The Battle at Mount Gilboa

After the Philistines mustered their forces at Aphek and advanced to Shunem in the Jezreel Valley, the Israelites assembled their forces nearby at Jezreel. During the battle, the Israelites began to retreat up the slopes of Mount Gilboa. There Saul and his sons were killed, and the Philistines took their bodies to Beth-shan and hung them on the wall of the city. When the people of Jabesh-gilead heard about this, they marched through the night to recover the bodies of Saul and his sons, perhaps as repayment for Saul's rescue of the town from the Ammonites many years earlier (1 Samuel 11).