Saul

SAUL

The son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, the first king of the Israelites, anointed by Samuel, B. C. 1091, and after a reign of forty years filled with various events, slain with his sons on Mount Gilboa. He was succeeded by David, who was his son-in-law, and whom he had endeavored to put to death. His history is contained in 1Sa 10:1-31 :13. It is a sad and admonitory narrative. The morning of his reign was bright with special divine favors, both providential, and spiritual, 1Sa 9:20 10:1-11,24,25. But he soon began to disobey God, and was rejected as unworthy to found a line of kings; his sins and misfortunes multiplied, and his sun went down in gloom. In his first war with the Ammonites, God was with him; but then follow his presumptuous sacrifice, in the absence of Samuel; his equally rash vow; his victories over the Philistines and the Amalekites; his sparing Agag and the spoil; his spirit of distracted and foreboding melancholy; his jealousy and persecution of David; his barbarous massacre of the priests and people at Nob, and of the Gibeonites; his consulting the witch on Endor; the battle with the Philistines in which his army was defeated and his sons were slain; and lastly, his despairing self-slaughter, his insignia of royalty being conveyed to David by an Amalekite, 1Sa 31:1-13 2Sa 1:1-27 1Ch 10:13,14 . The guilty course and the awful end of this first king of the Hebrews were a significant reproof of their sin in desiring any king but Jehovah; and also show to what extremes of guilt and ruin one may go who rebels against God, and is ruled by his own ambitious and envious passions.SAUL was also the Hebrew name of the apostle Paul.

Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Saul

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Saul the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, is mentioned in St. Pauls address at Pisidian Antioch as the first king whom God gave to Israel. After he had reigned 40 years, God removed him, and raised up David to be king over Israel, a man after His heart (Act 13:21-22). Saul of Tarsus could not fail to be profoundly interested in the career of the great king whose name he bore and to whose tribe he belonged. The story of the hero who was called against his will to the throne, and who lived and died fighting for the liberty of his country, has all the elements of high tragedy. By separating the later from the earlier and more authentic narrative contained in 1 Sam., historical criticism enables the reader to understand more fully and to appraise more highly the real services of this protagonist who turned the tide of Philistine conquest into defeat and paved the way for the still greater king who consolidated the Hebrew monarchy. For a fine psychological study of his character, see A. B. Davidson, The Called of God, 1902, p. 143 ff.

James Strahan.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

Saul

First king of Israel. When the people demanded a king, he was anointed by the prophet Samuel, but lost the favour of God through disobedience. he received David into his household, and later persecuted him in jealousy. After visiting the witch of Enor in order to communicate with Samuel’s spirit, he was defeated by the Philistines, and then took his own life.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Saul

Hebrew for postulatus, referring probably to the petition mentioned in I Kings, viii, 5.

The first King of Israel, the son of Cis of the tribe of Benjamin (ix, 1, 2). Waiving critical discussion of the parallel, though often divergent, sources underlying I Kings, suffice it to say that the narrative of the life and times of Saul is constructed from two traditional accounts, each of which has its particular viewpoint. This appears especially in the divergent accounts relative to the circumstances attending the election of Saul and his fall from Divine favour. The prophet Samuel, who is counted as the last of the great Judges of Israel, was growing old and the administration of civic and religious affairs had been confided to his sons. These proved unfaithful to their trust and the people being dissatisfied petitioned Samuel to select a king to rule over them after the manner of the other nations. Samuel resents this request, and the Lord, though affirming it to be an offence against Himself, a virtual rejection of the theocratic regime, nevertheless instructs the prophet to accede to the demands of the people. Samuel informs them of the Lord’s displeasure and predicts the retributory evils that will come upon them through the exactions of the future king (1 Samuel 8). The choice of the new ruler is determined by a providential incident. Saul, in quest of his father’s strayed asses, happens to consult Samuel the “seer” in the hope of obtaining information as to their whereabouts. The prophet assures him of their safety, and after entertaining Saul, reveals to him his mission with regard to the Chosen People and anoints him king. Forthwith Saul’s heart is changed, and to the surprise of many he prophesies in the midst of the company of prophets (1 Samuel 10:10). A month after these events the newly-chosen king, who had hitherto refrained from asserting his royal prerogatives, justifies his election by defeating the Ammonites and delivering Jabes Galaad. Later he engages in war with the Philistines and being in straits, he presumes to offer the holocaust because of Samuel’s unexplained delay in arriving on the scene. For this usurpation of the priestly function he is reproved by the prophet and already the end of his kingdom is announced (1 Samuel 13).

Illustrative of the composite character of the narrative is the fact that an entirely different motive for his rejection is given in chapter xv, viz. his failure to carry out fully the command of the Lord to utterly destroy the tribe of Amalec. Consequently upon the Lord’s disfavour Samuel is directed to anoint David to be a king “after God’s own heart,” and though merely a shepherd boy he is taken into Saul’s household. The many graphic incidents connected with Saul’s jealousy and persecution of David are narrated in I Kings xviii-xxvii. The narrative goes on to relate how on the occasion of a new invasion by the Philistines, Saul being now forsaken by Yahweh and still seeking superhuman guidance, has recourse to a witch living at Endor. Through her mediation the spirit of Samuel, who in the meantime had passed to his reward, is recalled. The departed prophet reproaches Saul for his infidelity and announces his impending fate at the hands of the Philistines (1 Samuel 28). The fulfilment of this dire prediction is related in the final chapter of the First Book of Kings. Saul and his forces are overwhelmed by the Philistines; the valiant Jonathan and his brothers are slain in the battle, and the king, fearing lest he fall into the hands of the uncircumcised, begs his armour bearer to take his life. The latter, fearing to lay hands on the Lord’s anointed, refuses, and Saul being in desperate straits ends his life by falling on his own sword. His head was cut off by the victorious Philistines and sent as a trophy to the various towns of their country, while his body and those of his sons were hung on the walls of Bethsan, but the inhabitants of Jabes Galaad hearing of these things came in the night, and removing the bodies carried them to their own town and burnt them there burying their ashes in the neighbouring woods (1 Samuel 31). Achinoam is mentioned as the wife of Saul (1 Samuel 14:50). Three of his sons perished with him (1 Samuel 31:2), and another, Isboseth, who endeavoured to continue the dynasty of his father’s house, was assassinated by two captains of his own army (2 Samuel 5:6). Thus was removed the last obstacle to the accession of King David.

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SCHULTZ, Diss. Saul regimen antecedentia exhibens (Strasburg, 1674).

JAMES F. DRISCOLL Transcribed by John Fobian In memory of Evelyn Gimler Fobian

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIIICopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, D.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Saul

(Heb. Shaill’, , desired; Sept. and New Test. ; Josephus, ), the name of several men, the following three of whom are thus known in the A.V. For the others SEE SHAUL.

1. An early king of the Edomites, successor of Samlah at Rehoboth (Gen 36:37-38), elsewhere called Shaul (1Ch 1:4 p. 49). B.C. post 1618.

2. The first king of Israel (B.C. 1093-1053). As such his career possesses a peculiar interest in the history and relations of the chosen people.

I. The Name. This first becomes prominent here in the history of Israel, though found before in the Edomitish prince already mentioned, and in a son of Simeon (Gen 46:10; A.V. Shaul). It also occurs among the Kohathites in the genealogy of Samuel (1Ch 6:24, Shaul), and in Saul, like the king, of the tribe of Benjamin, better known as the apostle Paul (see below). Josephus (War, 2, 18, 4) mentions a Saul, father of one Simon who distinguished himself at Scythopolis in the early part of the Jewish war. The name in its application to the present character seems almost like a mockery of his history.

II. His Family. On the following page is a general view of Saul’s pedigree.

In this genealogy may be observed

1. The repetition in two generations of the names of Kish and Ner, of Nadab and Abi-nadab, and of Mephibosheth.

2. The occurrence of the name of Baal in three successive generations; possibly in four, as there were two Mephibosheths.

3. The constant shiftings of the names of God, as incorporated in the proper names: (a) Ab-iel=Jehiel; (b) Malchi-shua=Je-shua; (c) Esh- baal=Ishbosheth; (d) Mephi- (or Meri-) baal=Mephi-bosheth.

4. The long continuance of the family down to the times of Ezra.

5. Is it possible that Zimri (1Ch 9:42) can be the usurper of 1 Kings 16 –if so, the last attempt of the house of Saul to regain its ascendency? The time would agree.

There is a disagreement between the pedigree in 1Sa 9:1; 1Sa 14:51, which represents Saul and Abner as the grandsons of Abiel. and 1Ch 8:33; 1Ch 9:39, which represents them as his great- grandsons. If we adopt the more elaborate pedigree in the Chronicles, we must suppose either that a link has been dropped between Abiel and Kish, in 1Sa 9:1, or that the elder Kish, the son of Abiel (1Ch 9:36), has been confounded with the younger Kish, the son of Ner (1Ch 9:39). The pedigree in 1 Chronicles 8 is not free from confusion, as it omits among the sons of Abiel, Ner, who in 1Ch 9:36 is the fifth son, and who in both is made the father of Kish. SEE ABIEL.

Saul’s more particular genealogy and lineage (so far as given) is as follows:

III. Saul’s History.

1. Up to his Coronation. The birthplace of Saul is not expressly mentioned; but as Zelah was the place of Kish’s sepulchre (2 Samuel 21), it was probably his native village. There is no warrant for saying that it was Gibeah, though, from its subsequent connection with him, it is called often Gibeah of Saul. SEE GIBEAH. (When Abiel, or Jehiel [1Ch 8:29; 1Ch 9:35], is called the father of Gibeon, it probably means founder of Gibeah.)

His father, Kish, was a powerful and wealthy chief, though the family to which he belonged was of little importance (1Sa 9:1; 1Sa 9:21). A portion of his property consisted of a drove of asses. In search of these asses, gone astray on the mountains, he sent his son Saul, accompanied by a servant () who acted also as a guide and assistant of the young man (1Sa 9:3-10). After a three days’ journey (1Sa 9:20), which it has hitherto proved impossible to track with certainty, SEE RAMAH, through Ephraim and Benjamin, SEE SHALIM; SEE SHALISHA; SEE ZUPH, they arrived at the foot of a hill surrounded by a town, when Saul proposed to return home, but was deterred by the advice of the servant, who suggested that before doing so they should consult a man of God, a seer, as to the fate of the asses, securing his oracle by a present (backshish) of a quarter of a silver shekel. They were instructed by the maidens at the well outside the city to catch the seer as he came out of the city to ascend to a sacred eminence, where a sacrificial feast was waiting for his benediction (1Sa 9:11-13). At the gate they met the seer for the first time it was Samuel.

A divine intimation had indicated to him the approach and the future destiny of the youthful Benjamite. Surprised at his language, but still obeying his call, they ascended to the high place, and in the inn or caravansary at the top (Sept. , 1Sa 9:27) found thirty or (Sept. and Josephus, Ant. 6, 4, 1) seventy guests assembled, among whom they took the chief place. In anticipation of some distinguished stranger, Samuel had bidden the cook reserve a boiled shoulder, from which Saul, as the chief guest, was bidden to tear off the first morsel (Sept. 1Sa 9:22-24). They then descended to the city, and a bed was prepared for Saul on the housetop. At daybreak Samuel roused him. They descended again to the skirts of the town, and there (the servant having left them) Samuel poured over Saul’s head the consecrated oil, and with a kiss of salutation announced to him that he was to be the ruler and (Sept.) deliverer of the nation (1Sa 9:25 to 1Sa 10:1). From that moment, as he turned on Samuel the huge shoulder which towered above all the rest (Sept. 10:9), a new life dawned upon him. He returned by a route which, like that of his search, it is impossible to make out distinctly; and at every step homeward it was confirmed by the incidents which, according to Samuel’s prediction awaited him (10:9, 10). At Rachel’s sepulchre he met two men, who announced to him the recovery of the asses his lower cares were to cease. At the oak of Tabor, SEE PLAIN, TABOR, he met three men carrying gifts of kids and bread and a skin of wine, as an offering to Bethel. Two of the loaves were offered to him as if to indicate his new dignity. At the hill of God (whatever may be meant thereby, possibly his own city, Gibeah) he met a band of prophets descending with musical instruments, and he caught the inspiration from them as a sign of his new life (Ewald, 3, 28-30).

This is what may be called the private, inner view of his call. The outer call, which is related independently of the other, was as follows. An assembly was convened by Samuel at Mizpeh, and lots (so often practiced at that time, see Aristot. Polit. 6, 11; Virgil, En. 2) were cast to find the tribe and the family which was to produce the king. Saul was named, and, by a divine intimation, found hidden in the circle of baggage which surrounded the encampment (1Sa 10:17-24). His stature at once conciliated the public feeling, and for the first time the shout was raised, afterwards so often repeated in modern times, Long live the king! (1Sa 10:23-24) and he returned to his own Gibeah, accompanied by the fighting part () of the people, of whom he was now to be the especial head. The murmurs of the worthless part of the community who refused to salute him with the accustomed presents were soon dispelled by an occasion arising to justify the selection of Saul. The words which close 1Sa 10:27 are, in the Hebrew text, he was as though he were deaf; in Josephus, Ant. 6, 5,1, and the Sept. (followed by Ewald), and it came to pass after a month that.

The corrupt administration of justice by Samuel’s sons furnished an occasion to the Hebrews for rejecting that theocracy of which they neither appreciated the value, nor, through their unfaithfulness, to it, enjoyed the full advantages (1 Samuel 8). The prospect of the event related below seems also to have conspired with the cause just mentioned and with a love of novelty in prompting the demand for a king (1Sa 12:12) an officer evidently alien to the genius of the theocracy, though contemplated as a historical certainty, and provided for by the Jewish lawgiver (1Sa 12:17-20; Deu 17:14-20; on which see Grotius’s note; also De Jure Belli, etc. 1, 4, 6, with the remarks of Gronovius, who [as Puffendorf also does] controverts the views of Grotius). An explanation of the nature of this request, as not only an instance of ingratitude to Samuel, but of rebellion against Jehovah, and the delineation of the manner in which their kings notwithstanding the restrictions prescribed in the law might be expected to conduct themselves ( , Sept. ; 1Sa 8:11; 1Sa 10:25), failed to move the people from their resolution. SEE SAMUEL.

