Person

Saul

The first king of Israel, a Benjamite, the son of Kish. Samuel anointed him in private and the people acclaimed him in public; he began with a rescue that united the tribes, and lost the kingdom through two acts of disobedience, the second of which was sparing Agag and the best of the Amalekite livestock in 1 Samuel 15. The rest of his reign is the story of a rejected king pursuing the anointed one who would replace him, David. He ended at Endor, consulting a medium, and on Mount Gilboa, falling on his own sword.

For apologetics Saul matters in four places: the Amalekite command and its partial obedience, the "evil spirit from Jehovah," the two accounts of his death, and the man who carried his name a thousand years later, Saul of Tarsus.

Life at a glance

• Family and tribe. "There was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish ... And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a young man and a goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people" (1 Samuel 9:1-2, ASV).
• Chosen and anointed (1 Samuel 9 to 10). Out looking for his father's lost donkeys, Saul comes to Samuel, whom God has told the day before, "thou shalt anoint him to be prince over my people Israel; and he shall save my people out of the hand of the Philistines" (1 Samuel 9:16, ASV). Saul protests that he is "a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel" (1 Samuel 9:21, ASV). Samuel pours oil on his head (1 Samuel 10:1), and on the way home "God gave him another heart" and "the Spirit of God came mightily upon him, and he prophesied" (1 Samuel 10:9-10, ASV), which gave rise to the saying "Is Saul also among the prophets?" (10:11).
• Presented to the people. At Mizpah the lot falls on him, but he is found "hid ... among the baggage"; when he stands up, he is a head taller than everyone, and the people shout, "Long live the king" (1 Samuel 10:22-24, ASV).
• The first victory (1 Samuel 11). Nahash the Ammonite besieges Jabesh-gilead and offers terms: the right eye of every man. "The Spirit of God came mightily upon Saul" (11:6, ASV); he musters Israel, routs the Ammonites, and refuses to execute the men who had despised him: "There shall not a man be put to death this day; for to-day Jehovah hath wrought deliverance in Israel" (11:13, ASV). The kingdom is renewed at Gilgal (11:14-15).
• Wars on every side. "He fought against all his enemies on every side," Moab, Ammon, Edom, Zobah and the Philistines (1 Samuel 14:47, ASV), and "there was sore war against the Philistines all the days of Saul" (14:52, ASV).
• Rejected twice, at Gilgal (1 Samuel 13) and over Amalek (1 Samuel 15). See below.
• The Spirit departs; David arrives (1 Samuel 16). David is anointed, and Saul's troubled spirit brings David to court as his harpist.
• Pursuit of David (1 Samuel 18 to 26), ending in two scenes where David spares him.
• Endor and Gilboa (1 Samuel 28; 31). God no longer answers him; he consults a medium, hears his sentence, and dies the next day with three of his sons.

On the length of his reign. The Hebrew of 1 Samuel 13:1 is the standard formula for a king's age and reign, but its numbers appear defective: the YLT renders it literally, "A son of a year [is] Saul in his reigning, yea, two years he hath reigned," while the ASV reads "forty years old" and the WEB "thirty years old ... forty-two years." Paul's sermon in Pisidian Antioch gives "the space of forty years" (Acts 13:21, ASV), which most readers take as a round figure for Saul's era.

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Rejected at Gilgal (1 Samuel 13)

With the Philistines massing at Michmash, Saul waits seven days at Gilgal for Samuel, as appointed. Samuel does not come, the army starts to scatter, and Saul offers the burnt-offering himself. Samuel arrives just as he finishes. Saul's defence is practical: "I saw that the people were scattered from me ... I forced myself therefore, and offered the burnt-offering" (1 Samuel 13:11-12, ASV).

Samuel's answer: "Thou hast done foolishly; thou hast not kept the commandment of Jehovah thy God ... But now thy kingdom shall not continue: Jehovah hath sought him a man after his own heart" (1 Samuel 13:13-14, ASV). The sin is not that a layman touched an altar under pressure; it is that Saul treated an explicit word as negotiable once the situation looked bad. Paul quotes the phrase about David in his sermon in Acts 13:22.

