Saul

Saul son of Kish, a Benjamite, was the first king of Israel and of the United Monarchy, reigning from 1050 to 1010 BC (1 Samuel 9:1-2; 10:21-24). From his home town of Gibeah, called "Gibeah of Saul," he ruled the early monarchy of Saul in Benjamin (1 Samuel 10:26; 11:4; 15:34). Chosen by the LORD and anointed by Samuel, he was rejected for disobedience and died in battle with three of his sons (1 Samuel 10:1; 15:23; 31:6).

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Israel Asks for a King

Because Samuel was old and his sons did not walk in his ways, the elders of Israel came to him at Ramah and asked for a king "like all the other nations" (1 Samuel 8:4-5). Samuel warned them what a king would take, but the people insisted, and the LORD told him to appoint one (1 Samuel 8:10-22). The name Saul means "asked."

The Philistines, whose cities were Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron, kept outposts at Gibeah of God and at Geba (1 Samuel 6:17; 10:5; 13:3). No blacksmith could be found in Israel, so Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen their farm tools, and in battle only Saul and Jonathan had sword or spear (1 Samuel 13:19-22). The charge for sharpening a plowshare was a "pim," a word no one could translate until excavated weights bearing the name were found; it was about two-thirds of a shekel (1 Samuel 13:21). Saul's reign falls in the archaeological period Iron I B (1100-1000 BC). Older reference works read these verses as showing that the Philistines held a monopoly on iron. The archaeological evidence, however, suggests that iron was still a precious metal in Iron Age I, not mass-produced until the tenth century BC, with bronze the everyday metal.

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Anointed and Acclaimed King

Saul was "choice and handsome," a head taller than anyone else, when his father sent him to look for lost donkeys (1 Samuel 9:2-3). The LORD had told Samuel the day before that He would send him a man from Benjamin to anoint as ruler (1 Samuel 9:15-16). Saul protested that he came "from the smallest tribe of Israel," but Samuel honored him at the sacrificial meal and next morning anointed him privately with a flask of oil (1 Samuel 9:21-10:1). The Spirit of God rushed upon him and he prophesied with a group of prophets, which gave rise to the proverb "Is Saul also among the prophets?" (1 Samuel 10:9-12).

At Mizpah the tribe of Benjamin, then the clan of Matri, then Saul was selected; he was found hiding among the baggage, and the people shouted, "Long live the king!" (1 Samuel 10:17-24). When Nahash the Ammonite besieged Jabesh-gilead and would make a treaty only by putting out everyone's right eye, the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul; he cut a pair of oxen into pieces to summon Israel, and Saul defeated the Ammonites (1 Samuel 11:1-11). The people then made him king before the LORD at Gilgal (1 Samuel 11:14-15).

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Saul's Household

Saul's wife was Ahinoam daughter of Ahimaaz; his sons were Jonathan, Ishvi and Malchishua, and his daughters Merab and Michal (1 Samuel 14:49-50). Chronicles lists his sons as Jonathan, Malchishua, Abinadab and Esh-baal (1 Chronicles 8:33). His concubine Rizpah daughter of Aiah bore him two sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 3:7; 21:8). His army commander was his cousin Abner, son of Saul's uncle Ner (1 Samuel 14:50-51).

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Michmash and the Wars of the Reign

Some Bible versions treat the Hebrew figures in 1 Samuel 13:1 for Saul's age at accession and length of reign as corrupted or missing, and English versions supply them differently. Saul chose three thousand men, and Jonathan attacked the Philistine outpost at Geba; the Philistines massed at Michmash (1 Samuel 13:2-5). Jonathan and his armor-bearer climbed between the cliffs Bozez and Seneh to the Philistine outpost, panic and an earthquake struck the camp, and in Saul's war with the Philistines the LORD saved Israel that day (1 Samuel 14:4-23). Saul had bound the troops by an oath to eat nothing before evening; Jonathan, not knowing, tasted honey, and when the lot fell on him and Saul declared that he must die, the people rescued him (1 Samuel 14:24-45). Saul fought Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah and the Philistines, defeated the Amalekites, and fought the Philistines fiercely all his days (1 Samuel 14:47-52).

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Rejected: Gilgal and Amalek

Told to wait seven days at Gilgal for Samuel, Saul waited, but as his troops deserted he offered the burnt offering himself (1 Samuel 10:8; 13:8-9). Samuel told him that his kingdom would not endure, for the LORD had sought "a man after His own heart" (1 Samuel 13:13-14).

Later Samuel told Saul to attack the Amalekites and devote to destruction all that belonged to them, people and livestock alike (1 Samuel 15:1-3). Saul struck the Amalekites, but he and his troops spared their king, Agag, and the best of the sheep and cattle, which Saul said were kept for sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:7-21). Samuel reminded him that he had once been "small in your own eyes" and answered that "obedience is better than sacrifice," that "rebellion is like the sin of divination," and that because Saul had rejected the word of the LORD, the LORD had rejected him as king (1 Samuel 15:17-23). Saul confessed that he had sinned "because I feared the people and obeyed their voice" (1 Samuel 15:24). When Saul grabbed the hem of Samuel's robe and it tore, Samuel said that the LORD had torn the kingdom from him that day (1 Samuel 15:27-28). Samuel put Agag to death at Gilgal and never visited Saul again, though he mourned for him, and the LORD regretted that He had made Saul king (1 Samuel 15:33-35).