Both previously to that election (1Sa 10:16), and subsequently, when insulted by the worthless portion of the Israelites, he showed that modesty, humility, and forbearance which seem to have characterized him till corrupted by the possession of power. The person thus set apart to discharge the royal function possessed, at least, those corporal advantages which most ancient nations desiderated in their sovereigns what Euripides calls the worthy form of royalty. His person was tall and commanding, and he soon showed that his courage was not inferior to his strength (1Sa 9:1; 1Sa 10:23). His belonging to Benjamin also, the smallest of the tribes, though of distinguished bravery, prevented the mutual jealousy with which either of the two great tribes, Judah and Ephraim, would have regarded a king chosen from the other.

2. Confirmation of Saul’s Appointment. He was (having, apparently, returned to his private life) on his way home, driving his herd of oxen, when he heard one of those wild lamentations in the city of Gibeah, such as mark in Eastern towns the arrival of a great calamity. It was the tidings of the threat issued by Nahash, king of Ammon, against Jabesh-gilead. SEE AMMON. For, in the meantime, the Ammonites, whose invasion had hastened the appointment of a king, having besieged Jabesh in Gilead, and Nahash their king having proposed insulting conditions to them, the elders of that town, apparently not aware of Saul’s election (1Sa 11:3), sent messengers through the land imploring help. The inhabitants of Jabesh were connected with Benjamin by the old adventure recorded in Judges 21. It was as if this one spark was needed to awaken the dormant spirit of the king. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him,’ as on the ancient judges. The shy, retiring nature which we have observed vanished never to return. In this emergency, he had recourse to the expedient of the earlier days by the message of the flesh of two of the oxen from the herd which he was driving. Saul thus acted with wisdom and promptitude, summoning the people, en masse, to meet him at Bezek; and having, at the head of a vast multitude, totally routed the Ammonites (Jdg 21:11) and obtained a higher glory by exhibiting a new instance of clemency, whether dictated by principle or policy Novum imperium inchoantibus utilis clementiae fama (Tacitus, Hist. 4, 63), For lowliness is young ambition’s ladder he and the people betook themselves, under the direction of Samuel, to Gilgal, there with solemn sacrifices to reinstall the victorious leader in his kingdom (1 Samuel 11). If the number set down in the Hebrew text of those who followed Saul (1Sa 11:8) can be depended on (the Sept. more than doubles them, and Josephus outgoes even the Sept.), it would appear that the tribe of Judah was dissatisfied with Saul’s election, for the soldiers furnished by the other tribes were 300,000, while Judah sent only 30,000; whereas the population of the former, compared with that of Judah, appears, from other passages, to have been as about five to three (2Ki 24:9). Yet it is strange that this remissness is neither punished (1Sa 11:7) nor noticed. At Gilgal Saul was publicly anointed and solemnly installed in the kingdom by Samuel, who took occasion to vindicate the purity of his own administration which he virtually transferred to Saul to censure the people for their ingratitude and impiety, and to warn both them and Saul of the danger of disobedience to the commands of Jehovah (1 Samuel 12). The effect of this military success was instantaneous on the people; the punishment of the murmurers was demanded, but refused by Saul, and the monarchy was inaugurated anew (1Sa 11:1-15). It should be observed, however, that, according to 1Sa 12:12. the affair of Nahash preceded and occasioned the election of Saul. He became king of Israel. But he still so far resembles the earlier judges as to be virtually king only of his own tribe, Benjamin, or of the immediate neighborhood. Almost all his exploits are confined to this circle of territory or associations.

These were the principal transactions that occurred during the first decade of Saul’s reign (which we venture to assign as the meaning of the first clause of ch. 13 the son of a year was Saul in his reigning; the emendation of Origen, Saul was thirty years old, being required by the chronology, for he seems, at the next event, to have been forty years old); and the subsequent events happened in the second decade, which may be the meaning of the latter clause.

3. Saul’s First Trial and Transgression. Samuel, who had up to this time been still named as ruler with Saul (1Sa 11:7; 1Sa 11:12; 1Sa 11:14), now withdrew, and Saul became the acknowledged chief. The restrictions on which he held the sovereignty had (1Sa 10:25) been fully explained as well to Saul as to the people, so that he was not ignorant of his true position as merely the lieutenant of Jehovah, king of Israel, who not only gave all the laws, but whose will, in the execution of them, was constantly to be consulted and complied with. The first occasion on which his obedience to this constitution was put to the test brought out those defects in his character which showed his unfitness for his high office, and incurred a threat of that rejection which his subsequent conduct confirmed (1Sa 13:13). Saul could not understand his proper position, as only the servant of Jehovah speaking through his ministers, or confine himself to it; and in this respect he was not, what David with many individual and private faults and crimes was a man after God’s own heart, a king faithful to the principles of the theocracy.

In the twentieth year of his reign (as the age of Jonathan evidently requires; the text being corrupt; see Keil, ad loc.) Saul began to organize an attempt to shake off the Philistine yoke which pressed on his country; not least on his own tribe, where a Philistine officer had long been stationed even in his own field (1Sa 10:5; 1Sa 13:3). Having collected a small standing army, part of which, under Jonathan, had taken a fort (or slain the officer) of the Philistines, Saul summoned the people to withstand the forces which their oppressors, now alarmed for their dominion, would, upon this signal, naturally assemble. But so numerous a host came against Saul that the people, panic stricken, fled to rocks and caverns for safety years of servitude having extinguished their courage, which the want of arms, of which the policy of the Philistines had deprived them, still further diminished. The number of chariots, 30,000, seems a mistake; unless we suppose, with Le Clerc, that they were not war chariots, but baggage wagons (an improbable supposition), so that 3000 may be the true number. Apparently reduced to extremity, and the seventh day having come, but not being ended, the expiration of which Samuel had enjoined him to wait, Saul at least ordered sacrifices to be offered for the expression (1Sa 13:9) does not necessarily imply that he intruded into the priest’s office (2Sa 6:13; 1Ki 3:2-4), though that is the most obvious meaning of the text. Whether that which Saul now disregarded was the injunction referred to (1Sa 10:8) or one subsequently addressed to him, this is evident, that Saul acted in the full knowledge that he sinned (1Sa 13:12); and his guilt, in that act of conscious disobedience, was probably increased by its clearly involving an assumption of authority to conduct the war according to his own judgment and will. But just after the sacrifice was completed Samuel arrived and pronounced the first curse on his impetuous zeal (1Sa 13:5-14). Samuel, having denounced the displeasure of Jehovah and its consequences, left him, and Saul returned to Gibeah (the addition made to the text of the Sept. 1Sa 13:15, where, after from Gilgal, the clause, and the rest of the people went up after Saul to meet the enemy from Gilgal to Gibeah, etc., being required apparently by the sense, which, probably, has been the only authority for its insertion). Left to himself, Saul’s errors multiplied apace. SEE SAMUEL.

Meanwhile the adventurous exploit of his son brought on the crisis which ultimately drove the Philistines back to their own territory. Jonathan, having assaulted a garrison of the Philistines (apparently at Michmash [1Sa 14:31], which therefore must have been situated near Migron in Gibeah [1Sa 14:1], and within sight of it [1Sa 14:15]), Saul, aided by a panic of the enemy, an earthquake, and the cooperation of his fugitive soldiers, effected a great slaughter; but by a rash and foolish denunciation, he (1) impeded his success (1Sa 14:30), (2) involved the people in a violation of the law (1Sa 14:33), and (3), unless prevented by the more enlightened conscience of the people, would have ended with putting Jonathan to death for an act which, being done in total ignorance, could involve no guilt. SEE JONATHAN.

This campaign was signalized by two remarkable incidents in the life of Saul. One was the first appearance of his madness in the above rash vow which all but cost the life of his son (1Sa 14:24; 1Sa 14:44). The other was the erection of his first altar, built either to celebrate the victory, or to expiate the savage feast of the famished people (1Sa 14:35). This success against the Philistines was followed, not only by their retirement for a time within their own territory, but by other considerable successes against the other enemies of his country. Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah, the Amalekites, and the Philistines all of whom he harassed. but did not subdue. These wars may have occupied two or three years, about the middle of Saul’s reign (B.C. 1073-71).

4. Saul’s Second Transgression. The expulsion of the Philistines (although not entirely completed [1Sa 14:52]) at once placed Saul in a position higher than that of any previous ruler of Israel. Probably from this time was formed the organization of royal state, which contained in germ some of the future institutions of the monarchy. The host of 3000 has been already mentioned (1 Samuel 13; 1Sa 24:2; 1Sa 26:2; comp. 1Ch 12:29). Of this Abner became captain (1Sa 14:50). A bodyguard of young, tall, and handsome Benjamites (Josephus, Ant. 6, 6, 6; 7, 14) was also formed of runners and messengers (see 1Sa 16:15; 1Sa 16:17; 1Sa 22:14; 1Sa 22:17; 1Sa 26:22). Of this David was afterwards made the chief. These two were the principal officers of the court, and sat with Jonathan at the king’s table (20:25). Another officer is incidentally mentioned the keeper of the royal mules the comes stabuli, the constable of the king such as appears in the later monarchy (1Ch 27:30). He is the first instance of a foreigner employed about the court being an Edomite or (Sept.) Syrian, of the name of Doeg (1Sa 21:7; 1Sa 22:9). According to Jewish tradition (Jerome, Qu. Hoeb. ad loc.) he was the servant who accompanied Saul in his pursuit of his father’s asses who counseled him to send for David (1Sa 9:16), and whose son ultimately killed him (2Sa 1:10). The high priest of the house of Ithamar (Ahimelech or Ahijah) was in attendance upon him with the ephod, when he desired it (1Sa 14:3), and felt himself bound to assist his secret commissioners (21:1-9; 22:14). The king himself was distinguished by a state not before marked in the rulers. He had a tall spear of the same kind as that described in the hand of Goliath, and the same that now marks the Bedouin sheik. This never left him in repose (18:10; 19:9), at his meals (20:33), at rest (26:11), in battle (2Sa 1:6). In battle he wore a diadem on his head and a bracelet on his arm (1:10). He sat at meals on a seat of his own facing his son (1Sa 20:25; Sept.). He was received on his return from battle by the songs of the Israelitish women (18:6), among whom he was on such occasions specially known as bringing back from the enemy scarlet robes, and golden ornaments for their apparel (2Sa 1:24).

The warlike character of his reign naturally still predominated, and he was now able not merely, like his temporary predecessors, to act on the defensive, but to attack the neighboring tribes of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Zobah, and finally Amalek (1Sa 14:47). The war with Amalek is twice related, first briefly (1Sa 14:48), and then at length (15:1-9). Its chief connection with Saul’s history lies in the disobedience to the prophetical command of Samuel, shown in the sparing of the king, and the retention of the spoil (B.C. 1070). In this event another trial was afforded Saul before his final rejection namely, by the command to extirpate the Amalekites, whose hostility to the people of God was inveterate (Deu 25:18; Exo 17:8-16; Num 14:42-45; Jdg 3:13; Jdg 6:3), and who had not by repentance averted that doom which had been delayed 550 years (1Sa 14:48). The extermination of Amalek and the subsequent execution of Agag belong to the general question of the moral code of the Old Test. SEE AGAG.

There is no reason to suppose that Saul spared the king for any other reason than that for which he retained the spoil namely, to make a more splendid show at the sacrificial thanksgiving (1Sa 15:21). Such was the Jewish tradition preserved by Josephus (Ant. 6, 7, 2), who expressly says that Agag was spared for his stature and beauty, and such is the general impression left by the description of the celebration of the victory. Saul rides to the southern Carmel in a chariot (Sept.), never mentioned elsewhere, and sets up a monument there (Heb. a hand [2Sa 18:18]), which in the Jewish traditions (Jerome, Qu. Hoeb. ad loc.) was a triumphal arch of olives, myrtles, and palms. In allusion to his crowning triumph, Samuel applies to God the phrase, The victory (Vulg. trumphator) of Israel will neither lie nor repent (1Sa 15:29; and comp. 1Ch 29:11). The apparent cruelty of this commission was not the reason why it was not fully executed, as Saul himself confessed when Samuel upbraided him, I feared the people and obeyed their voice (1Sa 15:24). This stubbornness in persisting to rebel against the directions of Jehovah was now visited by that final rejection of his family from succeeding him on the throne which had before been threatened (1Sa 13:13-14; 1Sa 15:23), and which was now significantly represented, or mystically predicted, by the rending of the prophet’s mantle. The struggle between Samuel and Saul in their final parting is also indicated, as he tears himself away from Saul’s grasp (for the gesture, see Josephus, Ant. 6, 7, 5), and by the long mourning of Samuel for the separation Samuel mourned for Saul. How long wilt thou mourn for Saul? (1Sa 14:35; 1Sa 16:1). After this second and flagrant disobedience, accordingly, Saul received no more public countenance from the venerable prophet, who now left him to his sins and his punishment; nevertheless the Lord repented that he had made Saul king (15:35). SEE SAMUEL.

5. Saul’s Conduct towards David. The rest of Saul’s life is one long tragedy. The frenzy which had given indications of itself before now at times took almost entire possession of him. It is described in mixed phrases as an evil spirit of God (much as we might speak of religious madness), which, when it came upon him, almost choked or strangled him from its violence (1Sa 16:14; Sept.; Josephus, Ant. 6:8, 2). The denunciations of Samuel sank into the heart of Saul, and produced a deep melancholy, which either really was, or which his physicians (1Sa 16:14-15; comp. Genesis 1, 2) told him was, occasioned by a supernatural influence; unless we understand the phrase , an evil spirit, subjectively, as denoting the condition itself of Saul’s mind, instead of the cause of that condition (Isa 29:10; Num 5:14; Rom 11:8). We can conceive that music might affect Saul’s feelings, might cheer his despondency, or divert his melancholy; but how it should have the power to chase away a spiritual messenger whom the Lord had sent to chasten the monarch for his transgressions is not so easily understood. Saul’s case must probably be judged of by the same principles as that of the daemoniacs mentioned in the New Test. SEE DAEMONIAC. In this crisis David was recommended to him by one of the young men of his guard (in the Jewish tradition groundlessly supposed to be Doeg [Jerome, Qu. Hoeb. ad loc.]) on account of his skill as a musician (1Sa 16:16-23). But the narrative of his introduction to Saul, his subsequently killing Goliath, Saul’s ignorance of David’s person after he had been his attendant and armor bearer, with various other circumstances in the narrative (1Sa 16:14-23; 1 Samuel 17; 1Sa 18:1-4), present difficulties which neither the arbitrary omissions in the Sept. nor the ingenuity of subsequent critics has fully succeeded in removing, and which have led many eminent scholars to suppose the existence of extensive dislocations in this part of the Old Test. The change proposed by Hales and others seems to be the most ready, which would place the passage 1Sa 16:14-23 after 18:9; yet why should Saul’s attendants need to describe so minutely a person whom he and all Israel knew so well already? Also, how can we conceive that Saul should love so much (1Sa 16:21) a person against whom his jealousy and hatred had been so powerfully excited as his probable successor in the kingdom? (1Sa 18:9). Besides, David had occupied already a much higher position (1Sa 18:5); and, therefore, his being made Saul’s armor bearer must have been the very opposite of promotion, which the text (16:21) supposes it was. The most rational solution of the difficulty appears to be the supposition that David had in the interim grown so much that the monarch did not now recognize him. SEE DAVID.

