1 Samuel 31:10
ESV
They put his armor in the temple of Ashtaroth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.
NIV
They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan.
NASB
They put his weapons in the temple of Ashtaroth, and they nailed his body to the wall of Beth-shan.
CSB
Then they put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shan.
NLT
They placed his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths, and they fastened his body to the wall of the city of Beth-shan.
KJV
And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan.
NKJV
Then they put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan.
What does 1 Samuel 31:10 mean?
Following his death during the battle with the Philistines, Saul's body suffers the fate of many kings killed in war during this era. The corpse is beheaded and stripped of its royal armor. Saul's armor is sent to the temple of the Ashtaroth or the Ashtaroths. Since the word "Ashtaroths" was sometimes used to refer to goddesses in general, some scholars speculate that this specific temple was one to the goddess Anit at Beth-shan, the place where Saul's beheaded body was put on display. Such a temple has been discovered there from this period. Describing the same events, 1 Chronicles 10:10 adds the detail that Saul's head was sent to the temple of Dagon, the primary Philistine deity.Beth-shan was a strategic spot at the intersection of the road along the Jordan Valley and the road from Gilead to the Jezreel Valley. It is a well-excavated site, showing occupation as far back as 4500 BC and many Philistine artifacts from the Iron Age periods, which includes this moment around 1010 BC. Publicly displaying the defeated king's body at such a well-travelled spot gave the Philistines yet another way of declaring the superiority of their gods and warning other kings and rebels not to challenge their rule.
The Philistines hang Saul's sons next to him. When Saul first became king, he rescued the city of Jabesh-gilead from the Ammonites (1 Samuel 11). The Ammonites will repay the debt. They will bravely sneak to the city, bring the bodies back to Jabesh, and burn them. They'll bury the bones under a tamarisk tree.