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Saul and David

The LORD then sent Samuel to Bethlehem, where Samuel anointed David son of Jesse (1 Samuel 16:1-13). The Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul and a spirit of distress tormented him; his servants found David to play the harp, and Saul loved him and made him his armor-bearer (1 Samuel 16:14-21). When Goliath defied Israel, the king offered riches and his daughter to the man who killed him and dressed David in his own armor before David killed Goliath (1 Samuel 17:25, 38-50).

After the women sang, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands," Saul kept a jealous eye on David and twice tried to pin him to the wall with his spear (1 Samuel 18:6-11; 19:9-10). He gave his daughter Merab, promised to David, to another man, then asked for Michal "a hundred Philistine foreskins," hoping the Philistines would kill David (1 Samuel 18:17-25). When Jonathan defended David, Saul called him the "son of a perverse and rebellious woman" and hurled his spear at him (1 Samuel 20:30-33).

Told by Doeg the Edomite that Ahimelech the priest had helped David at Nob, Saul ordered the priests killed; when his guards refused, Doeg killed eighty-five men who wore the linen ephod, and one son of Ahimelech, Abiathar, escaped and fled to David (1 Samuel 22:9-18, 20). Saul hunted David at Keilah and in the wildernesses of Ziph and Maon (1 Samuel 23:7-28). Twice David spared him as "the LORD's anointed," cutting off a corner of his robe in a cave at En-gedi and taking his spear and water jug from his camp (1 Samuel 24:1-10; 26:7-12). The first time Saul wept and said, "You are more righteous than I"; the second time he said, "I have played the fool" (1 Samuel 24:16-17; 26:21).

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Endor and Gilboa

Samuel had died, and Saul had removed the mediums and spiritists from the land (1 Samuel 28:3). With the Philistines camped at Shunem, the LORD did not answer Saul by dreams, Urim or prophets, so he disguised himself and consulted a medium at Endor, commonly known as the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:4-8). When she saw an old man in a robe coming up, Saul knew it was Samuel and bowed facedown (1 Samuel 28:11-14). Samuel told him that the LORD had torn the kingdom from him and given it to David, and that "tomorrow you and your sons will be with me" (1 Samuel 28:15-19). In Saul's overthrow on Mount Gilboa the Philistines killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchishua, and Saul, badly wounded by archers, told his armor-bearer to run him through; when the terrified man refused, Saul fell on his own sword, and the armor-bearer did the same (1 Samuel 31:1-6; 1 Chronicles 10:1-6).

The Philistines cut off his head, put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shean; Chronicles says that they hung his head in the temple of Dagon (1 Samuel 31:8-10; 1 Chronicles 10:10). The men of Jabesh-gilead, the town he had rescued, journeyed all night, took the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall, burned them at Jabesh, buried the bones under the tamarisk tree and fasted seven days (1 Samuel 31:11-13). David later sent messengers to bless them for this kindness to Saul (2 Samuel 2:4-7).

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Mourning and Saul's House After Him

An Amalekite came to David with Saul's crown and armband, claiming to have killed him, and David had him executed for destroying "the LORD's anointed" (2 Samuel 1:1-16). David's lament for Saul and Jonathan, the Song of the Bow in the Book of Jashar, mourns "How the mighty have fallen" (2 Samuel 1:17-27). Abner made Saul's son Ish-bosheth, called Esh-baal in Chronicles, king at Mahanaim, where he reigned from 1010 to 1008 BC (2 Samuel 2:8-10). For Jonathan's sake David gave Jonathan's lame son Mephibosheth, called Merib-baal in Chronicles, all Saul's land and a place at his table (2 Samuel 9:1-13; 1 Chronicles 8:34).

Under David a famine lasted three years because Saul had sought to kill the Gibeonites of Gibeon despite Israel's oath to them, and seven of Saul's descendants, among them Rizpah's two sons, were handed over and hanged (2 Samuel 21:1-9). Rizpah guarded their bodies from the beginning of the harvest until the rain came, and David then had the bones of Saul and Jonathan buried in the tomb of Saul's father Kish at Zela in Benjamin (2 Samuel 21:10-14).

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Saul in Later Old Testament Scripture

Chronicles gives the reason for his end: Saul "died for his unfaithfulness to the LORD," because he did not keep the word of the LORD and consulted a medium, and the LORD turned the kingdom over to David (1 Chronicles 10:13-14). The psalm headings set Psalms 52, 54, 57 and 59 in David's flight from Saul, and Psalm 18 on the day the LORD delivered him from all his enemies and from Saul (Psalm 18:1; 52:1; 54:1; 57:1; 59:1). Isaiah names Saul's town in a line of alarm: "Ramah trembles; Gibeah of Saul flees" (Isaiah 10:29). Esther calls Mordecai a Benjamite descended from Kish and Haman "the Agagite" (Esther 2:5; 3:1), which interpreters have long read as tracing them to Saul's father Kish and to Agag, the Amalekite king Saul spared.

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Gibeah, Beth-shean and Archaeology

Gibeah of Saul is generally identified with Tell el-Ful, 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Jerusalem. Excavations in 1922 and 1923 uncovered a tower fortress at the top of the mound. The building was first dated to the time of King Saul. In a 2011 article in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, Israel Finkelstein rejected both an Iron I fortress at the site and its identification with Gibeah, proposing that the tower was first built in Iron IIC as an Assyrian watchtower.

At Tell Beit She'an, the mound of Beth-shean, a team from the University of Pennsylvania's University Museum excavated from 1921 to 1933, and Amihai Mazar directed nine seasons for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology from 1989 to 1996. The excavations have identified no significant Philistine presence there.