The suicide and murder of King Saul is a most interesting vanishing point in a people chosen leader of Israel subverting the Will of God.
Saul was a weak person for being the tallest, most popular of men. He descended into pettiness, thinking himself greater than God and in the last days was inquiring of witches as God had chosen His leader.
In that, the last hours of King Saul or descriptions of him are telling.
It begins on Mount Gilboa with his sons in battle against the Philistines. The record states that the archers wounded him.
Saul was known to have armour, but in a later period Ahab had an archer wound him at the joints of the armour, and it would seem that the Philistine archers must have been amassed and it they numbered 1000, they could effectively if having 100 arrows per quiver deliver literally four thousand eight hundred arrows per minute. It literally could rain arrows as an archer could shoot four arrows every five seconds.
Accuracy would not matter in this flock shooting as massed troops receiving massed volleys of metal tipped arrows would provide the desired effect.
In this, even with armour, the "chance" would be that arms, legs, feet and neck could be effectively pierced. Even if the archers were not massed, the reality is enough damage could be inflicted on a human body to "worry" a body.
Arrows with metal tips could indeed puncture armour if it was brass and later the English long bow worked on armour in piercing it at considerable distances. The point in reality is Saul could have been wounded to the extent he would order his armour bearer to kill him, so that he would not be captured.
Saul might have not been capable of walking. He was though afraid of falling wounded into the hands of the Philistines and being like Khadaffi in roughed up before murdered or his wounds ending his life.
It was at this point his story states his armour bearer would not kill him, so Saul fell on this own sword, at which point the armour bearer committed suicide too.
A further account in Samuel progresses with a foreigner finding Saul, and Saul stating that he was "dizzy" and that the foreigner should kill Saul, to which he did.
The foreigner was probably looting the bodies and in taking from Saul his crown and things, in presenting them to David, Saul's rival, he thought he would be rewarded.
David had the assassin killed.
At this point, the Philistines arrive on the scene and decapitate Saul's corpse, parade his head around and hang his body, with his son's on the wall of their city.
The men of Israel then go and retrieve the bodies, cremate them and then bury the bones.
In all of this, King Saul, appears to have been wounded sufficiently to not flee. He must have suffered some would where he presumed he would die in a liver piercing or an arrow might have come from an above trajectory as arrows for distance were fired as such and might have pierced in he upper torso into a high lung. That would indeed cause incapciation in coughing up blood.
Saul falling on his sword must have pierced himself in the upper abdomen and not in the rib area. Correct dispatching would be to center the sword on the left or right side by the heart, next to the sternum, planting the sword but in the soil and thrusting the torso forward.
This should open major veins or arteries in which one drowns in their own blood or dies from loss of blood in internal bleeding within minutes.
The Romans executed Marc Antony down through his armour by the neck into this region.
Saul though apparently was not having any of this go his way, and the foreigner did inflict the final wound would was probably a chest thrust, as the Philistines came later and cut Saul's head off.
In that it is interesting in, Saul was dead and the Philistines discovered this event in picking over the battlefield. They had no idea what had taken place. That too hints that this was some type of archer attack on the battlefield which slaughter the Saulite royal household.
A ruler chosen by a nation and rejecting God. It all started out so exuberant, as no one was like Saul and in the end, Saul was desperately attempting suicide and could not accomplish the simple task when all hope was gone.
agtG
