Thus, the skeptics claim “contradiction” on this front as well. “How could God have killed Saul if Saul killed himself?”

In the same sense in which “the Lord has set a king over” Israel (1 Samuel 12:13; cf. 10:24), the Lord “killed” Saul. Throughout Scripture, the Bible writers repeatedly testify to how God works and accomplishes things providentially (i.e., “God orchestrates His will through natural laws”).7 Did Samuel make Saul a king over Israel? Yes (1 Samuel 12:1). Did the Bible writer not also contend that Israel “made Saul king”? Yes (1 Samuel 11:15). Still, God “was behind” it all. He knew, and His inspired writers prophesied hundreds of years earlier, that Israel would have a king (Genesis 36:31; Deuteronomy 17:14-15). God worked this out “behind the scenes,” while using Samuel and the children of Israel to accomplish His will.

In like manner, God knew ahead of time (1) that He was going to punish Saul for his sins, and (2) how He was going to punish Saul. In fact, He informed Saul of such retribution through the prophet Samuel. The God-inspired prophet revealed to Saul, “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king” (1 Samuel 15:23). What’s more, God used the spirit of Samuel to speak to Saul from the realm of the dead. Exactly one day before Saul’s death, God arranged for the departed soul of Samuel to speak to Saul a divinely inspired message, saying,

[T]he Lord has done for Himself as He spoke by me. For the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David. Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord nor execute His fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day. Moreover the Lord will also deliver Israel with you into the hand of the Philistines. And tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The Lord will also deliver the army of Israel into the hand of the Philistines (1 Samuel 28:17-19).

Did the Lord use the Philistines to kill Saul? Yes. Was God working providentially to arrange such warranted capital punishment? Absolutely. God knew what He was going to do, how He was going to do it, and when it would be accomplished. Indeed, as the chronicler recorded (1 Chronicles 10:13-14), there is a legitimate sense in which God justifiably killed Saul. Such Divine operation through various individuals and nations (such as the Philistines) is seen consistently throughout Scripture. The same God Who created the world with “the breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6), and the same God Who is currently “upholding all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3), is the same God Who has worked and currently is orchestrating His will through natural laws. Anyone who is very familiar with the Bible should not be surprised to read truthful expressions such as “He [God] killed him [Saul],” even if God did not actually “pull the trigger.”

Answering the question, “Who killed King Saul?”, provides Bible students with a golden opportunity to be reminded of three vital principles of interpretation. First, context is always critical to any correct understanding of any account or conversation. Part of getting “context” is identifying “who is talking”. In the case of 2 Samuel 1, an uninspired Amalekite is alleging to have killed King Saul, and one should no more believe his claim than we should believe that Cain didn’t know where Abel was or Samson didn’t know from whence his strength came.

Second, remember that a “contradiction” is not a “contradiction” if words are used in different senses. In the case of “Who killed King Saul?,” God, Saul, and the Philistines all truthfully “killed” him in different senses.

Third and finally, the Bible writers often harmoniously supplemented each other’s accounts. Reading all accounts gives the Bible student the best understanding of anything and everything the Bible teaches.8 Since the “sum” or “entirety” of God’s “word is truth” (Psalm 119:160), we should refrain from lazy, faulty, “partial” interpretations, and we should hunger for all of God’s Word, which when rightly divided, gives us the complete, truthful picture that God has painted for us.9

4 Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs (1906), The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/hebrew/5221.html.

5 William Gesenius (1979 reprint), Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/hebrew/5221.html.

6 See Eric Lyons (2017), “A Flawed Assumption Many Make About Kings and Chronicles,” https://apologeticspress.org/a-flawed-assumption-many-make-about-kings-and-chronicles-5421/.

7 Kyle Butt (2016), “God’s Providence and the Problem of Evil,” https://apologeticspress.org/gods-providence-and-the-problem-of-evil-5294/.

8 Or any book for that matter. We best understand rulebooks, math books, biographies, etc., when we read them in their totality. Why would we not read the Bible in this same manner—and even more carefully and thoroughly if it is, in fact, the Word of God?

Did the Amalekite Lie?

