The young Amalekite must have been a mercenary soldier who had joined Saul's army. It seems more likely that this man's account of Saul's death was not accurate rather than that he had had some hand in killing Saul in view of 1 Samuel 31:1-6 and 1 Chronicles 10.5He was able to take Saul's crown and bracelet and probably returned to David with his story to ingratiate himself with him. Mount Gilboa stood some 80 miles north of Ziklag, so it probably took the young man three or four days to make the trip. Ironically God had commanded Saul to annihilate the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15:3), and David had just returned from slaughtering a portion of them (v. 1; 1 Sam. 30). Now one of them claimed to have killed the king who disobeyed God by not killing all the Amalekites.
One writer saw in Saul's "leaning on his spear"(v. 6) ". . . a parable of his tendency to rely on human effort rather than on divine resources (cf. Isa 10:20; 31:1, where rely' translates the same Heb. verb as leaning' does here)."6
The writer constructed this chapter chiastically to focus the reader's attention on the Amalekite's story and David's reaction to it (1:6-12).
ADavid strikes the Amalekites 1:1
BDavid questions an Amalekite 1:2-5
CThe Amalekite tells his story 1:6-10
C'David reacts to the Amalekite's story 1:11-12
B'David questions the Amalekite again 1:13-14
A'David strikes the Amalekite 1:15-16
The Amalekite soldier undoubtedly thought David would have been glad Saul was finally dead since Saul was David's rival for the throne.7However, David was sad instead. Saul was the Lord's anointed. Furthermore David's soul brother Jonathan had died as had many other Israelite soldiers. David must have had the young Amalekite executed because he believed his story. "Your blood is on your own head"(v. 6) means the blood you have shed is the cause of your own death.8
"The author of Samuel established a deliberate connection between the two stories [i.e., this one and the story of the Benjamite fugitive's report in 1 Sam. 4:12-17] in order to set up an analogy between the fates of Saul's house and of Eli's. . . . The comparison indicates that there is a clear rule of law which connects a leader's conduct with his fate and the fate of his house. A degenerate leader, whether it is himself who has sinned or his sons, will ultimately be deposed . . . or come to a tragic end, just as Eli and his sons die on the same day, and so do Saul and his."9
