The life and times of Saul, Israel’s First King

Suppose you had a daughter whom you had to marry off. Perhaps the social customs of your day demand that you be responsible for her marital future. Left to you, your precious, adorable daughter would be five years old forever, but life does not work that way and you need to find a good man to be her betrothed.

As long as it depends on you, you will hold out till you find the best man possible. Ideally, you would find a man who stood heads and shoulders above everyone else, who was driven, ambitious in all the ways that mattered, and who stood in good conscience towards himself and others. Even if you are from a tribe of miscreants, you would find the best possible man from your tribe to marry your daughter.

In like manner, Saul was Israel’s best at the time he was chosen as King. He stood heads and shoulders above everyone else and seemed to be of good standing in Israelite society. He was not a priest, nor did he have priestly affiliations, but He feared God enough to be willing to listen to a prophet when he was in dire straits having lost his father’s donkey.

Shortly after Saul was anointed as king of Israel by Samuel, he campaigned as king and won a few victories, but it is also in the wake of some of these battles that Saul started to exhibit a fatal flaw that would eventually disqualify him. As a matter of fact, a huge part of Saul’s reign was characterized by the exhibition of this behavior.

Saul was a very self-driven king. He had a knack for taking matters into his hands; a necessary trait for a king; except of course, you were an Israelite king, in which case you had to learn to surrender to Yahweh at all times. Saul displayed an incredibly malignant unwillingness to surrender. We find the first instance of this behaviour in 1st Samuel 13, when Saul went on a campaign against the Philistines and waited seven days for Samuel to come to perform sacrifices.

1 Samuel 13:5–9

‘The Philistines assembled to fight Israel, with three thousand chariots, six thousand charioteers, and soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore.

They went up and camped at Mikmash, east of Beth Aven. When the Israelites saw that their situation was critical and that their army was hard pressed, they hid in caves and thickets, among the rocks, and in pits and cisterns.

Some Hebrews even crossed the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul remained at Gilgal, and all the troops with him were quaking with fear.

He waited seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul’s men began to scatter. So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.”

And Saul offered up the burnt offering.

We should all feel some sympathy for Saul. He was hard-pressed and had not sought the Lord before he went to battle, but he remembered and was eager to do the right thing. But the point of Yahweh’s sacrifices were never about seeking His favour. That sort of attitude belonged to the pagans and their gods, not Yahweh. The sacrifices were an expression of consecrated devotion that had to be carried out exactly as He instituted them. They were not a talisman, they were holy to Yahweh. Saul did not heed the spirit behind the sacrifices and for this reason, he roused Yahweh’s anger against himself.

He was reprimanded by Samuel and all seemed forgiven until God led Saul to campaign against the Amalekites and bring His justice to them. The instruction was for Saul to completely destroy everything in Amalek; their king, men, women, children, even their animals!

But Saul did not utterly destroy Amalek. Instead, he spared their king and spared the animals so they could be used as sacrifices to Yahweh. On the outside, Saul seemed like a man devoted to the God of Israel, but on the inside, one can tell that he regarded Yahweh as no different from the pagan idols that were served in other nations. That was why he thought he could flout the instructions and sacrifice animals to make things right.

He was again reprimanded and eventually rejected by God, not because God was harsh, but because Saul also rejected Him by not acknowledging Him as he should. This was rebellion and this was why in Samuel’s reprimand to Saul, he said the following words:

1 Samuel 15:22–26

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord ?

To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

Because you have rejected the word of the Lord , he has rejected you as king.”

Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the Lord ’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them. Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord .”

But Samuel said to him,

“I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the Lord , and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel!” ‘

Saul’s rejection of Yahweh stemmed from an idolaterous view of himself. This was why much later during his reign, when God put His anointing on someone else, Saul felt threatened and sought to kill him. He saw no reason why his self should be abased in the presence of Yahweh.

Imagine choosing a suitor for your daughter but it turns out the suitor has no regard for you. That was who Saul was as a King in Israel. An arrogant suitor who had no regard for the father who chose him.

Saul would eventually be succeeded by David, a man God anointed from a young age. He would spend a sizeable part of his reign as king trying to kill David, but in the thick of these tempestuous events, we see a beautiful love story emerge. It is between Jonathan, Saul’s heir and David, his nemesis. We would explore this in our next issue, but till then we should remember that what God wants is devotion and obedience, not sacrificial short-cuts.