Rejected over Amalek (1 Samuel 15)

The command. "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not" (1 Samuel 15:3, ASV). The moral objection to this command is answered at Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater; how the command came through Samuel is discussed at Prophetic Mediation and Wartime Rhetoric.

The partial obedience. "But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly" (1 Samuel 15:9, ASV). The line runs between what was worth keeping and what was not. Saul then sets up a monument to himself at Carmel (15:12).

The excuses. Saul greets Samuel with "I have performed the commandment of Jehovah" (15:13, ASV). Samuel asks, "What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears?" (15:14). Saul's explanations shift in sequence: the people spared the best (15:15), it was for sacrifice (15:15, 21), and he did obey, since he brought back Agag (15:20). Only at the end does he give the real reason: "I have sinned ... because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice" (15:24, ASV).

The verdict. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king" (1 Samuel 15:22-23, ASV). Samuel then executes Agag himself (see Agag) and "came no more to see Saul until the day of his death" (15:35, ASV).

What God was displeased with. A reading sometimes offered is that God was angry only that the king and the spoil were kept, not that the war was incomplete. The text names both. Verse 9 lists Agag and "the best of the sheep" together under what Saul "would not utterly destroy," and Saul's own summary is that he "transgressed the commandment of Jehovah" (15:24). The chapter's complaint is not about a body count; it is that Saul did the part of the command that cost him nothing and kept the part that profited him, then called it obedience. Samuel's verdict at Endor repeats the charge in the same terms: "thou obeyedst not the voice of Jehovah, and didst not execute his fierce wrath upon Amalek" (1 Samuel 28:18, ASV).

A grim footnote. The ban formula Saul would not carry through against Amalek he later carries through against Israel's own priests. After the priests of Nob help David, Saul has Doeg kill eighty-five of them, and "Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen and asses and sheep" (1 Samuel 22:19, ASV). The narrator lets the echo of 15:3 speak for itself.

"God repented." The chapter says both that "it repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king" (1 Samuel 15:11, ASV) and that God "will not lie nor repent" (15:29). This pairing is discussed at Samuel and Divine Immutability.

The evil spirit from Jehovah (1 Samuel 16.14)

"Now the Spirit of Jehovah departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Jehovah troubled him" (1 Samuel 16:14, ASV). The same spirit recurs: David's harp playing relieves Saul (16:23), and twice the spirit comes on Saul while he has a spear in his hand and he throws it at David (18:10-11; 19:9-10).

The verse is a common objection: does God send evil spirits on people? A fair reading has several parts.

1. The order matters. The departure of the Spirit and the coming of the troubling spirit follow Saul's rejection in chapter 15 and David's anointing in the verse before (16:13). The text presents it as a consequence of what Saul has already chosen, not as the cause of his fall.
2. "Evil" has a wide range. The Hebrew word rendered "evil" here (Strong's H7451, ra') is translated in the KJV not only "evil" and "wickedness" but also "hurt," "harm," "trouble," "affliction," "adversity" and "calamities." The phrase can mean a harmful or tormenting spirit, a spirit of calamity sent as judgment, without saying God created something morally evil. The same word stands in Isaiah 45:7, "I make peace, and create evil."
3. God's sovereignty over spirits, including hostile ones. The Old Testament speaks this way elsewhere: "God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem" (Judges 9:23, ASV), and in Micaiah's vision a lying spirit volunteers before Jehovah's throne to deceive Ahab (1 Kings 22:22-23). In Job 1 the adversary acts only within the limits God sets. On this reading the spirit is hostile in itself and permitted, or sent, as an instrument of judgment.
4. The early church read it as judgment by permission. Tertullian, writing on persecution, says that the devil has no power over God's people by right of his own, but that sometimes "the sinner is handed over to him, as though he were an executioner to whom belonged the inflicting of punishment, as in the case of Saul," and quotes 1 Samuel 16:14 (Tertullian, On Flight in Persecution 2, ANF 4, PDF p. 100). He sets it beside the men Paul delivered over to Satan "that by chastening they might be taught not to blaspheme."