Though not acquainted with the unction of David, yet having received intimation that the kingdom should be given to another, Saul soon suspected, from his accomplishments, heroism, wisdom, and popularity, that David was his destined successor; and, instead of concluding that his resistance to the divine purpose would only accelerate his own ruin, Saul, in the spirit of jealousy and rage, commenced a series of murderous attempts on the life of his rival that must have lost him the respect and sympathy of his people, which they secured for the object of his malice and envy, whose noble qualities also they both exercised and rendered more conspicuous. He attempted twice to assassinate him with his own hand (1Sa 18:10-11; 1Sa 19:10); he sent him on dangerous military expeditions (1Sa 18:5; 1Sa 18:13; 1Sa 18:17); he proposed that David should marry first his elder daughter, whom yet he gave to another, and then his younger, that the procuring of the dowry might prove fatal to David; and then he sought to make his daughter an instrument of her husband’s destruction; and it seems probable that unless miraculously prevented he would have imbrued his hands in the blood of the venerable Samuel himself (1Sa 19:18), while the text seems to intimate (1Sa 20:33) that even the life of Jonathan was not safe from his fury, though the subsequent context may warrant a doubt whether Jonathan was the party aimed at by Saul. The slaughter of Ahimelech the priest (ch. 22), under pretence of his being a partisan of David, and of eighty-five other priests of the house of Eli, to whom nothing could be imputed, as well as the whole inhabitants of Nob, was an atrocity perhaps never exceeded; and yet the wickedness of the act was not greater than its infatuation, for it must have inspired his subjects not only with abhorrence of their king as an inhuman tyrant, but with horror of him as an impious and sacrilegious monster. This crime of Saul put David in possession of the sacred lot, which Abiathar, the only surviving member of Eli’s priestly family, brought with him, and by which he was enabled to obtain oracles directing him in his critical affairs (1Sa 22:21-23; 1Sa 23:1-2).

Having compelled David to assume the position of an outlaw, around whom gathered a number of turbulent and desperate characters, Saul might persuade himself that he was justified in bestowing the hand of David’s wife on another, and in making expeditions to apprehend and destroy him. A portion of the people were base enough to minister to the evil passions of Saul (1Sa 23:19; 1Sa 26:1), and others, perhaps, might color their fear by the pretence of conscience (1Sa 23:12). But his sparing Saul’s life twice, when he was completely in his power, must have destroyed all color of right in Saul’s conduct in the minds of the people, as it also did in his own conscience (1Sa 24:3-7; 1 Samuel 26), which two passages, though presenting many points of similarity, cannot be referred to the same occasion without denying to the narrative all historic accuracy and trustworthiness. Though thus degraded and paralyzed by the indulgence of malevolent passions, Saul still acted with vigor in repelling the enemies of his country, and in other affairs wherein his jealousy of David was not concerned (1Sa 23:27-28). In Sauls better moments, also, he never lost the strong affection which he had contracted for David. He loved him greatly (1Sa 16:21). Saul would let him go no more home to his fathers house (1Sa 18:2). Wherefore cometh not the son of Jesse to meat? (1Sa 20:27). Is this thy voice, my son David? … Return, my son David; blessed be thou, my son David (1Sa 24:16; 1Sa 26:17; 1Sa 26:25). Occasionally, too, his prophetical gift returned, blended with his madness. He prophesied or raved in the midst of his house he prophesied and lay down naked all day and all night at Ramah (1Sa 19:24). But his acts of fierce, wild zeal increased. The massacre of the priests, with all their families the massacre, perhaps at the same time, of the Gibeonites (2Sa 21:1), and the violent extirpation of the necromancers (1Sa 28:3; 1Sa 28:9), are all of the same kind.

6. Sauls Last Offense and Death. At length the monarchy itself, which he had raised up, broke down under the weakness of its head. The Philistines reentered the country, and with their chariots and horses occupied the plain of Esdraelon. Their camp was I pitched on the southern slope of the range now called Little Hermon, by Shunem. On the opposite side, on Mount Gilboa, was the Israelitish army, clinging, as usual, to the heights which were their safety. It was near the spring of Gideons encampment, hence called the spring of Harod, or trembling; and now the name assumed an evil omen, and the heart of the king as he pitched his camp there trembled exceedingly (1Sa 28:5). The measure of Saul’s iniquity, now almost full, was completed by an act of direct treason against Jehovah the God of Israel (Exo 22:18; Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27; Deu 18:10-11). Saul, probably in a fit of zeal and perhaps as some atonement for his disobedience in other respects, had executed the penalty of the law on those who practiced necromancy and divination (1Sa 28:3). Now, however, in the loss of all the usual means of consulting the divine will, he determined, with that wayward mixture of superstition and religion which marked his whole career, to apply to one of the necromancers who had escaped his persecution. Forsaken of God, who gave him no oracles, and rendered, by a course of wickedness, both desperate and infatuated, he requested his attendants to seek him a woman who had a familiar spirit (which is the loose rendering in the English Bible of the expression occurring twice in 1Sa 28:7, , a woman a mistress of Ob; Sept. , i.e. a ventriloquist; Vulg. habens Pythonem, i.e. a Pythoness, SEE NECROMANCY ), that he might obtain from her that direction which Jehovah refused to afford him. She was a woman living at Endor, on the other side of Little Hermon.. According to the Hebrew tradition mentioned by Jerome, she was the mother of Abner, and hence her escape from the general massacre of the necromancers (see Leo Allatius, De Engastrimutho, cap. 6 in Critici Sacri, vol. 2). Volumes have been written on the question whether in the scene that follows we are to understand an imposture or a real apparition of Samuel. Eustathius and most of the fathers take the former view (representing it, however, as a figment of the devil); Origen, the latter view. Augustine wavers (ibid. ut supra, p. 1062- 1114). The Sept. of 1Sa 27:7 (by the above translation) and the A.V. (by its omission of himself in 28:14, and insertion of when in 1Sa 27:12) lean to the former. Josephus (who pronounces a glowing eulogy on the woman, Ant. 6, 14, 2, 3) and the Sept. of 1Ch 10:13, to the latter. At this distance of time it is impossible to determine the relative amount of fraud or of reality, though the obvious meaning of the narrative itself tends to the hypothesis of some kind of apparition. She recognizes the disguised king first by the appearance of Samuel, seemingly from his threatening aspect or tone as towards his enemy. Saul apparently saw nothing, but listened to her description of a godlike figure of an aged man wrapped round with the royal or sacred robe. On hearing the denunciation which the apparition conveyed, Saul fell the whole length of his gigantic stature (see 1Sa 28:20, margin) on the ground, and remained motionless till the woman and his servants forced him to eat.

Assured of his own death in the coming engagement, and that of his sons, of the ruin of his army and the triumph of his most formidable enemies, whose invasion had tempted him to try this unhallowed expedient all announced to him by that same authority which had foretold his possession of the kingdom, and whose words had never been falsified Saul, in a state of dejection which could not promise success to his followers (comp. Thomson, Land and Book, 2, 168), prepared as best he could to meet the enemy in Gilboa, on the extremity of the great plain of Esdraelon (on the localities of this battle, etc., see Hackett, Illustrations of Script. p. 178 sq.).

The next day the battle came on, and, according to Josephus (Ant. 6, 14,7), perhaps according to the spirit of the sacred narrative, his courage and self devotion returned. The Israelites were driven up the side of Gilboa. The three sons of Saul were slain (1Sa 31:2). Saul himself with his armor bearer was pursued by the archers and the charioteers of the enemy (1Sa 31:3; 2Sa 1:6). He was wounded in the stomach (Sept. 1Sa 31:3). His shield was cast away (2Sa 1:21). In his extremity, having in vain solicited death from the hand of his armor bearer (Doeg the Edomite the Jews say, a partner before of his master’s crimes and now of his punishment), Saul perished at last by his own sword (1Sa 31:4). According to another account (less trustworthy, or, perhaps, to be reconciled with the former by supposing that it describes a later incident), an Amalekite came up at the moment of his death wound (whether from himself or the enemy) and found him fallen but leaning on his spear (2Sa 1:6; 2Sa 1:10). The dizziness of death was gathered over him (2Sa 1:9), but he was still alive; and he was, at his own request, put out of his pain by the Amalekite, who took off his royal diadem and bracelet and carried the news to David (2Sa 1:7-10). Not till then, according to Josephus (Ant. 6, 14, 7), did the faithful armor bearer fall on his sword and die with him (1Sa 31:5). The body, on being found by the Philistines on the morrow, was stripped and decapitated. The armor was sent into the Philistine cities, as if in retribution for the spoliation of Goliath, and finally deposited in the temple of Astarte, apparently in the neighboring Canaanitish city of Bethshan; and over the walls of the same city was hung the naked, headless corpse with those of his three sons (1Sa 31:9-10). The head was deposited (probably at Ashdod) in the temple of Dagon (1Ch 10:10). The corpse was removed from Bethshan by the gratitude of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead, who came over the Jordan by night, carried off the bodies, burned them, and buried them under the tamarisk at Jabesh (1Sa 31:13). It is pleasing to think that even the worst men have left behind them those in whom gratitude and affection are duties. Saul had those who mourned him, as some hand was found to have strewn flowers on the newly made grave of Nero. After the lapse of several years, his ashes and those of Jonathan were removed by David to their ancestral sepulchre at Zelah in Benjamin (2Sa 21:14).

IV. Saul’s Character. There is not in the sacred history, or in any other, a character more melancholy to contemplate than that of Saul. Naturally humble and modest, though of strong passions, he might have adorned a private station. In circumstances which did not expose him to strong temptation, he would probably have acted virtuously. But his natural rashness was controlled neither by a powerful understanding nor a scrupulous conscience; and the obligations of duty and the ties of gratitude, always felt by him too slightly, were totally disregarded when ambition, envy, and jealousy had taken possession of his mind. The diabolical nature of these passions is seen, with frightful distinctness, in Saul, whom their indulgence transformed into an unnatural and bloodthirsty monster, who constantly exhibited the moral infatuation, so common among those who have abandoned themselves to sin, of thinking that the punishment of one crime may be escaped by the perpetration of another. In him, also, is seen that moral anomaly or contradiction, which would be incredible did we not so often witness it, of an individual pursuing habitually a course which his better nature pronounces not only flagitious, but insane (1Sa 24:16; 1Sa 24:22). Saul knew that that person should be king whom yet he persisted in seeking to destroy, and so accelerated his own ruin. For it can hardly be doubted that the distractions and disaffection occasioned by Saul’s persecution of David produced that weakness in his government which encouraged the Philistines to make the invasion in which himself and his sons perished. I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath (Hos 12:11). In the prolonged troubles and disastrous termination of this first reign, the Hebrews were vividly shown how vain was their favorite remedy for the mischiefs of foreign invasion and intestine discord.

Saul’s character is in part illustrated by the fierce, wayward, fitful nature of the tribe, SEE BENJAMIN, and in part accounted for by the struggle between the old and new systems in which he found himself involved. To this we must add a taint of madness, which broke out in violent frenzy at times, leaving him with long lucid intervals. His affections were strong, as appears in his love both for David and his son Jonathan, but they were unequal to the wild accesses of religious zeal or insanity which ultimately led to his ruin. He was, like the earlier Judges, of whom in one sense he may be counted as the successor, remarkable for his strength and activity (2Sa 1:23); and he was, like the Homeric heroes, of gigantic stature, taller by head and shoulders than the rest of the people, and of that kind of beauty denoted by the Hebrew word good (1Sa 9:2), and which caused him to be compared to the gazelle the gazelle of Israel. It was probably these external qualities which led to the epithet which is frequently attached to his name, chosen whom the Lord did choose See ye (i.e. Look at) him whom the Lord hath chosen (1Sa 9:17; 1Sa 10:24; 2Sa 21:6).

V. Literature. See the treatises referred to in Darling, Cyclop. Bibliograph. Colossians 290-302; Stanley, Jewish Ch. 2, lect. 21; Ewald, Hist. of Israel, 2, 15 sq.; Niemeyer, Charak. 5, 75 sq.; Hasse, Knig Saul (Gries. 1854); Richardson, Saul, King of Israel (Edinb. 1858); Miller, Saul, First King of Israel (2d ed., Lond. 1866); Brooks, King Saul ([a tragedy], N.Y. 1871); and the monographs on his interview with the witch cited by Frst, Bibliotheca Judaica, 3, 236. SEE KING.

3. The Jewish name of Paul (q.v.). This was the most distinguished name in the genealogies of the tribe of Benjamin, to which the apostle felt some pride in belonging (Rom 11:1; Php 3:5). He himself leads us to associate his name with that of the Jewish king by the marked way in which he mentions Saul in his address at the Pisidian Antioch: God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin (Act 13:21). These indications are in harmony with the intensely Jewish spirit of which the life of the apostle exhibits so many signs. The early ecclesiastical writers did not fail to notice the prominence thus given by Paul to his tribe. Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 5, 1) applies to him the dying words of Jacob on Benjamin. And Jerome, in his Epitaphium Pauloe ( 8), alluding to the preservation of the six hundred men of Benjamin after the affair of Gibeah (Judges 20:49), speaks of them as trecentos [sic] viros propter Apostolum reservatos. SEE BENJAMIN.

