Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 31:13

"And they took their bones, and buried them under the tamarisk-tree in Jabesh, and fasted seven days." — 1 Samuel 31:13 (ASV)

A tree in Jabesh. —A tree, that is “the well-known” tamarisk (êshel). For Saul’s love for trees, see as an instance 1 Samuel 22:6. The men of Jabesh-Gilead well remembered this peculiar fancy of their dead king, and under the waving branches of their own beautiful and famous tamarisk they tenderly laid the remains of their dead hero and his princely sons.

Evidently King David, at a subsequent period, retrieved these royal remains and had them reverently interred in the family tomb of Kish, the father of Saul, in Zelah of Benjamin (2 Samuel 21:12; 2 Samuel 21:14).

And fasted seven days. —This was the period the sons of Israel mourned for Jacob at the threshing floor of Atad beyond Jordan (Genesis 1:10). The grateful men of Jabesh-Gilead thus paid the last honors to the fallen Saul.

It is probable that the Talmudic rule which prescribes strict mourning for seven days (fasting was mourning of the strictest kind) was originally based on these two historic periods of mourning: the one recorded for Jacob, the great ancestor of the tribes, and the one for the first King Saul.

This is the case even though a curious tradition preserved in the Babylonian Talmud gives a special reason for the period of seven days.

Rav. Chisda said: The soul of the deceased mourns over him the first seven days; for it is said, and his soul shall mourn over him (Job 14:22). Rav. Jehudah said: If there are no mourners to condole with, ten men sit down where the death took place. Such a case happened in the neighborhood of Rav. Jehudah. After the seven days of mourning, the deceased appeared to Rav. Jehudah in a dream and said, “May you be comforted as you have comforted me.”—Treatise Shabbath, fol. 152,Colossians 2:0.

To this day among the Jews, ten men are hired to perform the usual daily prayers during the seven days of mourning at the house of the deceased.

On the reason for the number seven being fixed for the period of mourning, we read again in the Seder Moed of the Babylonian Talmud, “How is it proved that mourning should be kept up seven days? It is written, I will turn your feasts into mourning (Amos 8:10), and these (usually) lasted seven days.”—Treatise Moed Katon, fol. 20,Colossians 1:0.

“Again a long draught of my soul-wine! Look forth over the years!
You have done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!
Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb—bid arise
A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till built to the skies.
Let it mark where the great First King slumbers; whose fame would you know?
Up above see the rock’s naked face, where the record shall go,
In great characters cut by the scribe. Such was Saul, so he did;
With the sages directing the work, by the populace rebuked—
For not half, they’ll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend,
In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, on which they shall spend
(See, in tablets, it is level before them) their praise, and record,
With gold of the graver, Saul’s story—the statesman’s great Word
Side by side with the poet’s sweet comment. The rivers a-wave
With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet winds rave:
So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part
In your being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that you are!”

BROWNING’S Saul.