19 The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!
How are the mighty fallen, and the instruments of war perished!
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain upon thy high places.
And it came to pass the next day, that the Philistines came to strip the slain, and they found Saul and his three sons fallen on mount Gilboa.
Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their lives, Even in their death were not divided; They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
For he shall grow up before him as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground: he hath no form nor lordliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
How hath the Lord in his anger covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud! He hath cast down from the heavens unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger.
So I fed the flock of slaughter, truly the poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 2 Samuel 1
Commentary on 2 Samuel 1 Matthew Henry Commentary
An Exposition, With Practical Observations, of
The Second Book of Samuel
Chapter 1
In the close of the foregoing book (with which this is connected as a continuation of the same history) we had Saul's exit; he went down slain to the pit, though he was the terror of the mighty in the land of the living. We are now to look towards the rising sun, and to enquire where David is, and what he is doing. In this chapter we have,
2Sa 1:1-10
Here is,
2Sa 1:11-16
Here is,
2Sa 1:17-27
When David had rent his clothes, mourned, and wept, and fasted, for the death of Saul, and done justice upon him who made himself guilty of it, one would think he had made full payment of the debt of honour he owed to his memory; yet this is not all: we have here a poem he wrote on that occasion; for he was a great master of his pen as well as of his sword. By this elegy he designed both to express his own sorrow for this great calamity and to impress the like on the minds of others, who ought to lay it to heart. The putting of lamentations into poems made them,