1 Samuel 9:1-10:27
Hidden among the baggage
He is looking for donkeys and finds a kingdom. At the casting of lots he cannot be found, and has to be pointed out standing head and shoulders above the crowd once he is dragged out.
People of the Bible
Saul
Was found hiding among the baggage on the day he was made king, and spent the rest of his reign unable to stop looking over his shoulder.
Saul is out looking for his father’s lost donkeys when he is anointed, and he goes home and tells nobody. At the public choosing he has to be fetched from where he is hiding. He begins well: he takes a national insult personally in the right way, wins, and refuses to execute the men who had opposed him. Then the unravelling starts, and every step of it is a small impatience. He offers the sacrifice himself rather than wait. He spares what he was told to destroy and explains it. And then a boy kills a giant, and Saul spends fourteen years hunting him.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Saul
- 01
- 02
1 Samuel 11:1-15
The right kind of anger
Jabesh-gilead is offered terms that involve losing an eye each. Saul cuts up oxen and sends the pieces through the country, wins, and refuses to let anyone be put to death for it.
- 03
1 Samuel 13:5-14
Seven days, and then he did it himself
The army is scattering and Samuel has not come. He offers the burnt offering, and Samuel arrives as he finishes. You have done foolishly, and your kingdom shall not continue.
- 04
1 Samuel 15:1-23
The people spared the best
Told to devote Amalek to destruction, he keeps the king and the best animals, and greets Samuel by saying he has performed the commandment. The bleating of sheep answers him.
- 05
1 Samuel 18:6-16
What can he have more but the kingdom
Women sing thousands for Saul and ten thousands for David, and from that day he eyes him. He throws the spear twice, then makes him a commander, hoping the Philistines will do it for him.
- 06
1 Samuel 28:3-25
The night at Endor
He has expelled the mediums himself, and goes to one in disguise because nothing answers him any more. The woman is more frightened than he is, and afterwards she makes him eat.
Why it matters
Saul is the answer to the request in chapter eight. Israel asked for a king like the nations, and got one who looked exactly right, a head taller than anyone else, and whose defining trait turns out to be fear of what people think. The account is not a caricature. He prophesies, he loves his son, he is genuinely brave at the end, and he goes to his death on Gilboa fighting. David, who had every reason to hate him, composes the lament.
21 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
