Gilboa

Gilboa — boiling spring, a mountain range, now Jebel Fukua’, memorable as the scene of Saul’s disastrous defeat by the Philistines. Here also his three sons were slain, and he himself died by his own hand (1 Sam. 28:4; 31:1–8; 2 Sam. 1:6–21; 21:12; 1 Chr. 10:1, 8). It was a low barren range of mountains bounding the valley of Esdraelon (Jezreel) on the east, between it and the Jordan valley. When the tidings of this defeat were conveyed to David, he gave utterance to those pathetic words in the “Song of the Bow” (2 Sam. 1:19–27).