Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

31 Now the P’lishtim pressed their attack on Isra’el. The men of Isra’el fled before the P’lishtim, leaving their dead on Mount Gilboa. ² The P’lishtim pursued and overtook Sha’ul and his sons; and the P’lishtim killed Y’honatan, Avinadav and Malkishua, the sons of Sha’ul. ³ The fighting went hard against Sha’ul; then the archers overtook and wounded him, so that he was in agony. ⁴ Sha’ul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and run me through with it. Otherwise these uncircumcised men will come, run me through and make sport of me.” But his armor-bearer refused, he was too frightened. So Sha’ul took his sword and fell on it. ⁵ When his armor-bearer saw that Sha’ul was dead, he too fell on his own sword and died with him. ⁶ Thus Sha’ul, his three sons, his armor-bearer and all his men died that same day together.

⁷ When the men of Isra’el who were on the other side of the valley and those who were on the far side of the Yarden saw that the men of Isra’el had fled and that Sha’ul and his sons were dead, they abandoned the cities and fled; then the P’lishtim came and lived in them.

⁸ The following day, when the P’lishtim came to strip the dead, they found Sha’ul and his three sons lying dead on Mount Gilboa. ⁹ They cut off his head, stripped off his armor and sent these all over the territory of the P’lishtim to carry the news to the temples of their idols and to the people. ¹⁰ Then they put his armor in the temple for the ‘ashtarot and fastened his body to the wall of Beit-Sh’an.

¹¹ When the people living in Yavesh-Gil‘ad heard what the P’lishtim had done to Sha’ul, ¹² all their warriors set out, traveling all night. They took the body of Sha’ul and the bodies of his sons off the wall of Beit-Sh’an, returned to Yavesh and burned them there. ¹³ Then they took their bones, buried them under the tamarisk tree in Yavesh and fasted seven days.

9 There is really no need for me to write you about this offering for God’s people — ² I know how eager you are, and I boast about you to the Macedonians. I tell them, “Achaia has been ready since last year,” and it was your zeal that stirred up most of them. ³ But now I am sending the brothers so that our boast about you in this regard will not prove hollow, so that you will be ready, as I said you would be. ⁴ For if some Macedonians were to come with me and find you unprepared, we would be humiliated at having been so confident — to say nothing of how you would feel. ⁵ So I thought it necessary to urge these brothers to go on to you ahead of me and prepare your promised gift in plenty of time; this way it will be ready when I come and will be a genuine gift, not something extracted by pressure.