Nothing certain is known about the change of the apostle’s name from Saul to Paul (Act 13:9). Two chief conjectures prevail concerning the change. (1) That of Jerome and Augustine, that the name was derived from Sergius Paulus, the first of his Gentile converts. (2) That which appears due to Lightfoot, that Paulus was the apostle’s Roman name as a citizen of Tarsus, naturally adopted into common use by his biographer when his labors among the heathen commenced. The former of these is adopted by Olshausen and Meyer. It is also the view of Ewald (Gesch. 6, 419, 420), who seems to consider it self evident, and looks on the absence of any explanation of the change as a proof that it was so understood by all the readers of the Acts. However this may be, after Saul has taken his place definitively as the apostle to the Gentile world, his Jewish name is entirely dropped. Two divisions of his life are well marked by the use of the two names.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Saul

asked for. (1.) A king of Edom (Gen. 36:37, 38); called Shaul in 1 Chr. 1:48.

(2.) The son of Kish (probably his only son, and a child of prayer, “asked for”), of the tribe of Benjamin, the first king of the Jewish nation. The singular providential circumstances connected with his election as king are recorded in 1 Sam. 8-10. His father’s she-asses had strayed, and Saul was sent with a servant to See k for them. Leaving his home at Gibeah (10:5, “the hill of God,” A.V.; lit., as in R.V. marg., “Gibeah of God”), Saul and his servant went toward the north-west over Mount Ephraim, and then turning north-east they came to “the land of Shalisha,” and thence eastward to the land of Shalim, and at length came to the district of Zuph, near Samuel’s home at Ramah (9:5-10). At this point Saul proposed to return from the three days’ fruitless search, but his servant suggested that they should first consult the “See r.” Hearing that he was about to offer sacrifice, the two hastened into Ramah, and “behold, Samuel came out against them,” on his way to the “bamah”, i.e., the “height”, where sacrifice was to be offered; and in answer to Saul’s question, “Tell me, I pray thee, where the See r’s house is,” Samuel made himself known to him. Samuel had been divinely prepared for his coming (9:15-17), and received Saul as his guest. He took him with him to the sacrifice, and then after the feast “communed with Saul upon the top of the house” of all that was in his heart. On the morrow Samuel “took a vial of oil and poured it on his head,” and anointed Saul as king over Israel (9:25-10:8), giving him three signs in confirmation of his call to be king. When Saul reached his home in Gibeah the last of these signs was fulfilled, and the Sprit of God came upon him, and “he was turned into another man.” The simple countryman was transformed into the king of Israel, a remarkable change suddenly took place in his whole demeanour, and the people said in their astonishment, as they looked on the stalwart son of Kish, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”, a saying which passed into a “proverb.” (Comp. 19:24.)

The intercourse between Saul and Samuel was as yet unknown to the people. The “anointing” had been in secret. But now the time had come when the transaction must be confirmed by the nation. Samuel accordingly summoned the people to a solemn assembly “before the Lord” at Mizpeh. Here the lot was drawn (10:17-27), and it fell upon Saul, and when he was presented before them, the stateliest man in all Israel, the air was rent for the first time in Israel by the loud cry, “God save the king!” He now returned to his home in Gibeah, attended by a kind of bodyguard, “a band of men whose hearts God had touched.” On reaching his home he dismissed them, and resumed the quiet toils of his former life.

Soon after this, on hearing of the conduct of Nahash the Ammonite at Jabeshgilead (q.v.), an army out of all the tribes of Israel rallied at his summons to the trysting-place at Bezek, and he led them forth a great army to battle, gaining a complete victory over the Ammonite invaders at Jabesh (11:1-11). Amid the universal joy occasioned by this victory he was now fully recognized as the king of Israel. At the invitation of Samuel “all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal.” Samuel now officially anointed him as king (11:15). Although Samuel never ceased to be a judge in Israel, yet now his work in that capacity practically came to an end.

Saul now undertook the great and difficult enterprise of freeing the land from its hereditary enemies the Philistines, and for this end he gathered together an army of 3,000 men (1 Sam. 13:1, 2). The Philistines were encamped at Geba. Saul, with 2,000 men, occupied Michmash and Mount Bethel; while his son Jonathan, with 1,000 men, occupied Gibeah, to the south of Geba, and See mingly without any direction from his father “smote” the Philistines in Geba. Thus roused, the Philistines, who gathered an army of 30,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen, and “people as the sand which is on the sea-shore in multitude,” encamped in Michmash, which Saul had evacuated for Gilgal. Saul now tarried for seven days in Gilgal before making any movement, as Samuel had appointed (10:8); but becoming impatient on the seventh day, as it was drawing to a close, when he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, Samuel appeared and warned him of the fatal consequences of his act of disobedience, for he had not waited long enough (13:13, 14).

When Saul, after Samuel’s departure, went out from Gilgal with his 600 men, his followers having decreased to that number (13:15), against the Philistines at Michmash (q.v.), he had his head-quarters under a pomegrante tree at Migron, over against Michmash, the Wady esSuweinit alone intervening. Here at Gibeah-Geba Saul and his army rested, uncertain what to do. Jonathan became impatient, and with his armour-bearer planned an assault against the Philistines, unknown to Saul and the army (14:1-15). Jonathan and his armour-bearer went down into the wady, and on their hands and knees climbed to the top of the narrow rocky ridge called Bozez, where was the outpost of the Philistine army. They surprised and then slew twenty of the Philistines, and immediately the whole host of the Philistines was thrown into disorder and fled in great terror. “It was a very great trembling;” a supernatural panic seized the host. Saul and his 600 men, a band which speedily increased to 10,000, perceiving the confusion, pursued the army of the Philistines, and the tide of battle rolled on as far as to Bethaven, halfway between Michmash and Bethel. The Philistines were totally routed. “So the Lord saved Israel that day.” While pursuing the Philistines, Saul rashly adjured the people, saying, “Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening.” But though faint and weary, the Israelites “smote the Philistines that day from Michmash to Aijalon” (a distance of from 15 to 20 miles). Jonathan had, while passing through the wood in pursuit of the Philistines, tasted a little of the honeycomb which was abundant there (14:27). This was afterwards discovered by Saul (ver. 42), and he threatened to put his son to death. The people, however, interposed, saying, “There shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground.” He whom God had so signally owned, who had “wrought this great salvation in Israel,” must not die. “Then Saul went up from following the Philistines: and the Philistines went to their own place” (1 Sam. 14:24-46); and thus the campaign against the Philistines came to an end. This was Saul’s second great military success.

Saul’s reign, however, continued to be one of almost constant war against his enemies round about (14:47, 48), in all of which he proved victorious. The war against the Amalekites is the only one which is recorded at length (1 Sam. 15). These oldest and hereditary (Ex. 17:8; Num. 14:43-45) enemies of Israel occupied the territory to the south and south-west of Palestine. Samuel summoned Saul to execute the “ban” which God had pronounced (Deut. 25:17-19) on this cruel and relentless foe of Israel. The cup of their iniquity was now full. This command was “the test of his moral qualification for being king.” Saul proceeded to execute the divine command; and gathering the people together, marched from Telaim (1 Sam. 15:4) against the Amalekites, whom he smote “from Havilah until thou comest to Shur,” utterly destroying “all the people with the edge of the sword”, i.e., all that fell into his hands. He was, however, guilty of rebellion and disobedience in sparing Agag their king, and in conniving at his soldiers’ sparing the best of the sheep and cattle; and Samuel, following Saul to Gilgal, in the Jordan valley, said unto him, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he also hath rejected thee from being king” (15:23). The kingdom was rent from Saul and was given to another, even to David, whom the Lord chose to be Saul’s successor, and whom Samuel anointed (16:1-13). From that day “the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.” He and Samuel parted only to meet once again at one of the schools of the prophets.

David was now sent for as a “cunning player on an harp” (1 Sam. 16:16, 18), to play before Saul when the evil spirit troubled him, and thus was introduced to the court of Saul. He became a great favourite with the king. At length David returned to his father’s house and to his wonted avocation as a shepherd for perhaps some three years. The Philistines once more invaded the land, and gathered their army between Shochoh and Azekah, in Ephes-dammim, on the southern slope of the valley of Elah. Saul and the men of Israel went forth to meet them, and encamped on the northern slope of the same valley which lay between the two armies. It was here that David slew Goliath of Gath, the champion of the Philistines (17:4-54), an exploit which led to the flight and utter defeat of the Philistine army. Saul now took David permanently into his service (18:2); but he became jealous of him (ver. 9), and on many occasions showed his enmity toward him (ver. 10, 11), his enmity ripening into a purpose of murder which at different times he tried in vain to carry out.

After some time the Philistines “gathered themselves together” in the plain of Esdraelon, and pitched their camp at Shunem, on the slope of Little Hermon; and Saul “gathered all Israel together,” and “pitched in Gilboa” (1 Sam. 28:3-14). Being unable to discover the mind of the Lord, Saul, accompanied by two of his retinue, betook himself to the “witch of Endor,” some 7 or 8 miles distant. Here he was overwhelmed by the startling communication that was mysteriously made to him by Samuel (ver. 16-19), who appeared to him. “He fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel” (ver. 20). The Philistine host “fought against Israel: and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa” (31:1). In his despair at the disaster that had befallen his army, Saul “took a sword and fell upon it.” And the Philistines on the morrow “found Saul and his three sons fallen in Mount Gilboa.” Having cut off his head, they sent it with his weapons to Philistia, and hung up the skull in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod. They suspended his headless body, with that of Jonathan, from the walls of Bethshan. The men of Jabesh-gilead afterwards removed the bodies from this position; and having burnt the flesh, they buried the bodies under a tree at Jabesh. The remains were, however, afterwards removed to the family sepulchre at Zelah (2 Sam. 21:13, 14). (See DAVID)

(3.) “Who is also called Paul” (q.v.), the circumcision name of the apostle, given to him, perhaps, in memory of King Saul (Acts 7:58; 8:1; 9:1).

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Saul

Hebrew SHAUL

1. An early king of Edom (Gen 36:37-38).

2. Gen 46:10.

3. 1Ch 6:24.

4. First king of Israel. The names Kish and Ner, Nadab and Abi-nadab, Baal and Mephibosheth, recur in the genealogy in two generations. The family extends to Ezra’s time. If the Zimri of 1Ch 9:42 be the Zimri of 1 Kings 16 it is the last stroke of the family of Saul for the kingdom. Saul was son of Kish, son of Ner, son of Abiel or Jehiel. 1Sa 9:1 omits Ner, the intermediate link, and makes Kish son of Abiel; 1Ch 8:33 supplies the link, or Ner in 1 Chronicles is not father but ancestor of Kish (1Ch 9:36-39), and Ner son of Abi-Gibeon (father or founder of Gibeon, 1Ch 8:29) is named only because he was progenitor of Saul’s line, the intermediate names mentioned in 1 Samuel 9 being omitted. The proud, fierce, and self willed spirit of his tribe, Benjamin, is conspicuous in Saul (see Judges 19; 20; 21). Strong and swift fooled (2Sa 1:23), and outtopping the people by head and shoulders (1Sa 9:2), he was the “beauty” or “ornament of Israel,” “a choice young man,” “there was none goodlier than he.”

Above all, he was the chosen of the Lord (1Sa 9:17; 1Sa 10:24; 2Sa 21:6). Zelah was Kish’s burial place. Gibeah was especially connected with Saul. The family was originally humble (1Sa 11:1-21), though Kish was “a mighty man of substance.” Searching for Kish’s donkeys three days in vain, at last, by the servant’s advice, Saul consulted Samuel, who had already God’s intimation that He would send at this very time a man of Benjamin who should be king. God’s providence, overruling man’s free movements to carry out His purpose, appears throughout the narrative. Samuel gave Saul the chiefest place at the feast on the high place to which he invited him, and the choice portion. Setting his mind at ease about his asses, now found, Samuel raised his thoughts to the throne as one “on whom was all the desire of Israel.” “Little then in his own sight” (1Sa 15:17), and calling himself “of the smallest of the tribes, and his family least of all the families of Benjamin” (1Sa 9:21), Saul was very different from what he afterward became in prosperity; elevation tests men (Psa 73:18).

Samuel anointed and kissed Saul as king. On his coming to the oak (“plain”) of Tabor, three men going with offerings to God to Bethel gave him two of three loaves, in recognition of his kingship. Next prophets met him, and suddenly the Spirit of God coming upon him he prophesied among them, so that the proverb concerning him then first began, “is Saul also among the prophets?” The public outward call followed at Mizpeh, when God caused the lot to fall on Saul. So modest was he that he hid himself, shunning the elevation, amidst the baggage. A band whose hearts God had touched escorted him to Gibeah, while the worthless despised him, saying “how shall this man save us?” (compare Luk 14:14, the Antitype, meekly “He held His peace”; Psa 38:13). NAHASH’S cruel threat against Jabesh Gilead, which was among the causes that made Israel desire a king (1Sa 8:3; 1Sa 8:19; 1Sa 12:12), gave Saul the opportunity of displaying his patriotic bravery in rescuing the citizens and securing their lasting attachment.

His magnanimity too appears in his not allowing any to be killed of those whom the people desired to slay for saying “shall Saul reign over us?” Pious humility then breathed in his ascription of the deliverance to Jehovah, not himself (1Sa 11:12-13). Samuel then inaugurated the kingdom again at Gilgal. In 1Sa 13:1 read “Saul reigned 40 years”; so Act 13:21, and Josephus “18 years during Samuel’s life and 22 after his death” (Ant. 16:14, section 9). Saul was young in beginning his reign (1Sa 9:2), but probably verging toward 40 years old, as his son Jonathan was grown up (1Sa 13:2). Ishbosheth his youngest son (1Ch 8:33) was 40 at his death (2Sa 2:10), and as he is not mentioned among Saul’s sons in 1Sa 14:49 he perhaps was born after Saul’s accession. In the second year of his reign Saul revolted from the Philistines whose garrison had been advanced as far as Geba (Jehu, N.E. of Rama), (1Sa 10:5; 1Sa 13:3) and gathered to him an army of 3,000.

