Saul Becomes King

And so Saul was made king, after Samuel had first anointed him with the priests’ sacred oil. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, and his father’s name was Kish. He was modest in spirit and unusually handsome, so that the dignity of his person was worthy of the dignity of a king. But at the beginning of his reign some of the people revolted from him. They refused to acknowledge his authority and joined themselves to the Ammonites. Saul, however, took vigorous vengeance on them: the enemy were conquered, and the Hebrews were pardoned. Then Saul is said to have been anointed by Samuel a second time. [a]

Next the Philistines invaded, and a bloody war broke out. Saul had named Gilgal as the place where his army was to gather. There they waited seven days for Samuel to come and offer sacrifice to God. As he was slow in coming, the people gradually slipped away, and the king, with unlawful presumption, offered a burnt offering himself, taking on the duty of a priest. Samuel rebuked him severely for this, and he acknowledged his sin, but his repentance came too late. For as a result of the king’s sin, fear had spread through the whole army. The enemy’s camp lay not far off and showed them how real the danger was. No one had the courage even to think of going out to battle, and most of them had taken refuge in the marshes. Besides the loss of courage among men who felt that God had turned away from them because of the king’s sin, the army was badly short of iron weapons. In fact, it is said that nobody but Saul and his son Jonathan had either a sword or a spear. For the Philistines, as the victors in the earlier wars, had taken from the Hebrews the use of weapons, and no one had been able to forge any weapon of war, or even to make a tool for working the land.

In these circumstances Jonathan, with a daring plan and with only his armor-bearer for company, went into the enemy’s camp. He killed about twenty of them and spread terror through their whole army. Then, by God’s ordering, they took to flight. They neither obeyed orders nor kept their ranks, but put all their hope of safety in running away. When Saul saw this, he quickly led out his men, pursued the fleeing enemy, and won a victory. On that day the king is said to have issued a proclamation that no one was to take any food until the enemy were destroyed. But Jonathan, knowing nothing of this order, found a honeycomb, dipped the point of his weapon in it, and ate the honey. When the king learned of it through the anger of God that followed, he ordered his son to be put to death. But with the people’s help Jonathan was saved from death.

At that time Samuel, instructed by God, went to the king and told him, in the words of God, to make war on the nation of the Amalekites, who long before had stood in the way of the Hebrews as they were coming out of Egypt. To this was added the command that they were not to covet any of the spoils of the conquered. So an army was led into the enemy’s territory; their king was captured and the nation subdued. But Saul could not resist so great a spoil. Forgetting God’s commands, he ordered the plunder to be kept and gathered together.