1 Samuel 31:12-13

They burnt them. Cremation, though highly honourable among classical nations, is here mentioned for the first time in Holy Scripture, and was probably resorted to on this occasion to insure the bodies of Saul and his sons against further maltreatment, as, if buried, the Philistines might have made the attempt to get them again into their power. Some suppose that the burning of the dead was afterwards practised by the Jews, and quote in its favour 2 Chronicles 16:14 ; Isaiah 33:12 ; Jeremiah 31:40 ; Jeremiah 34:5 ; Amos 6:10 , but these passages bear a different interpretation. After the exile, interment was the sole method of disposing of the dead among the Jews, and in the Talmud cremation is condemned as a heathen practice. The burial of the bones of Saul and his sons proves that their bodies here were really burnt. Under a tree. Hebrew, "under the tamarisk," the famous tree of that species at Jabesh. It was under one tamarisk that Saul commanded the massacre of the priests ( 1 Samuel 22:6 ), and now his bones are placed in rest beneath another. Perhaps the people remembered the king's fondness for trees. For the final fate of these relics see 2 Samuel 21:12-14 . They fasted seven days (see Genesis 1:10 ). The time of mourning was thirty days for Aaron ( Numbers 20:29 ) and for Moses ( Deuteronomy 34:8 ). The Talmudic rule is strict mourning for seven days, less strict for the next twenty-three, in all thirty; and for a father or mother mourning was continued for a year. The fasting was mourning of the strictest kind, and proves that the people of Jabesh-Gilead honored to the utmost their deliverer.

HOMILETICS.