Jonathan smote the garrison, and so brought on a Philistine invasion in full force, 30,000 chariots. 6,000 horsemen, and a multitude as the sand. The Israelites, as the Romans under the Etruscan Porscna, were deprived by their Philistine oppressors of all smiths, so that no Israelite save Saul and Jonathan had sword or spear (1Sa 13:19-21). Many hid in caves, others fled beyond Jordan, while those (600: 1Sa 13:15) who stayed with Saul followed trembling. Already some time previously Samuel had conferred with Saul as to his foreseen struggle against the Philistines, and his going down to Gilgal (not the first going for his inauguration as king, 1Sa 11:14-15; but second after revolting from the Philistines) which was the most suitable place for gathering an army.

Samuel was not directing Saul to go at once to Gilgal, as seen as he should go from him, and wait there seven days (1Sa 10:8); but that after being chosen king by lot and conquering Ammon and being confirmed as king at Gilgal, he should war with the Philistines (one main end of the Lord’s appointing him king, 1Sa 9:16, “that he may save My people out of the hand of the Philistines, for I have looked upon My people, because their cry is come unto Me”), and then go down to Gilgal, and “wait there seven days, until I come, before offering the holocaust.” The Gilgal meant is that in the Jordan valley, to which Saul withdrew in order to gather soldiers for battle, and offer sacrifices, and then advance again to Gibeah and Geba, thence to encounter the Philistines encamped at Michmash. Now first Saul betrays his real character. Self will, impatience, and the spirit of disobedience made him offer without, waiting the time appointed by Jehovah’s prophet; he obeyed so far and so long only as obedience did not require crossing of his self will.

Had he waited but an hour or two, he would have saved his kingdom, which was now transferred to one after God’s own heart; we may forfeit the heavenly kingdom by hasty and impatient unbelief (Isa 28:16). Saul met Samuel’s reproof “what hast thou done?” with self justifying excuses, as if his act had been meritorious not culpable: “I saw the people scattered from me, and thou camest not within the days appointed (Samuel had come before their expiration), and the Philistines gathered themselves. … Therefore said I, The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto Jehovah; I forced myself therefore (he ought to have forced himself to obey not disobey; necessity, is often the plea for sacrificing principle to expediency) and offered.” Jonathan’s exploit in destroying the Philistine garrison (1 Samuel 14) eventuated in driving the Philistines back to their own land. (See JONATHAN.)

The same reckless and profane impatience appears in Saul; he consults Jehovah by the priest Ahiah (1Sa 14:18 read with Septuagint, “bring here the ephod, for he took the ephod that day in the presence of Israel”; for the ark was not usually taken out, but only the ephod, for consultation, and the ark was now at Kirjath Jearim, not in Saul’s little camp); then at the increasing tumult in the Philistine host, impatient to join battle, interrupted the priest, “withdraw thine hand,” i.e. leave off. Contrast David’s patient and implicit following of Jehovah’s will, inquired through the priest, in attacking in front as well as in taking a circuit behind the Philistines (2Sa 5:19-25). Saul’s adjuration that none should eat until evening betrayed his rash temper and marred the victory (1Sa 14:29-30). His scrupulosity because the people flew upon the spoil, eating the animals with the blood (1Sa 14:32-35), contrasts with true conscientiousness which was wanting in him at Gilgal (1 Samuel 13).

Now he built his first altar. Jonathan’s unconscious violation of Saul’s adjuration, by eating honey which revived him (1Sa 13:27-29, “enlightened his eyes,” Psa 13:3), was the occasion of Saul again taking lightly God’s name to witness that Jonathan should die (contrast Exo 20:7). But the guilt, which God’s silence when consulted whether Saul should follow after the Philistines implied, lay with Saul himself, for God’s siding “with Jonathan” against the Philistines (“he hath wrought with God this day”) was God’s verdict acquitting him. Thus convicted Saul desisted from further pursuit of the Philistines. His warlike prowess appears in his securing his regal authority (1Sa 14:47, “took the kingdom over Israel”) by fighting successfully against all his enemies on every side, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Zobah, the Philistines, and Amalek (summarily noticed 1Sa 14:48, in detail in 1 Samuel 15).

Saul’s second great disobedience at his second probation by God was (1 Samuel 15) his sparing the Amalekite Agag and the best of the sheep, oxen, etc., and all that was good; again self will set up itself to judge what part of God’s command it chose to obey and what to disobey. The same self complacent blindness to his sin appears in his words to Samuel, “I have performed the commandment of Jehovah.” “What meaneth then tills bleating of the sheep?” Saul lays on the people the disobedience, and takes to himself with them the merit of the obedience: “they have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep … to sacrifice … and the rest we have utterly destroyed.” True obedience observes all the law and turns not to the right or left (Jos 1:7; Deu 5:32). The spirit of self will shows its nonsubmission to God’s will in small but sure indications. Saul had zeal for Israel against the Gibeonites where zeal was misplaced, because not according to God’s will (2 Samuel 21); he lacked zeal here, where God required it.

He shifts the blame on “the people” and makes religion a cloak, saying the object was “to sacrifice unto Jehovah, thy God.” We must not do evil that good may come (Rom 3:8). Samuel tears off the pretext: “behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, … for rebellion is as the silt of witchcraft,” the very sin which Saul fell into at last (1 Samuel 28). As Saul rejected Jehovah’s word so He rejected Saul “from being king.” In 1Ch 10:13 “Saul died for his transgression (Hebrew maal, ‘prevarication,’ shuffling, not doing yet wishing to appear to do, God’s will) against Jehovah, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit.” The secret of Saul’s disobedience he discloses, “because I feared the people and obeyed their voice,” instead of God’s voice (Exo 23:2; Pro 29:25). Even in confession, while using the same words as David subsequently, “I have sinned” (2Sa 12:13), he betrays his motive, “turn again with me … honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people and before Israel” (Joh 5:44; Joh 12:43).

Man’s favor he regarded more than God’s displeasure. Henceforth Samuel, after tearing himself from the king, to the rending of his garment (the symbol of the transference of the kingdom to a better successor), came to Saul no more though mourning for him. As the Spirit of Jehovah came upon David from the day of his anointing (1Sa 16:13-14), so an evil spirit from (it is never said OF) Jehovah troubled Saul, and the Spirit of Jehovah departed from hint. David then first was called in to soothe away with the harp the evil spirit; but music did not bring the good Spirit: to fill his soul, so the evil spirit returned worse than ever (Mat 12:43-45; 1Sa 28:4-20). No ritualism or sweet melody, though pleasing the senses, will change the heart; the Holy Spirit alone can attune the soul to purity and peace.

Like his tribe, which should “ravin as a wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at night … the spoil” (Gen 49:27), Saul was energetic, choleric, and impressible, now prophesying with the prophets whose holy enthusiasm infected him, now jealous to madness of David whom he had loved greatly and brought permanently to court (1Sa 16:21; 1Sa 18:2) and made his armour bearer; and all because of a thoughtless expression of the women in meeting the conquerors after the battle with Goliath, “Saul hath slain his thousands, David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 17; 1Sa 18:7). A word was enough to awaken suspicion, and suspicion was wrested into proof of treason, “what can he have more but the kingdom?” (see Ecc 4:4; Pro 27:4). But David’s wise walk made Saul fear him (1Sa 18:12; 1Sa 18:14-15; 1Sa 18:29; Psa 101:2; Psa 5:8). God raised up to David a friend, Michal, in his enemy’s house, which made Saul the more afraid. So, not daring to lay his own hand on him, he exposed him to the Philistines (1Sa 18:17-27); in righteous retribution, it was Saul himself who fell by them (Psa 9:15-16).

For a brief time a better feeling returned to Saul through Jonathan’s intercession for David (1Sa 19:4-6); but again the evil spirit returned, and Saul pursued David to Michal’s house, and even to Samuel’s presence at Naioth in Ramah. But Jehovah, “in whose hand the king’s heart is, to turn it wheresoever He will” (Pro 21:1), caused him who came to persecute to prophesy with the prophets. Yet soon after, because Jonathan let David go, Saul cast a javelin at his noble unselfish son, saying, “thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion, for as long as he liveth thou shalt not be established, nor thy kingdom” (1Sa 20:28-33). Saul’s slaughter of the priests at Nob, on Doeg’s information, followed (1 Samuel 22), Saul upbraiding his servants as if conspiring with David and feeling no sorrow for the king; “yet can David, as I can (1Sa 8:14, compare 1Sa 22:7), give every one of you fields and vineyards?” etc., thus answering to David’s picture of him (Psa 53:7), “this is the man that trusted in the abundance of his riches,” etc.(See DOEG; DAVID.)

By slaying the priests, so that Abiathar alone escaped to David, Saul’s sin recoiled on himself, for Saul thereby supplied him whom he hated with one through whom to consult Jehovah, and deprived himself of the divine oracle, so that at last he had to have recourse to witchcraft, though he had himself tried to extirpate it (1Sa 23:2; 1Sa 23:9; 1Sa 28:3-7, etc.). The Philistines, by whom Saul thought to have slain David, were the unconscious instruments of saving him from Saul at Mann (1Sa 23:26-27). David’s magnanimity at the cave of Engedi in sparing his deadly foe and only cutting off his skirt, when in his power, moved Saul to tears, so that his better feelings returned for the moment, and he acknowledged David’s superiority in spirit and deed, and obtained David’s promise not to destroy his seed (1 Samuel 24). Once again (1 Samuel 26), at Hachilah David spared Saul, though urged by Abishai to destroy him; the Altaschith of Psalm 57; 58; 59; refers to David’s words on this occasion, “destroy not.” (See ALTASCHITH.)

David would not take vengeance out of God’s hands (Psa 35:1-3; Psa 17:4; Psa 94:1-2; Psa 94:23; Rom 12:19). His words were singularly prophetic of Saul’s doom, “his day shall come to die, or be shall descend into battle and perish.” The “deep sleep from Jehovah” on Saul enabled David unobserved to take spear and cruse from Saul’s bolster. From a hill afar off David appealed to Saul, “if thy instigation to (i.e. giving up to the manifestation of thine own) evil be from Jehovah, through His anger against thee for sin, let Him smell sacrifice” (Hebrew), i.e. appease God’s wrath by an acceptable sacrifice; “but if thy instigators be men, they drive me out from attaching (Hebrew) myself to the inheritance of Jehovah (the Holy Land); now therefore let not my blood fall to the earth far away from the face of Jehovah,” i.e. do not drive me to perish in a heathen land; contrast Psa 16:4-6. Saul acknowledged his sinful “folly” (meaning “wickedness” in Scripture: see MUTH-LABBEN), and promised no more to seek his hurt, and blessed him.

The consultation with the witch at Endor preceded the fatal battle of Gilbea. Saul had “put away out of the land wizards,” etc. But the law forbad them to live (Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27; Deu 18:10, etc.). He only took half measures, as in sparing the Amalekite king; “rebellion” ended in “witchcraft” (1Sa 15:23). He had driven away the only man, David, who could have saved him from the Philistines (1 Samuel 17; 2Sa 5:17-22). He had killed all by whom he could have consulted Jehovah (1 Samuel 21; 22). How men’s own wickedness, by a retributive providence (Jer 2:19), corrects them! She was mistress of a “spirit” (baalath-ob) with which the dead were conjured up to inquire of them the future. Either she merely pretended this, or if there was a demoniacal reality Samuel’s apparition differed so essentially from it that she started at seeing him, and then (what shows her art to be something more than jugglery) she recognized Saul; probably she fell into a state of clairvoyance in which she recognized persons, as Saul, unknown to her by face.

Saul did not himself see Samuel with his eyes, but recognized that it was he from her description, and told him his distress; but Samuel told him it was vain to ask of a friend of God since Jehovah was become his enemy. Saul should be in Hades by the morrow for his disobeying as to the Amalekites, while David, Amalek’s destroyer (1Sa 30:17), should succeed. On the morrow the Philistines followed hard upon Saul, the archers hit him; then Saul having in vain begged his armour bearer to slay him (1Sa 31:4) fell on his own sword, but even so still lingered until an Amalekite (of the very people whom he ought to have utterly destroyed) stood upon and slew him, and brought his crown and bracelet to David (2Sa 1:8-10).

The Philistines cut off his head and fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan. The armour they put in the temple of Ashtaroth, the head in the temple of Dagon (1Sa 31:9-10; 1Ch 10:10); the tidings of the slaughter of their national enemy they sent far and near to their idols and to the people. The inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead showed their gratitude to their former deliverer by bravely carrying off the bodies of him and his sons, and burning them, and burying the bones under a tree. His life is a sadly vivid picture of declension and deterioration until suicide draws a dark curtain over the scene. In his elegy David brings out all his good qualities, bravery, close union with Jonathan, zeal for Israel whose daughters Saul clothed in rich spoils; David generously overlooks his faults (2 Samuel 1). Years after he had the bones of Saul and Jonathan buried in Zelah in the tomb of Kish (2Sa 21:12-14). 2Sa 21:5. Paul’s original name. He was proud of his tribe Benjamin and the name Saul (Act 13:21).

Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary

Saul

SAUL.1. Son of Kish, a Benjamite, the first king of Israel. We first meet him about to abandon the search for his fathers asses, when his servant suggested consulting Samuel. As it was customary to bring a present to a seer, and the wallet was empty, Saul hesitated till the servant produced the fourth part of a shekel of silver to give to the man of God. The seer, Divinely prepared for their arrival, met them as he was on his way to the high place to sacrifice. A banquet was made ready, and special honour paid to Saul by Samuel. The seer told the seekers that the asses had been found, and broached the matter of the kingdom to Saul, and anointed him as he was leaving. Saul was given certain signs in attestation of Samuels message, and after leaving the seers house, where he and his servant spent the night, he met a band of prophets, and soon was prophesying among them, to the marvel of his acquaintances (1Sa 10:10). This narrative gives no hint that the people asked for a king, or that his selection would be displeasing to either Samuel or Jehovah.

