King Saul

Saul (שאול המלך) (or Sha'ul) (Hebrew: שָׁאוּל, Standard Šaʾul Tiberian Šāʾûl ; "asked for") (reigned 1047 BC - 1007 BC) is identified in the Books of Samuel, 1 Chronicles and the Qur'an as the first king of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. Saul reigned from Gibeah during the closing decades of the second millennium B.C. When his reign succumbed to a Philistine onslaught, a part of his kingdom fell to the Philistines, while the remainder was contested by his surviving son Ish-bosheth and rival David. Saul's traditional biography in the Books of Samuel reveals two main sources, independent of each other.

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Appointment as King

The Books of Samuel give three distinct accounts of how Saul came to be anointed as king:

• (1 Samuel 9:1-10:16) Saul was sent with a servant to look for his father's donkeys, who had strayed; leaving his home at Gibeah, they eventually wander to the district of Zuph, at which point Saul suggests abandoning their search. Saul's servant however, remarks that they happened to be near the town of Ramah, where a famous seer was located, and suggested that they should consult him first. The seer (later identified by the text as Samuel), having previously had a vision instructing him to do so, offers hospitality to Saul when he enters Ramah, and later anoints him in private.

• (1 Samuel 10:17-24 and 12:1-5) Desiring to be like other nations, there was a popular movement to establish a centralised monarchy. Samuel therefore assembled the people at Mizpah in Benjamin, and despite having strong reservations, which he made no attempt to hide, allows the appointment of a king. Samuel uses cleromancy to determine who it was that God desired to be the king, whittling the assembly down into ever smaller groups until Saul is finally identified. Saul, hiding in baggage, is then publicly anointed.

• (1 Samuel 11:1-11 and 11:15) The Ammonites, led by Nahash, lay siege to Jabesh-Gilead, who are forced to surrender. Under the terms of surrender, the occupants of the city would be forced into slavery, and have their right eyes removed as a sign of this. The city's occupants send out word of this to the other tribes of Israel, and the tribes west of the Jordan assemble an army under the leadership of Saul. Saul leads the army to victory against the Ammonites, and, in both gratitude and appreciation of military skill, the people congregate at Gilgal, and acclaim Saul as king.

According to many scholars using source criticism,[attribution needed] the existence of three different explanations here is the result of the biblical narrative being spliced together from a number of originally distinct source texts. This may be supported by text-critical evidence: in the Septuagint version of 1 Samuel 11:15, Saul is being publicly anointed as king by Samuel at Gilgal, rather than the crowd simply acclaiming him as such; i.e. Saul gets anointed three times, and twice publicly. Scholars consider the cleromancy narrative to be part of the so-called republican source (which takes an anti-monarchical spin), while the battle-victory narrative, and sometimes also the lost-sheep narrative, is assigned to the pro-monarchical source (which views the Israelite monarchy through rose-tinted glasses). The pro-monarchical source is generally thought to be the older, reflecting court records from the times of strong kings, while the republican source is considered to have a date more in tune with the times when writers, such as Jeremiah, were willing to openly criticise their weaker rulers.[citation needed]

William Sanford et. al., in their Old Testament Survey, argue that the three accounts are a reasonable process of gradual acceptance for the political climate of the time. Given that Israel was a loose confederation of tribes united by their faith, and without a strong political or theological leader, Sanford argues that a series of displays of ability (or, from a theological point of view, gifts from God as evidence that he was divinely chosen for rulership) were needed to bring all the tribes on board for the inevitable loss of individual freedom resulting from the institution of a monarchy.

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