10.1 2 Samuel 1

News of Saul's Death Reaches David

After Saul's death, unknown to David, he returns from his expedition against the Amalekites to Ziklag and is there for two days and only on the third hears news of the defeat.

Saul's Amalekite Soldier

That many of the details of the Amalekite's story do accord with what we've read in 1 Sam 31 and 1 Chron 10 suggests he was in close proximity with the king before his death and may have even heard the king ask his bodyguard (armor bearer) to kill him. He is close enough to see the king die, able to evade death at the hands of the Philistines (including arrows), get to the king's body and remove both crown and a royal gold armband, and then still escape before Philistine looters arrive the next day. It is telling that he can identify the king while it isn't clear that the Philistines who shot him could (would they have prioritized retrieving a high value target in the heat of battle if they knew)? He also knows enough about the rivalry between David and Saul to believe he can use it to curry favor in David's eyes.

Why does Saul have an Amalekite soldier in close proximity?

When David asks who he is, he identifies himself as "an Amalekite", and then later as "the son of a foreigner, an Amalekite" (therefore under Jewish law would be considered an Amalekite even if he personally had been born in Israel). Could this be an implementation of Deut 23:7 which states that after the third generation, Egyptian and Edomites in the land, converted, can be treated as fully Israelite, and this was being applied to an Amalekite?

Amalekites being the historic ruthless, vicious, hated enemy of Israel, such that they are one of only a few peoples God explicitly ordered to be exterminating to the last man, what is this Amalekite's relationship to Saul?

After Samuel killed the Amalekite King, Agag (1 Sam 15), would Saul have further defied Samuel by deliberately keeping other Amalekites alive? Or giving them favored status in the army? Was this man a defector? Was he an earlier captive from Saul's actions. Was he a slave? Or did he win favor in the eyes of the Israelite king? Was he an opportunistic traitor to his people?

He tells David a story that he "happened to be on Mt. Gilboa" when the king died. Did he mean was implausibly just passing through (a battle area), or that, having "escaped the Israelite camp" he happened to be stationed on Mt. Gilboa at the time Saul retreated onto it?

He emphasizes that Saul tell him he is already mortally wounded, but not yet dead, and then as if to confirm, mentions that he saw that Saul's arrow wound was mortal, which ideally absolves him of guilt for dealing a final blow, painting it as an ordered act of mercy.

These tactics fail and David executes him for killing YHWH's annointed.

David's Lament

David then lament's Saul's death in song. V20, as follows:

“Tell it not in Gath,
    proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon,
lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad,
    lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice.

...seems to indicate that David does not know that the Philistines know they killed Saul and continues to hope that they don't find this out.