The account is interrupted at 1Sa 10:17 by one of a different temper. The people demand a king, which Samuel interprets to be a rejection of Jehovah, their true king, and Saul, after protest, is elected by lot at Mizpah. He remained quietly at home till Nahashs cruel demand that the men of Jabesh-gilead should surrender to him, and each one lose the right eye, roused him. He was ploughing in the field when the news reached him, and immediately sacrificed the oxen, sending out parts of the sacrifice to his brethren with the command that they should follow him. When the army was mustered he marched to Jabesh-gilead and administered a crushing defeat to Nahash, after which his grateful countrymen made him king at Gilgal (ch. 11). A still greater necessity for a king appears in the encroachments of the Philistines. Saul and Jonathan, his son, were encamped in Michmash and Gibeah (Geba), when Jonathan smote the garrison (?) of the Philistines in Geba, thus precipitating the struggle. The plan of the Philistines was to send out plundering parties, and Jonathan threw the whole camp into confusion by surprising one of its guerilla headquarters (1Sa 13:1-3, 1Sa 14:1 f.). When Saul heard of the flight of the enemy he inquired of the oracle what to do, but the rout was so apparent that he joined pursuit without the answer. The destruction of the enemy would have been greater had not Saul put a taboo on food. In the evening the famished warriors fell upon the cattle, and ate without sacrificing till the reported impiety reached the ears of Saul, who legitimated the meal by sacrificing at a great stone. As he failed to receive an answer from the oracle, when he Inquired whether he should pursue the Philistines farther, Saul concluded that some one had sinned. An inquiry was taken to the oracle, and the fault was found to lie with Jonathan, who confessed to having tasted honey. He was, however, delivered by the people from the penalty, for Saul had sworn that he should die (1Sa 14:17-45).

This narrative (chs. 13, 14) is interrupted at 1Sa 13:8 to 1Sa 15:35 by an account which represents Samuel as taking issue with Saul for sacrificing at the end of an appointed period of seven days, and announcing his rejection (See art. Samuel, p. 823n). We have from another source (ch. 15) a story of the encounter with Amalek, against whom Samuel sent Saul with instructions to destroy men, women, children, and spoil. Saul, however, spares Agag, and part of the booty. This is now assigned as the reason for his rejection. Saul acknowledged his fault, but begged Samuel to honour him before the people by sacrificing with him. In his importunity he lays hold of Samuels garment, which is rent, and becomes the symbol of the kingdom wrested from Saul. Samuel relents and worships with him.

The second stage of Sauls life concerns his relations with David. Saul is advised to employ music as a relief from a deep-seated mental trouble, called an evil spirit from the Lord. David, a skilled harper and celebrated soldier, is engaged. Saul loves him, and makes him his armour-bearer (1Sa 16:14-23). The Philistines again assemble, this time at Socoh; Goliath issues his challenge, but no one responds. The lad David, who had come to the camp to visit his brethren, learns of the proffered reward, meets the boaster in single combat, and kills him. In this story Saul seems weak, irresolute, and unacquainted with David (ch. 17). Davids growing popularity and prowess lead Saul to attempt his life. Michal, Sauls daughter, is offered to him in marriage in return for one hundred Philistines. The hazard involved failed to accomplish his death. Then Davids house is surrounded, but Michal manages Davids escape through a window (1Sa 18:6-9, 1Sa 20:29, 1Sa 19:11-17). Merab, Sauls elder daughter, was also offered to David, but withdrawn when he should have had her. This seems to be an effort to explain why David did not receive Sauls daughter after he had slain the giant. David flees to Ramah, and Saul, seeking him there, is seized with the prophetic frenzy and rendered powerless (1Sa 19:18-24). David again flees, and receives help from the priests at Nob. So enraged was Saul that he ordered the slaughter of the entire priesthood there (chs. 2021). Saul had David all but captured in the hills of Ziph, when a raid of the Philistines called him away (1Sa 23:14-29). Twice Saul was in the power of David, who refused to harm the Lords anointed (chs. 24, 26).

The circumstances connected with Sauls death are told in a dramatic way. The Philistines had gathered together at Aphek, while Saul held the fateful plains of Megiddo at Jezreel. Answer came from neither prophet nor priest. Then in despair he applied to the necromancer at Endor, but received only a hopeless message. The battle joins; Sauls sons are slain; sore pressed, he calls on his armourbearer to slay him, but being refused he falls upon his sword and dies. The following day the Philistines severed the heads of Saul and his sons, and exposed the bodies on the walls of Beth-shan, whence the grateful Jabesh-gileadites brought them away by night (chs. 28, 31). An Amalekite, who brought the story of Sauls death to David, claimed that he himself slew him, and was promptly executed by David (2Sa 1:1-16).

2. Saul of Tarsus. See Paul.

J. H. Stevenson.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Saul

King of Israel. His name is as remarkable as his history, if it be derived, as some have thought, from Sheol, or Shaal, hell, or sepulchre. His history we have at large in the first book of Samuel. The great apostle Paul, whose name was originally Saul may, it is probable, have had his name changed at his conversion on this account: but this, the reader will recollect, is only conjecture.

Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures

Saul

sol (, sha’ul; , Saoul):

(1) The first king of Israel.

I.EARLY HISTORY

1.Name and Meaning

2.Genealogy

3.Home and Station

4.Sources for Life

5.Election as King

6.Reasons for It

II.REIGN AND FALL

1.His First Action

2.Army Reorganized

3.Battle of Michmash

4.Defeats the Amalekites

5.Deposition Pronounced

6.David Introduced to Saul

7.Two Accounts

8.Saul’s Envy of David

9.Attempts to Get Rid of David

10.David Spares Saul

11.Saul’s Divided Energies

12.Consults a Necromancer

13.Battle of Gilboa

14.Double Accounts

15.Saul’s Posterity

III.CHARACTER

1.Book of Chronicles

2.Saul’s Failings

3.His Virtue

4.David’s Elegy

I. Early History.

1. Name and Meaning:

The name Saul is usually regarded as simply the passive participle of the verb to ask, and so meaning asked (compare 1Sa 8:4 ff), but the gentilic adjective sha’ul (Num 26:13) would point to its having also an intensive connotation, the one asked importunately, or perhaps, the one asking insistently, the beggar.

2. Genealogy:

Saul was the son of Kish, a Benjamite. His genealogical tree is given in 1Sa 9:1 (compare Septuagint 1Sa 10:21). In 1Sa 9:1 his grandfather is Abiel, but in 1Ch 8:33; 1Ch 9:39, Ner, who appears as his paternal uncle in 1Sa 14:50, 1Sa 14:51.

The last verse contains a very curious scribal error, a yodh having slipped out of one word in it into another. It states that both Abner and Ner were sons of Abiel. These apparent inconsistencies are to be explained by the fact that in Hebrew, as in Arabic, son is often used in the sense of grandson. Also, with the facility of divorce then prevalent, by brother and sister we must in most cases understand half-brother and half-sister. Moreover, Saul’s mother might have been the wife at different times of Kish and of his brother Ner (compare 1Sa 20:30). This was quite common, and in some cases compulsory (Deu 25:5-9).

3. Home and Station:

Saul’s home was at GIBEAH (which see), which is also called Gibeah of Saul, i.e. Saul’s Hill (1Sa 11:4; compare also 1Sa 10:5, God’s Hill, or simply The Hill, 1Sa 10:10; Hos 5:8, etc.), or the Hill of Benjamin or of the Benjamites (1Sa 13:15; 2Sa 23:29). It is usually identified with Tell el-Ful, but perhaps its site is marked rather by some ruins near but beneath that eminence. The tribe of Benjamin was the fighting tribe of Israel, and Kish seems to have been one of its most important members. Saul’s remarks in depreciation (1Sa 9:21) are not to be taken literally.

4. Sources for Life:

The circumstances of Saul’s career are too well known to require recapitulation. It will be sufficient to refer to some of the recognized difficulties of the narrative. These difficulties arise from the fact that we appear to have two distinct biographies of Saul in the present Books of Samuel. This may well be the case as it is the practice of the Semitic historian to set down more than one tradition of each event, without attempting to work these up into one consistent account. We shall call the duplicated narratives A and B, without postulating that either is a continuous whole. See SAMUEL, BOOKS OF.

5. Election as King:

According to A, Saul was anointed king of Israel at Ramah by the prophet Samuel acting upon an inspiration from Yahweh, not only without consulting anyone, but in the strictest secrecy (1 Sam 9:1 through 10:16). According to B, the sheiks of the tribes demanded a king. Samuel in vain tried to dissuade them. They would not listen, and a king was chosen by lot at Mizpah. The lot fell upon Saul, and Samuel immediately demitted office (1 Sam 8; 1Sa 10:17-27, omitting the last clause; and chapter 12).

6. Reasons for It:

There are three distinct reasons given in the text for the abolition of theocracy and institution of an elective or hereditary monarchy: first, the incapacity of Samuel’s sons (1Sa 8:1 ff); second, an invasion of the Ammonites (1Sa 12:12); and third, the Philistines (1Sa 9:16). These three motives are not mutually exclusive. The Philistines formed the standing menace to the national existence, which would have necessitated the creation of a monarchy sooner or later. The other two were temporary circumstances, one of which aggravated the situation, while the other showed the hopelessness of expecting any improvement in it in the near future.

II. Reign and Fall.

1. His First Action:

The election of Saul at Mizpah was conducted in the presence of the chieftains of the clans; it is not to be supposed that the whole nation was present. As soon as it was over, the electors went home, and Saul also returned to his father’s farm and, like Cincinnatus, once more followed the plow. Within about a month, however (1Sa 10:27 the Septuagint, for Massoretic Text But he held his peace), the summons came. A message from the citizens of JABESH-GILEAD (which see) was sent round the tribes appealing for help against the Ammonites under Nahash. They, of course, knew nothing about what had taken place at Mizpah, and it was only by chance that their messengers arrived at Gibeah when they did. Saul rose to the occasion, and immediately after he was acclaimed king by the whole body of the people (1Sa 11:1-15). This double election, first by the chiefs and then by the people, is quite a regular proceeding.

2. Army Reorganized:

This first success encouraged Saul to enter upon what was to be the mission of his life, namely, the throwing off of the Philistine suzerainty. From the first he had had the boldest spirits upon his side (1Sa 10:26, the Septuagint, the Revised Version margin); he was now able to form a standing army of 3,000 men, under the command of himself and his son JONATHAN (which see). The Philistines, the last remnant of the Minoan race, had the advantage of the possession of iron weapons. It was, in fact, they who introduced iron into Palestine from Crete – the Israelites knowing only bronze, and having even been deprived of weapons of the softer metals. They seem to have armed themselves – with the exception of the king and his son – with mattocks and plowshares (1Sa 13:19 ff).

3. Battle of Michmash:

The first encounter was the attack upon the Philistine post at Michmash (1 Sam 13; 14). The text of the narrative is uncertain, but the following outline is clear. On hearing that the Hebrews had revolted (1Sa 13:3, the Septuagint), the Philistines gathered in great force, including 3,000 chariots (1Sa 13:5, the Septuagint; the Massoretic Text has 30,000) at Michmash. In dismay, Saul’s troops deserted (1Sa 13:6 f), until he was left with only 600 (1Sa 14:2). In spite of this, Jonathan precipitated hostilities by a reckless attack upon one of the outposts. This was so successful that the whole Philistine army was seized with panic, and the onset of Saul and the desertion of their Hebrew slaves completed their discomfiture. Saul followed up his victory by making predatory excursions on every side (1Sa 14:47).

4. Defeats the Amalekites:

Saul’s next expedition was against the Amalekites under Agag, who were likewise completely defeated. The fight was carried out with all the remorselessness common to tribal warfare. Warning was sent to the friendly Kenites to withdraw out of danger; then the hostile tribe was slaughtered to a man, their chief alone being spared for the time being. Even the women and children were not taken as slaves, but were all killed (1 Sam 15).

5. Deposition Pronounced:

It is not clear what was the precise attitude of Samuel toward Saul. As the undoubted head of theocracy he naturally objected to his powers being curtailed by the loss of the civil power (1Sa 8:6). Even after the elections of Saul, Samuel claimed to be the ecclesiastical head of the state. He seems to have objected to Saul’s offering the sacrifice before battle (1Sa 13:10 ff), and to have considered him merely as his lieutenant (1Sa 15:3) who could be dismissed for disobedience (1Sa 15:14 ff). Here again there seem to be two distinct accounts in the traditional text, which we may again call A and B. In A, Saul is rejected because he does not wait long enough for Samuel at Gilgal (1Sa 13:8; compare 1Sa 10:8). Seven days, of course, means eight, or even more, in short, until Samuel should come, whenever that might be. The expression might almost be omitted in translating. In B Saul is rejected because he did not carry out Samuel’s orders (1Sa 15:3) to the letter. The two narratives are not mutually exclusive. The second offense was an aggravation of the first, and after it Samuel did not see Saul again (1Sa 15:35).

6. David Introduced to Saul:

He had good reason for not doing so. He had anointed a rival head of the state in opposition to Saul, an act of treason which, if discovered, would have cost him his head (compare 2Ki 9:6, 2Ki 9:10). Saul did not at once accept his deposition, but he lost heart. One cannot but admire him, deserted by Samuel, and convinced that he was playing a losing game, and yet continuing in office. To drive away his melancholy, his servants introduced to him a musician who played until his spirits revived (1Sa 16:14 ff; compare 2Ki 3:15).

7. Two Accounts:

By a strange coincidence (compare I, 5, above) the minstrel was the very person whom Samuel had secretly anointed to supplant Saul. According to what looks like another account, however, it was his encounter with Goliath which led to the introduction of David to Saul (1Sa 17:1 ff; see DAVID). In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, the two narratives are not incompatible, since we are not told the order of the events nor over how many years these events were spread. The theory of duplicate narratives rests upon the assumption that all statements made by the dramatis personae in the Bible are to be taken at their face value. If 1 Samuel 16 and 17 had formed part of a play of Shakespeare, they would have been considered a fine example of his genius. Treatises would have been written to explain why Saul did not recognize David, and why Abner denied all knowledge of him. Septuagint, however, omits 1 Sam 17:12-31, 1Sa 17:41, 1Sa 17:50, 55 through 18:5.

8. Saul’s Envy of David:

Whether Saul actually discovered that David had been anointed by Samuel or not, he soon saw in him his rival and inevitable successor, and he would hardly have been human if he had not felt envious of him. His dislike of David had two motives. The first was jealousy, because the women preferred the military genius of David to his own (1Sa 18:7 f). His consequent attempt upon the life of David (1Sa 18:8-11) is omitted in the Septuagint. Not least was the love of his own daughter for David (1Sa 18:20; in 1Sa 18:28 read with Septuagint all Israel). The second cause was his natural objection to see his son Jonathan supplanted in his rights to the throne, an objection which was aggravated by the devotion of that son to his own rival (1Sa 20:30). See also DAVID; JONATHAN.

