First of all, it is not possible to harmonize the two stories. It could not be said that Saul survived his injuries in the story told in 1 Samuel 31, for "when the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him" (v. 5). And the story in 2 Samuel 1 clearly implies that the king was not yet injured, for he was standing with the chariots and soldiers closing in and, in his words, "anguish has come on me because my entire soul is still in me" (v. 9). On the argument used by the Society to explain the contradiction, Henry Preserved Smith wrote: "The easiest hypothesis is that the Amalekite fabricated his story. But the whole narrative seems against this. David has no inkling that the man is not truthful, nor does the author suggest it. The natural conclusion is that we have here a document different from the one just preceding" (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Samuel, 1902, p. 254). Indeed it is in the same chapter that the author directly cites a source that he was using, the Book of Jashar. When the two stories are read together, they are closely parallel; they both have the moment of death occurring when the enemy army was closing in on Saul and Saul requests for another to kill him. The differences pertain to the identity of the person addressed by Saul (his armor bearer or an Amalekite?) and the deed performed by his individual (in one story he refuses to kill the king whereas in the other he obliges and reports back to David). The second version is thus probably based on what was written in the Book of Jashar, while the first version represents what is in the main Davidic source that the compiler of the books of Samuel was using.