Honest limits. The text does say "from Jehovah," and the readings above do not make that phrase disappear. What they show is that the Old Testament places even hostile powers under God's rule, that this spirit came as judgment on a man who had refused God's word, and that it did not remove Saul's responsibility: he still chose to throw the spear. Christians differ on whether "evil spirit" here means a demonic being or a God-sent affliction of mind; the text supports the first more naturally, and both keep God just. See The Devil and Demons.

The Spirit "came upon" Saul. The earlier statements that the Spirit "came mightily upon" Saul (10:10; 11:6) describe empowering for office and for battle, the pattern of the judges. They do not describe the indwelling the New Testament promises to every believer, and the departure in 16:14 is the removal of that royal anointing as the kingdom passes to David.

Saul and David

David enters Saul's service as the harpist who eases him (16:23) and becomes his commander after Goliath. The women's song "Saul hath slain his thousands, And David his ten thousands" (1 Samuel 18:7, ASV) turns Saul against him: "and what can he have more but the kingdom? And Saul eyed David from that day and forward" (18:8-9, ASV). The narrator gives the root: "Saul was afraid of David, because Jehovah was with him, and was departed from Saul" (18:12, ASV).

Saul tries to kill David by his own hand, by the Philistines, through his daughter Michal, and finally by open pursuit through the wilderness. He even throws his spear at his son Jonathan for defending David (20:33). Twice David has Saul at his mercy, in the cave at En-gedi (1 Samuel 24) and in the camp at night (1 Samuel 26), and twice he refuses: "Jehovah forbid that I should do this thing unto my lord, Jehovah's anointed" (1 Samuel 24:6, ASV). Each time Saul weeps and confesses, "Thou art more righteous than I" (24:17) and "I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly" (26:21, ASV), and each time the confession does not last.

The contrast is the point of 1 Samuel. Saul, chosen for his height, repeatedly acts to keep his throne; David, chosen for his heart (1 Samuel 16:7), refuses to seize a throne God has already promised him. On the friendship between David and Saul's son, see David and Jonathan Relationship Objection Defeater.

Endor (1 Samuel 28)

With Samuel dead and the Philistines camped at Shunem, "when Saul inquired of Jehovah, Jehovah answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets" (1 Samuel 28:6, ASV). The king who had himself "put away those that had familiar spirits ... out of the land" (28:3, ASV) disguises himself and goes to a woman at En-dor. Samuel appears and pronounces the sentence: "because thou obeyedst not the voice of Jehovah, and didst not execute his fierce wrath upon Amalek ... to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me" (1 Samuel 28:18-19, ASV).

The question whether Samuel truly appeared, with Justin Martyr and Tertullian on either side, is covered at Samuel. For Saul's story, the scene is the last step of the same pattern: when God's word did not suit him, he looked for another word. The Chronicler names it as one of the two causes of his death (below).

Death at Gilboa (1 Samuel 31 and 2 Samuel 1)

The narrator's account. The Philistines kill Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchi-shua. Saul is badly wounded by archers and asks his armourbearer to kill him, "lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armorbearer would not ... Therefore Saul took his sword, and fell upon it. And when his armorbearer saw that Saul was dead, he likewise fell upon his sword" (1 Samuel 31:4-5, ASV). The next day the Philistines cut off his head and fasten his body to the wall of Beth-shan. The men of Jabesh-gilead, the town Saul had rescued in his first battle, march all night, recover the bodies, and bury them under the tamarisk at Jabesh (31:8-13).

The Amalekite's account. Three days later a man arrives at David's camp in Ziklag with Saul's crown and bracelet. He says he came upon Saul "leaning upon his spear," that Saul begged him to finish him, and "So I stood beside him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen" (2 Samuel 1:6-10, ASV). He identifies himself as "the son of a sojourner, an Amalekite" (1:13). David has him executed for claiming to have killed "Jehovah's anointed" (1:14-16).

Two accounts, one event. Critics sometimes list these as a contradiction about how Saul died. The usual harmonization is simple: the narrator of 1 Samuel 31 tells what happened, and 2 Samuel 1 reports what a man said happened. The Amalekite was a scavenger on the battlefield who found the body, took the royal insignia, and invented a mercy killing in the hope of a reward from Saul's rival. Three details support this:

• 1 Samuel 31:5 states that the armourbearer "saw that Saul was dead" before taking his own life.
• The man arrives with exactly the things a looter would carry, the crown and the bracelet (2 Samuel 1:10).
• David later describes the episode in just these terms: "when one told me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have brought good tidings, I took hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag, which was the reward I gave him for his tidings" (2 Samuel 4:10, ASV).

A minority reading takes Saul's fall on his sword as not immediately fatal, and lets the Amalekite finish him; this has to set aside 31:5. Either way, the author of Samuel placed both accounts in the same work a few verses apart and evidently saw no contradiction in reporting a liar's words. A narrative that quotes a false claim is not making it. On the method, see Bible Contradictions Objection Defeater.

A third description. The Chronicler, retelling the death in nearly the same words as 1 Samuel 31 (1 Chronicles 10:4-5), adds a theological verdict: "So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against Jehovah, because of the word of Jehovah, which he kept not; and also for that he asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit ... and inquired not of Jehovah: therefore he slew him" (1 Chronicles 10:13-14, ASV). Saul fell on his sword, and God slew him. The Bible regularly describes a single event at two levels, the human act and God's judgment through it.

The irony of the Amalekite. The king rejected for sparing Amalek claims to have been killed by an Amalekite. Whether or not the man told the truth, the narrator lets the detail stand.

David's lament. David mourns Saul without bitterness: "Thy glory, O Israel, is slain upon thy high places! How are the mighty fallen!" (2 Samuel 1:19, ASV) and "Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, And in their death they were not divided" (1:23, ASV).

The other Saul: Paul of Tarsus

The apostle Paul was born Saul, and like the king he was a Benjamite: "circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews" (Philippians 3:5, ASV; compare Romans 11:1). Luke marks the change of name in Acts 13:9, "Saul, who is also called Paul," and in the same chapter Paul himself, preaching in Pisidian Antioch, recalls the king: "God gave unto them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for the space of forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king" (Acts 13:21-22, ASV).

The New Testament does not say why Paul's family chose the name; it is natural to see it as honouring the tribe's one king. The parallel is suggestive. The first Saul was a Benjamite who persecuted the Lord's anointed; the second was a Benjamite who persecuted the church until the risen Christ asked him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" (Acts 9:4). The first was rejected for refusing to obey; the second spent his life calling the nations "unto obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5, ASV).

In the codex's apologetic

• Obedience over ritual. Saul is the Old Testament's clearest case of religious performance used to cover disobedience, the text behind "to obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Samuel 15:22). The contrast with Christ, who "humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death" (Philippians 2:8, ASV), runs through Christian preaching on Saul.
• The Amalekite objection. Saul's partial obedience is part of the data in Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater, and the escape clause for the Kenites (15:6) is his.
• The evil spirit from Jehovah. A recurring hard text, answered above, and part of the wider question of God's relation to evil; see Problem of Evil and Isaiah 45.7 I Create Evil.
• The two death accounts. A standard example of an alleged contradiction that dissolves once a reported claim is distinguished from the narrator's own statement.
• Kingship under the word. Saul's two rejections show that Israel's king was answerable to a prophetic word he did not control, the theme developed at Samuel.

See also

• Samuel, the prophet who anointed and rejected Saul
• Agag, the Amalekite king Saul spared
• David, the anointed successor Saul pursued
• Goliath, David's victory that began Saul's jealousy
• Paul the Apostle, the Benjamite who bore Saul's name
• Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater, the answer to the objection built on 1 Samuel 15
• Prophetic Mediation and Wartime Rhetoric, how the command reached Saul through Samuel
• Canaanite Conquest and Herem, the ban and its language
• Bible Contradictions Objection Defeater, method for alleged contradictions such as the two death accounts
• Isaiah 45.7 I Create Evil, the same Hebrew word for "evil" applied to God's acts
• Divine Immutability, on "it repenteth me" in 1 Samuel 15
• 1 Samuel, the book hub