9. Attempts to Get Rid of David:

Saul could not believe that David could remain loyal to him (1Sa 24:9); at the first favorable opportunity he would turn upon him, hurl him from the throne, and exterminate his whole house. In these circumstances, it was his first interest to get rid of him. His first attempt to do so (omitting with Septuagint 1Sa 18:8-11) was to encourage him to make raids on the Philistines in the hope that these might kill him (1Sa 18:21 ff); his next, assassination by one of his servants (1Sa 19:1), and then by his own hand (1Sa 19:9 f). When David was compelled to fly, the quarrel turned to civil war. The superstitious fear of hurting the chosen of Yahweh had given place to blind rage. Those who sheltered the fugitive, even priests, were slaughtered (1Sa 22:17 ff). From one spot to another David was hunted, as he says, like a partridge (1Sa 26:20).

10. David Spares Saul:

It is generally maintained that here also we have duplicate accounts; for example, that there are two accounts of David taking refuge with Achish, king of Gath, and two of his sparing Saul’s life. The latter are contained in 1 Samuel 24 and 26, but the points of resemblance are slight. Three thousand (1Sa 24:2; 1Sa 26:2) was the number of Saul’s picked men (compare 1Sa 13:2). David uses the simile of a flea in 1Sa 24:14, but in 1Sa 26:20 for a flea Septuagint has my soul, which is no doubt original. The few other expressions would occur naturally in any narrative with the same contents.

11. Saul’s Divided Energies:

Obviously Saul’s divided energies could not hold out long; he could not put down the imaginary rebellion within, and at the same time keep at bay the foreign foe. No sooner had he got the fugitive within his grasp than he was called away by an inroad of the Philistines (1Sa 23:27 f); but after his life had been twice spared, he seemed to realize at last that the latter were the real enemy, and he threw his whole strength into one desperate effort for existence.

12. Consults a Necromancer:

Saul himself saw that his case was desperate, and that in fact the game was up. As a forlorn hope he determined to seek occult advice. He could no longer use the official means of divination (1Sa 28:6), and was obliged to have recourse to a necromancer, one of a class whom he himself had taken means to suppress (1Sa 28:3). The result of the seance confirmed his worst fears and filled his soul with despair (1Sa 28:7 ff).

13. Battle of Gilboa:

It says much for Saul that, hopeless as he was, he engaged in one last forlorn struggle with the enemy. The Philistines had gathered in great force at Shunem. Saul drew up his army on the opposing hill of Gilboa. Between the two forces lay a valley (compare 1Sa 14:4). The result was what had been foreseen. The Israelites, no doubt greatly reduced in numbers (contrast 1Sa 11:8), were completely defeated, and Saul and his sons slain. Their armor was placed in the temple of Ashtaroth, and their bodies hung on the wall of Bethshan, but Saul’s head was set in the temple of Dagon (1Ch 10:10). The citizens of Jabesh-gilead, out of ancient gratitude, rescued the bodies and, in un-Semitic wise, burned them and buried the bones.

14. Double Accounts:

Once more we have, according to most present-day critics, duplicate accounts of the death of Saul. According to one, which we may name A, he fell, like Ajax whom he much resembles, upon his own sword, after being desperately wounded by the archers (1Sa 31:4). According to the second (2Sa 1:2 ff), an Amalekite, who had been by accident a witness of the battle, dispatched Saul at his own request to save him from the enemy. But B is simply the continuation of A, and tells us how David received the news of the battle. The Amalekite’s story is, of course, a fabrication with a view to a reward. Similar claims for the reward of assassination are common (2Sa 4:9 ff).

15. Saul’s Posterity:

With Saul the first Israelite dynasty began and ended. The names of his sons are given in 1Sa 14:49 as Jonathan, Ishvi and Malchishua. Ishvi or Ishyo (Septuagint) is Eshbaal, called in 2Sa 2:8 ISH-BOSHETH (which see). 1Ch 8:33 adds Abinadab. Jonathan left a long line of descendants famous, like himself, as archers (1Ch 8:34 ff). The rest of Saul’s posterity apparently died out. Malchishua and Abinadab were slain at Gilboa (1Sa 31:6; 1Ch 10:2), and Ish-bosheth was assassinated shortly after (2Sa 4:2 ff). Saul had also two natural sons by Rizpah who were put to death by David in accordance with a superstitious custom, as also were the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab (2Sa 21:8, not Michal; compare 1Sa 18:19). Saurs other daughter Michal apparently had no children. Saul had, it seems, other wives, who were taken into the harem of David in accordance with the practice of the times (2Sa 12:8), but of them and their descendants we know nothing.

III. Character.

1. Book of Chronicles:

Saul’s life and character are disposed of in a somewhat summary fashion by the Chronicler (1Ch 10:1-14, especially 1Ch 10:13, 1Ch 10:14). Saul was rejected because he was disloyal to Yahweh, especially in consulting a necromancer. The major premise of this conclusion, however, is the ancient dictum, Misfortune presupposes sin. From a wider point of view, Saul cannot be dismissed in so cavalier a manner.

2. Saul’s Failings:

Like everyone else, Saul had his virtues and his failings. His chief weakness seems to have been want of decision of character. He was easily swayed by events and by people. The praises of David (1Sa 18:7 f) at once set his jealousy on fire. His persecution of David was largely due to the instigation of mischievous courtiers (1Sa 24:9). Upon remonstrance his repentance was as deep as it was short-lived (1Sa 24:16; 1Sa 26:21). His impulsiveness was such that he did not know where to stop. His interdict (1Sa 14:24 ff) was quite as uncalled for as his religious zeal (1Sa 15:9) was out of place. He was always at one extreme. His hatred of David was only equal to his affection for him at first (1Sa 18:2). His pusillanimity led him to commit crimes which his own judgment would have forbidden (1Sa 22:17). Like most beaten persons, he became suspicious of everyone (1Sa 22:7 f), and, like those who are easily led, he soon found his evil genius (1Sa 22:9, 1Sa 22:18, 1Sa 22:22). Saul’s inability to act alone appears from the fact that he never engaged in single combat, so far as we know. Before he could act at all his fury or his pity had to be roused to boiling-point (1Sa 11:6). His mind was peculiarly subject to external influences, so that he was now respectable man of the world, now a prophet (1Sa 10:11; 1Sa 19:24).

3. His Virtues:

On the other hand, Saul possessed many high qualities. His dread of office (1Sa 10:22) was only equaled by the coolness with which he accepted it (1Sa 11:5). To the first call to action he responded with promptitude (1Sa 11:6 ff). His timely aid excited the lasting gratitude of the citizens of Jabesh-gilead (1Sa 31:11 ff) If we remember that Saul was openly disowned by Samuel (1Sa 15:30), and believed himself cast off by Yahweh, we cannot but admire the way in which he fought on to the last. Moreover, the fact that he retained not only his own sons, but a sufficient body of fighting men to engage a large army of Philistines, shows that there must have been something in him to excite confidence and loyalty.

4. David’s Elegy:

There is, however, no question as to the honorable and noble qualities of Saul. The chief were his prowess in war and his generosity in peace. They have been set down by the man who knew him best in what are among the most authentic verses in the Bible (2Sa 1:19 ff).

(2) Saul of Tarsus. See PAUL.

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Saul

Saul, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, was the first king of the Israelites. The corrupt administration of justice by Samuel’s sons furnished an occasion to the Hebrews for rejecting that theocracy, of which they neither appreciated the value, nor, through their unfaithfulness to it, enjoyed the full advantages (1 Samuel 8). An invasion by the Ammonites seems also to have conspired with the cause just mentioned, and with a love of novelty, in prompting the demand for a king (1Sa 12:12)an officer evidently alien to the genius of the theocracy, though contemplated as an historical certainty, and provided for by the Jewish lawgiver (1Sa 12:17-20; Deu 17:14-20). An explanation of the nature of this request, as not only an instance of ingratitude to Samuel, but of rebellion against Jehovah, and the delineation of the manner in which their kingsnotwithstanding the restrictions prescribed in the lawmight be expected to conduct themselves (1Sa 8:11; 1Sa 10:25), having failed to move the people from their resolution, the Lord sent Saul, who had left home in quest of his father’s asses, which had strayed, to Samuel, who having informed Saul of the divine purpose regarding him, and having at a feast shown him a preference, which, no doubt the other guests understood, privately anointed him king, and gave him various tokens, by which he might be assured that his designation was from, Jehovah (1 Samuel 9-10). Moved by the authority of Samuel, and by the fulfillment of these signs, Saul’s reluctance to assume the office to which he was called was overcome. On his way home, meeting a company of prophets, he was seized with the prophetic afflatus, and so gave occasion to a proverb afterwards in use among the Jews. Immediately after, Saul was elected at Mizpah in a solemn assembly by the determination of the miraculous lotand both previously to that election (1Sa 10:16), and subsequently, when insulted by the worthless portion of the Israelites, he showed that modesty, humility, and forbearance which seem to have characterized him till corrupted by the possession of power. The person thus set apart to discharge the royal function, possessed at least those corporeal advantages which most ancient nations desiderated in their sovereigns. His person was tall and commanding, and he soon showed that his courage was not inferior to his strength (1Sa 9:1; 1Sa 10:23). His belonging to Benjamin also, the smallest of the tribes, though of distinguished bravery, prevented the mutual jealousy with which either of the two great tribes, Judah and Ephraim, would have regarded a king chosen from the other; so that his election was received with general rejoicing, and a number of men, moved by the authority of Samuel (1Sa 10:20), even attached themselves to him as a body-guard, or as counselors and assistants. In the mean time the Ammonites, whose invasion had hastened the appointment of a king, having besieged Jabesh in Gilead, and Nahash their king having proposed insulting conditions to them, the elders of that town, apparently not aware of Saul’s election (1Sa 11:3), sent messengers through the land imploring help. Saul acted with wisdom and promptitude; summoning the people, en masse, to meet him at Bezek, at the head of a vast multitude he totally routed the Ammonites. He and the people then betook themselves, under the direction of Samuel, to Gilgal, there with solemn sacrifices to reinstall the victorious leader in his kingdom (1 Samuel 11). At Gilgal Saul was publicly anointed, and solemnly installed in the kingdom by Samuel, who took occasion to vindicate the purity of his own administrationwhich he virtually transferred to Saulto censure the people for their ingratitude and impiety, and to warn both them and Saul of the danger of disobedience to the commands of Jehovah (1 Samuel 12) [SAMUEL].

The restrictions on which he held the sovereignty had (1Sa 10:25) been fully explained as well to Saul as to the people, so that he was not ignorant of his true position as merely the lieutenant of Jehovah, king of Israel, who not only gave all the laws, but whose will, in the execution of them, was constantly to be consulted and complied with. The first occasion on which his obedience to this constitution was put to the test brought out those defects in his character which showed his unfitness for his high office, and incurred a threat of that rejection which his subsequent conduct confirmed (1Sa 13:13).

Having organized a small standing army, part of which, under Jonathan, had taken a fort of the Philistines, Saul summoned the people to withstand the forces which their oppressors, now alarmed for their dominion, would naturally assemble. But so numerous a host came against Saul, that the people, panic-stricken, fled to rocks and caverns for safetyyears of servitude having extinguished their courage, which the want of arms, of which the policy of the Philistines had deprived them, still further diminished. Apparently reduced to extremity, and the seventh day being come, but not being ended, the expiration of which Samuel had enjoined him to wait, Saul ‘offered a burnt offering,’ thus intruding into the priest’s office. Samuel having denounced the displeasure of Jehovah and its consequences, left him, and Saul returned to Gibeah. Left to himself, Saul’s errors multiplied apace. Jonathan, having assaulted a garrison of the Philistines (apparently at Michmash, 1Sa 14:31, which, therefore, must have been situated near Migron in Gibeah, 1Sa 14:1, and within sight of it, 1Sa 14:15), Saul, aided by a panic of the enemy, an earthquake, and the co-operation of his fugitive soldiers, effected a great slaughter; but by a rash and foolish denunciation, he (1) impeded his success (1Sa 14:30), (2) involved the people in a violation of the law (1Sa 14:33), and (3), unless prevented by the more enlightened conscience of the people, would have ended with putting Jonathan to death for an act which, being done in ignorance, could involve no guilt.

Another trial was afforded Saul before his final rejection, the command to extirpate the Amalekites, whose hostility to the people of God was inveterate (Deu 25:18; Exo 17:8-16; Num 14:42-45; Jdg 3:13; Jdg 6:3), and who had not by repentance averted that doom which had been delayed 550 years (1Sa 14:48). A second time Saul willfully violated the divine commission with which he had been entrusted. This stubbornness in persisting to rebel against the directions of Jehovah was now visited by that final rejection of his family from succeeding him on the throne, which had before been threatened (1Sa 14:23; 1Sa 13:13-14). After this second and flagrant disobedience, Saul received no more public countenance from the venerable prophet, who now left him to his sins and his punishment; ‘nevertheless, he mourned for Saul,’ and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king (1Sa 15:35).

The denunciations of Samuel sunk into the heart of Saul, and produced a deep melancholy, which either really was, or which his physicians (1Sa 16:14-15; comp. Gen 1:2) told him, was occasioned by an evil spirit from the Lord. By the advice of his servants, music was employed for the purpose of removing the deep melancholy into which he had fallen, and David was recommended to his notice as one ‘cunning in playing.’ Some critics have supposed, however, and apparently with good reason, that this event occurred subsequently to the transactions recorded in 1 Samuel 18.

Though not acquainted with the unction of David, yet having received intimation that the kingdom should be given to another, Saul soon suspected from his accomplishments, heroism, wisdom, and popularity, that David was his destined successor; and, instead of concluding that his resistance to the divine purpose would only accelerate his own ruin, Saul, in the spirit of jealousy and rage, commenced a series of murderous attempts on the life of his rival (1Sa 18:10-11; 1Sa 19:10), that must have lost him the respect and sympathy of his people which they secured for the object of his malice and envy, whose noble qualities also they both exercised and rendered more conspicuous. The slaughter of Ahimelech the priest (1 Samuel 22), under pretence of his being a partisan of David, and of eighty-five other priests of the house of Eli, to whom nothing could be imputed, as well as the whole inhabitants of Nob, was an atrocity perhaps never exceeded.