The majority of commentators through the years have looked upon the account of the Amalekite in 2 Samuel 1 as being a lie told in the opportunistic hopes of gaining a reward from King David. After all, once you read both accounts, you are left with only a few possibilities, either the Amalekite was lying, or, if he was telling the truth, then the author of 1 Samuel 31 either got the details completely wrong or didn’t have all the details, and so wrote only what he knew. These last two positions are untenable for biblical inerrancy, though, especially since the author was inspired by the Holy Spirit at the time of writing (2 Timothy 3:16;2 Peter 1:21). Furthermore, there are many things which make it likely that the Amalekite is lying.

- The Amalekite makes no mention of the armor bearer, and the 1 Samuel 31 account states that the armor bearer saw Saul die from a self-inflicted wound. The armor bearer’s job was to protect his charge, and he would have fought the Amalekite if he was living. He would certainly not have allowed him to take the crown and bracelets off of Saul’s body had he still been alive. Yet we are told in1 Samuel 31:5that the armor bearer (someone who no doubt had been in many battles and witnessed death many times) verified that Saul was dead before he also committed suicide.
- It can hardly be thought Saul would ask an uncircumcised foreigner to kill him; since he might as well have died by the hands of the uncircumcised Philistines, which he endeavored to avoid (1 Samuel 31:4). Therefore it is inconceivable for Saul to want death by the hands of an Amalekite (especially since Saul’s prophesied loss of the throne and his death was predicted exactly because he didn’t fulfill God’s edict to wipe out the Amalekites:1 Samuel 15:17–26,28:17–19).
- The 1 Samuel 31 account records Saul’s words to his armor bearer; the 2 Samuel 1 account reveals the Amalekite telling David of Saul’s words and they do not align. So we have to decide whether it is more consistent for Saul to ask his fellow-Israelite armor bearer to kill him or to ask an Amalekite to do so. If we view the Amalekite story as being an addendum to the 1 Samuel 31 account and having any germ of truth, then Saul had already been hit by several arrows, had fallen on his sword, convinced his armor bearer he was dead, and then revived, stood up and leaned on his spear, and was still not dead yet!
- The Amalekite states that Saul was leaning on a spear, yet the 1 Samuel account records Saul falling on his sword. So was Saul strong enough after falling on his sword to stand up, lean on a spear and talk to the Amalekite, or was the Amalekite “sure that he [Saul] could not live after he had fallen” as he claimed to David seconds later?
- The Amalekite never mentions that Saul had been pierced with arrows, another thing that seems strange (1 Samuel 31:3). If the Amalekite wanted to play down his part in Saul’s death and play up that Saul was in mortal agony with no hope of living (2 Samuel 1:10), then why no mention of Saul’s self-inflicted sword thrust and several Philistine arrow wounds?
- The Amalekite mentions that the chariots of the Philistines were in hot pursuit of Saul, how would he then have time to talk to Saul, kill him, steal his crown, and take a bracelet off of his arm—and still get away, outrunning chariots? We read later (1 Samuel 31:8–10) what the Philistines did to Saul’s body, and how they stripped his armor. Are we expected to believe that they would not have wanted the royal crown and a gold bracelet? The Amalekite claimed that he was behind Saul (2 Samuel 1:7), who was being hotly pursued, and thus the Amalekite by his own testimony, would have presumably been visible by both Saul and the Philistines.
- Additionally, how would the Amalekite have “chanced” upon Saul when Saul was being pursued by chariots? And why would the Philistines have waited until the next day to go strip Saul’s body (1 Samuel 31:8), when according to the Amalekite they were “hot on his heels”? The Amalekites were enemies of Israel and Judah (1 Samuel 30) and had also been raiding against the Philistines (1 Samuel 30:16). Consequently, he would have been killed on sight if the Philistines saw him on the battlefield. He would not have risked his life strolling along (in reality looting the dead) in daylight when he would have been considered an enemy by the Philistines at least.

The most likely scenario was that Saul was hit by arrows late in the day, and the Philistines thinking he had fled (or fallen back behind the battle lines), were unaware he was hit and mortally wounded by arrows until they came upon his body the next morning. The Amalekite was merely an opportunist who arrived late, probably after sunset, saw Saul and his retinue dead, and hoped to ingratiate himself into David’s court, supposing that since Saul considered David an enemy, the feeling was reciprocal.

It should be noted that there are a few commentators who believe that Saul’s armor bearer mistakenly thought Saul was dead, but after the armor bearer committed suicide, Saul revived and the Amalekite stumbled upon the royal retinue. Then, acting on Saul’s wishes, he killed Saul, took his crown, and went to David and embellished the account. This is not just unlikely, given the tenor of the account in 1 Samuel 31 and the seeming certainty of the armor bearer, but in consideration of the above-mentioned “holes” in the Amalekites story, and the fact that it would call into question the accuracy of Scripture, it is demonstrably false.

Why Did David Execute the Amalekite?

So why did David have the Amalekite killed? Either he believed him and killed him for daring to slay the Lord’s anointed, or he knew he was lying and killed him for lying and looting, as well as trying to besmirch David’s name by associating him with the forced and premature transferal of power. David’s statement in2 Samuel 1:16, “Your blood is on your own head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have killed theLord’s anointed’” does not necessarily mean that David accepted his story as fact, but only that, if it were, the Amalekite had testified against himself and absolved David of any wrongdoing in ordering his execution.

> We must remember that the Bible is true, and this is the case even when recording someone who is lying.

We must remember that the Bible is true, and this is the case even when recording someone who is lying. In fact, since people quite often in Scripture told outright lies and half-truths (think of Aaron’s whopper inExodus 32:24compared to what actually happened inverses 3–4). Scripture must of necessity faithfully record these statements to point out their error and show forth the real truth. False prophets in the time of Jeremiah were condemned for their outright lies (Jeremiah 27:9–17,28:15–17) and Ananias and Sapphira were struck down for lying to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1–9). This does not mean that Scripture condones lying because it records such examples, but rather shows these in order to expose lying.

So, Who Killed King Saul?

That brings us back to the original question. Who killed King Saul? Did he kill himself, or did an Amalekite battlefield looter kill him? Perhaps another passage can shed some light on the question. A couple of years after King Saul’s death, another similar incident occurred when two brothers, servants of Saul’s son Ishbosheth, killed him and brought his head to David. David’s response to this tends to support the “lying Amalekite” position. David told the two brothers “when someone told me, saying, ‘Look, Saul is dead,’ thinking to have brought good news, I arrested him and had him executed in Ziklag—the one who thought I would give him a reward for his news. How much more, when wicked men have killed a righteous person in his own house on his bed? Therefore, shall I not now require his blood at your hand and remove you from the earth?” (2 Samuel 4:10–11).

David’s statement seems to imply that he really thought the Amalekite was lying for potential gain, and, unlike the case at hand, was not responsible for murder, but for lying, looting, and implicating David in the death of Saul by taking Saul’s crown to him. Since1 Samuel 31:4–6claims that the armor bearer saw Saul die and then killed himself, and that Saul and his three sons all died on the same day, it appears certain that the Amalekite was lying, and that Saul died by his own hand. Keeping in mind that a day in ancient Israel ran from sundown to sundown, this makes the case even more telling that the Amalekite was lying, assuming he arrived after sundown.

As mentioned above, the Amalekite was either a “timely” opportunist or an experienced battlefield looter and almost certainly did his skulking about at dusk and at night. Saul’s sons had died a little earlier in battle, and therefore Saul (and his armor bearer who died after Saul) must have also died at or shortly before sundown. Since the Philistines were unable or unwilling to loot and desecrate the bodies of Saul and his sons right away (which was clearly their intention), it must have been late in the day when all of them died, or resistance from the remaining Israelite soldiers before they fled (1 Samuel 31:1) was strong enough to keep the Philistines from looting the dead until after sundown, which caused them to wait until the next morning.

“Lying Lips”

There are not contradictory accounts of Saul’s death in Scripture. The account in 1 Samuel 31 is the true account of the events as they unfolded, and the account in 2 Samuel 1 is also a true account—but an account of a man lying to David, hoping for a reward. There is no contradiction here, Saul committed suicide after being mortally wounded in battle, and the Amalekite thought to take advantage of the opportunity for personal gain, only to have his plan backfire on him.

As you read through the Psalms, a couple verses stand out as potential remembrances of David of this episode in his life:

> Let the lying lips be put to silence,Which speak insolent things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. (Psalm 31:18)

> Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners,Whose mouth speaks lying words,And whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. (Psalm 144:11)

Lastly, perhaps David’s son Solomon (who might have been told of this event by his father) had this account of the Amalekite in mind when he wrote what is an extremely appropriate proverb to this situation—“A fool’s mouth is his destruction, And his lips are the snare of his soul” (Proverbs 18:7).