Having compelled David to assume the position of an outlaw, around whom gathered a number of turbulent and desperate characters, Saul might persuade himself that he was justified in bestowing on another the hand of his younger daughter whom he had given David to wife, and in making expeditions to apprehend and destroy him. A portion of the people were base enough to minister to the evil passions of Saul (1Sa 23:19; 1Sa 26:1), and others, perhaps, might color their fear by the pretence of conscience (1Sa 23:12). But his sparing Saul’s life twice, when he was completely in his power, must have destroyed all color of right in Saul’s conduct in the minds of the people, as it also did in his own conscience (1Sa 24:3-7; 1 Samuel 26). Though thus degraded and paralyzed by the indulgence of malevolent passions, Saul still acted with vigor in repelling the enemies of his country, and in other affairs wherein his jealousy of David was not concerned (1Sa 23:27-28).

The measure of Saul’s iniquity, now almost full, was completed by an act of direct treason against Jehovah the God of Israel (Exo 22:18; Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27; Deu 18:10-11), in consulting a woman that had a familiar spirit. [The question as to the character of the apparition evoked by the Witch of Endor, falls more properly to be considered under the article WITCHCRAFTS]. Assured by this woman of his own death the next day, and that of his sons; of the ruin of his army, and the triumph of his most formidable enemies, whose invasion had tempted him to try this unhallowed expedient; Saul, in a state of dejection which could not promise success to his followers, met the enemy next day in Gilboa, on the extremity of the great plain of Esdraelon; and having seen the total rout of his army, and the slaughter of his three sons, of whom the magnanimous Jonathan was one; and, having in vain solicited death from the hand of his armor-bearer, Saul perished at last by his own hand (1Sa 31:1-7; 1Ch 10:13-14).

When the Philistines came on the morrow to plunder the slain, they found Saul’s body and the bodies of his sons, which, having beheaded them, they fastened to the wall of Bethshan; but the men of Jabesh-gilead, mindful of their former obligation to Saul (1 Samuel 11), when they heard of the indignity, gratefully and heroically went by night and carried them off, and buried them under a tree in Jabesh, and fasted seven days. From Jabesh the bones of Saul and of his sons were removed by David, and buried in Zelah, in the sepulcher of Kish his father.

Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature

Saul

Son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, and the first king of Israel. He was anointed by Samuel by God’s direction when the Israelites demanded a king. As the king whom they had chosen and desired, ‘a new heart’ was given him, and he had a fair start in his reign; but he signally failed in obedience to God, by the word of Samuel. He was rejected, and David was anointed, whom for years he malignantly persecuted. Being forsaken of God, without faith or conscience he resorted to one with a familiar spirit, and there heard his doom. (See DIVINATION.) He was conquered by the Philistines, the very people he was to have overcome. Thus royalty, as everything else committed to man by God, at once failed. For details of Saul’s life see SAMUEL, FIRST BOOK OF.

One of the ancient kings of Edom. Gen 36:37-38. Called SHAUL in 1Ch 1:48-49.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary

Saul

H7586

1. Called Shaul, king of Edom

Gen 36:37-38; 1Ch 1:48-49

2. King of Israel:

– A Benjamite, son of Kish

1Sa 9:1-2

– Sons of

1Ch 8:33

– His personal appearance

1Sa 9:2; 1Sa 10:23

– Made king of Israel

1Sa 9; 1Sa 11:12-15; Hos 13:11

– Dwells at Gibeah of Saul

1Sa 14:2; 1Sa 15:34; Isa 10:29

– Defeats the Philistines

1Sa 13; 1Sa 14:46; 1Sa 14:52

– Smites the Amalekites

1Sa 15

– Is reproved by Samuel for usurping the priestly functions

1Sa 13:11-14

– Is reproved for disobedience in not slaying the Amalekites; the loss of his kingdom foretold

1Sa 15

– Dedicates the spoils of war

1Sa 15:21-25; 1Ch 26:28

– Sends messengers to Jesse, asking that David be sent to him as musician and armor-bearer

1Sa 16:17-23

– Defeats the Philistines after Goliath is slain by David

1Sa 17

– His jealousy of David; gives his daughter, Michal, to David to be his wife; becomes David’s enemy

1Sa 18

– Tries to slay David; Jonathan intercedes and incurs his father’s displeasure; David’s loyalty to him; Saul’s repentance; prophesies

1Sa 19

– Hears Doeg against Ahimelech, and slays the priest and his family. Pursues David to the wilderness of Ziph; the Ziphites betray David to

1Sa 23

– Pursues David to En-Gedi

1Sa 24:1-6

– His life saved by David

1Sa 24:5-8

– Saul’s contrition for his bad faith

1Sa 24:16-22

– David is again betrayed to, by the Ziphites; Saul pursues him to the hill of Hachilah; his life spared again by David; his confession, and his blessing upon David

1Sa 26

– Slays the Gibeonites; crime avenged by the death of seven of his sons

2Sa 21:1-9

– His kingdom invaded by Philistines; seeks counsel of the witch of En-Dor, who foretells his death

1Sa 28:3-25; 1Sa 29:1

– Is defeated, and with his sons is slain

1Sa 31:1-13

– Their bodies exposed in Beth-Shan; rescued by the people of Jabesh and burned; bones of, buried under a tree at Jabesh

1Sa 31:1-13; 2Sa 1; 1Ch 10:1-14

– His death a judgment on account of his sins

1Ch 10:13

3. Of Tarsus

Paul

Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible

Saul

Saul (sawl), asked for, desired. 1. The first king of Israel. He was the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin. 1Sa 9:1-2; 1Sa 10:1; 1Sa 10:21; 1Sa 10:23-24 In personal appearance he was tall, remarkably fine and noble. After his signal defeat of the Ammonites, Saul was confirmed on the throne by the army at Gilgal, 1Sa 11:1-15, though the continuance of the theocracy was earnestly insisted on by Samuel. 1Sa 12:1-25. He carried on successful wars against the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Moabites, and the Amalekites. 1Sa 13:1-21; 1Sa 14:46-52. Saul, however, in two instances, forgot that he was subject to Jehovah, the invisible King. 1Sa 13:11-14; 1Sa 15:1-35. Hence Jehovah commanded Samuel to anoint David privately, as Saul’s successor to the kingdom. 1Sa 16:1-13. From this time Saul is exhibited as the slave of jealousy, duplicity, and malice; he fell at last into a deep melancholy. David was introduced to the court to soothe Saul, and there he became acquainted with the manners of the court, and the business of government. 1Sa 16:14-23. See David. The Philistines mustered an army so formidable, that Saul, finding himself abandoned of God, applied in his emergency to a witch at Endor. Disheartened by the ambiguous answer of the wily sorceress, Saul advanced against the Philistines. The Hebrews were routed, and Saul, finding himself wounded, fell upon his own sword, b.c. 1056, after a reign of forty years. 1Sa 28:1-25; 1Sa 31:1-13. There is no character in history more pitiable than this wretched king, swayed by evil impulse, tormented by his own conscience, powerless as it seemed for everything but mischief. His better thoughts, if temporarily awakened, were stings and scourges to him. 1Sa 24:17; 1Sa 26:21.

Fuente: People’s Dictionary of the Bible

Saul

Saul. (desired). More accurately, Shaul.

1. One of the early kings of Edom, and successor of Samlah. Gen 36:37-38; 1Ch 1:48. (B.C. after 1450).

2. The first king of Israel, the son of Kish, and of the tribe of Benjamin. (B.C, 1095-1055). His character is, in part, illustrated by the fierce, wayward, fitful nature of the tribe, and, in part, accounted for by the struggle between the old and new systems, in which he found himself involved. To this, we must add a taint of madness, which broke out in violent frenzy, at times, leaving him with long lucid intervals.

He was remarkable for his strength and activity, 2Sa 1:25 and, like the Homeric heroes, of gigantic stature, taller by head and shoulders than the rest of the people, and of that kind of beauty denoted by the Hebrew word “good,” 1Sa 9:2, and which caused him to be compared to the gazelle, “the gazelle of Israel.” His birthplace is not expressly mentioned; but, as Zelah in Benjamin was the place of Kish’s sepulchre, 2Sa 21:14, it was, probably, his native village.

His father, Kish, was a powerful and wealthy chief, though the family to which he belonged was of little importance. 1Sa 9:1; 1Sa 9:21. A portion of his property consisted of a drove of asses. In search of these asses, gone astray on the mountains, he sent his son, Saul. It was while prosecuting this adventure that Saul met with Samuel, for the first time, at his home in Ramah, five miles north of Jerusalem. A divine intimation had made known to him, the approach of Saul, whom he treated with special favor, and, the next morning, descending with him to the skirts of the town, Samuel poured over Saul’s head, the consecrated oil, and with a kiss of salutation announced to him that he was to be the ruler of the nation. 1Sa 9:25; 1Sa 10:1.

Returning homeward, his call was confirmed by the incidents which, according to Samuel’s prediction, awaited him. 1Sa 10:9-10. What may be named, the public call, occurred at Mizpeh, when lots were cast to find the tribe and family which was to produce the king, and Saul, by a divine intimation was found hid in the circle of baggage which surrounded the encampment. 1Sa 10:17-24. Returning to Gibeah, apparently to private life, he heard the threat issued by Nahash, king of Ammon, against Jabesh-gilead. He speedily collected an army, and Jabesh was rescued. The effect was instantaneous on the people, and the monarchy was inaugurated anew at Gilgal. 1Sa 11:1-15. It should be, however, observed that according to 1Sa 12:12, the affair of Nahash preceded and occasioned the election of Saul.

Although king of Israel, his rule was, at first, limited; but in the second year of his reign, he began to organize an attempt to shake off the Philistine yoke, and an army was formed. In this crisis, Saul, now on the very confines of his kingdom at Gilgal, impatient at Samuel’s delay, whom he had directed to be present, offered sacrifice himself. Samuel, arriving later, pronounced the first curse, on his impetuous zeal. 1Sa 13:5-14. After the Philistines were driven back to their own country occurred the first appearance of Saul’s madness in the rash vow which all but cost the life of his soil. 1Sa 14:24; 1Sa 14:44.

The expulsion of the Philistines, although not entirely completed, 1Sa 14:52, at once, placed Saul in a position higher than that of any previous ruler of Israel, and he made war upon the neighboring tribes. In the war with Amalek, 1Sa 14:48; 1Sa 15:1-9, he disobeyed the prophetical command of Samuel, which called down the second curse, and the first distinct intimation of the transference of the kingdom to a rival. The rest of Saul’s life is one long tragedy.

The frenzy which had given indications of itself before now, at times, took almost entire possession of him. In this crisis, David was recommended to him. From this time forward, their lives are blended together. See David. In Saul’s better moments, he never lost the strong affection which he had contracted for David. Occasionally, too, his prophetical gift returned, blended with his madness. 2Sa 19:24. But his acts of fierce, wild zeal increased. At last, the monarchy itself broke down under the weakness of his head. The Philistines re-entered the country, and just before giving them battle Saul’s courage failed, and he consulted one of the necromancers, the “Witch of Endor,” who had escaped his persecution.

At this distance of time, it is impossible to determine the relative amount of fraud or of reality in the scene which follows, though the obvious meaning of the narrative itself tends to the hypothesis of some kind of apparition. 2Sa 19:28. On hearing the denunciation which the apparition conveyed, Saul fell the whole length of his gigantic stature on the ground, and remained motionless till the woman and his servants forced him to eat. The next day, the battle came on. The Israelites were driven up the side of Gilboa. The three sons of Saul were slain. Saul was wounded. According to one account, he fell upon his own sword, 1Sa 31:4, and died. The body on being found by the Philistines was stripped slid decapitated, and the headless trunk hung over the city walls, with those of his three sons. 1Sa 31:9-10. The head was deposited, (probably at Ashdod), in the temple of Dagon, 1Ch 10:10. The corpse was buried at Jabesh-gilead. 1Sa 31:13.

3. The Jewish name of St. Paul.

Fuente: Smith’s Bible Dictionary

SAUL

son of Kish, first king of Israel

1Sa 9:2; 1Sa 9:26; 1Sa 10:1; 1Sa 10:9; 1Sa 13:9; 1Sa 15:11; 1Sa 16:1; 1Sa 17:2; 1Sa 17:58; 1Sa 18:2; 1Sa 18:11; 1Sa 18:22; 1Sa 18:28

1Sa 19:1; 1Sa 19:11; 1Sa 20:27; 1Sa 22:6; 1Sa 23:8; 1Sa 24:4; 1Sa 26:1; 1Sa 27:1; 1Sa 28:5; 1Sa 31:4

2Sa 1:17; 1Ch 8:33

—“The man who Lost a Crown” Characteristics of
Fine Personal Appearance

1Sa 9:2; 1Sa 10:24

(Early Years)
Humility

1Sa 10:22

Self-control

1Sa 10:27,1Sa 10:13

(Later Years)
Self-will

1Sa 13:12; 1Sa 13:13

Disobedience

1Sa 15:11-23

Jealousy and hatred

1Sa 18:8; 1Sa 19:1

Superstition

1Sa 28:7

Suicide

1Sa 31:4

Fuente: Thompson Chain-Reference Bible

Saul

the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, the first king of the Israelites, 1Sa 9:1-2, &c. Saul’s fruitless journey when seeking his father’s asses; (See Ass;) his meeting the Prophet Samuel; the particulars foretold to him, with his being anointed as king, about A.M. 2909; his prophesying along with the young prophets; his appointment by the lot; his modesty in hiding himself; his first victory over the Ammonites; his rash sacrifice in the absence of Samuel; his equally rash curse; his victories over the Philistines and Amalekites; his sparing of King Agag with the judgment denounced against him for it; his jealousy and persecution of David; his barbarous massacre of the priests and people of Nob; his repeated confessions of his injustice to David, &c, are recorded in 1 Samuel 9-31. He reigned forty years, but exhibited to posterity a melancholy example of a monarch, elevated to the summit of worldly grandeur, who, having cast off the fear of God, gradually became the slave of jealousy, duplicity, treachery, and the most malignant and diabolical tempers. His behaviour toward David shows him to have been destitute of every generous and noble sentiment that can dignify human nature; and it is not an easy task to speak with any moderation of the atrocity and baseness which uniformly mark it. His character is that of a wicked man, waxing worse and worse; but while we are shocked at its deformity, it should be our study to profit by it, which we can only do by using it as a beacon to warn us, lest we also be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary