Samuel and Saul
1 SAMUEL 1–3; 8–11; 15–17
Eli and Samuel by John Opie.
PROPHECY AND KINGSHIP. THE BIRTH AND CALL OF SAMUEL. THE RISE OF SAUL. MILITARY CAMPAIGNS. 
EREM OF THE AMALEKITES. SAUL’S YOUNG RIVAL.
The period of time covered by the books of 1 and 2 Samuel is short—only a few decades. But these decades marked an enormous change. At their start, the future Israelite kingdom was still a group of scattered and persecuted tribes. By the end, these tribes had not only united to form a kingdom; together they had turned into a mighty empire, holding sway from Egypt to deep into Syria. Or had they?
Three men stand out in the period that follows that of the book of Judges. Not surprisingly, two of them are kings—Saul and David. But the first, no less an important figure, is the prophet Samuel. Indeed, the story of this period begins with a detailed account of Samuel’s birth and how he came to be a servant of God.
Hannah, Samuel’s mother, had been childless for some years; like Sarah and Rebekah (and Samson’s unnamed mother) before her, this “barren wife” was destined to give birth to one of Israel’s heroes. Her husband, Elkanah, who had another wife, tried to comfort her over her childlessness, but Hannah’s only wish was for a baby of her own. After some years, she went in desperation to the temple at Shiloh:
She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: “O LORD of hosts, if only You will look on the misery of Your servant, and remember me, and not forget Your servant, but will give to Your servant a male child, then I will put him before You as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.”
God heard Hannah’s prayer and answered: she soon became pregnant and gave birth to a little boy. In keeping with her vow, she prepared Samuel as a nazirite:63 as soon as he was of age, Samuel was brought to Eli, the priest of Shiloh, to serve before God. On that occasion Hannah sang a hymn of thanksgiving (1 Sam. 2:1–10).
Samuel was thus indentured as a boy to Eli, serving as an apprentice priest at Shiloh. Now, “the word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread” (1 Sam. 3:1). Nevertheless, it happened one night that God called to Samuel:
At that time Eli was lying down in his usual place; his eyesight had begun to grow weak, so that he could not see well. The lamp of God had not yet burnt out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. Then the LORD called to Samuel. He cried out “Here I am!” and ran to Eli. He said, “Here I am; you called me?” But he said, “I did not call you; go back to bed.” So he went and lay down. The LORD called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am; you called me?” But he said, “I did not call, my son; go back to bed.” Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD; the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. Then the LORD called to Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am; you called me?” Then Eli understood that the LORD was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if He calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for Your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Now the LORD entered and stood there, and He called as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.”
This was a signal event not only in Samuel’s life, but in the life of the people of Israel. If, until then, “the word of the LORD was rare,” it was not to be rare any longer. Soon, everyone was aware that a true prophet had come: “All Israel from Dan [in the far north] to Beer-sheba [in the far south] knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD” (1 Sam. 3:20).
In fact, scholars note, from the time of Samuel onward, the Deuteronomistic History maintains that prophecy was a fixture in Israel’s collective life. This had not been so earlier. True, Moses is sometimes presented as a prophet in the books from Exodus to Deuteronomy (Num. 12:6–8; Deut. 18:15–19; 34:10), but many modern scholars would say that the prophetic portrayal of Moses in these books has been influenced by the succession of prophets long after his time; what Moses was really like (or even if he ever existed) is, they say, something that had been lost in the sands of time long before these books were written. In any case, the Deuteronomistic History scarcely mentions prophecy from the time of Moses until that of Samuel. True, some of the judges seem to have prophetlike abilities (announcing when the time is right to attack, for example), and Deborah is at one point called a “prophetess” (Judg. 4:4), but the other judges are not described as prophets, and their prophetic traits may in any case—as scholars allege about Moses’ portrayal—likewise be a retrojection from later times.
From the time of Samuel on, however, prophecy is presented as an established institution in Israel. Following Samuel come narratives about Nathan, the prophet of David’s time, and after him, Elijah and Elisha in the ninth century. The Bible then includes the actual writings attributed to various prophets: the books of Amos and Hosea and Isaiah and Micah from the eighth century BCE, Nahum and Habakkuk and Zephaniah in the seventh century, along with Jeremiah and Ezekiel in the late seventh and early sixth—and the writings of still later prophets. Indeed, the books of the three “major”64 prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (so called not because of their importance, but because of the bulk of writings attributed to them) actually account for about 20 percent of the whole Hebrew Bible. Add to these three the books of the twelve “minor” prophets, as well as the historical narratives that center on various prophets and their doings, and a still greater part of Hebrew Scripture turns out to be tied up with these central religious figures. What was prophecy all about, and why were these figures deemed so important?
Prophets in Modern Scholarship
A straightforward definition of the prophet might be: a messenger sent by God to speak on His behalf. The need for such a go-between, as we have seen, was taken for granted in biblical times: direct contact between God and ordinary humans was deemed to be too dangerous (Gen. 32:30; Exod. 33:20; Judg. 13:22), or too frightening and painful (Exod. 20:18–21; Deut. 18:16–18) for people to bear. Therefore, when God had a message to be delivered to someone or some group (such as the king or some other individual; the royal house; foreign kings and their nations; or the people of Israel as a whole), He would send a messenger. Not a mere messenger, of course; apart from speaking on God’s behalf, prophets were also holy men and women. Indeed, some of them are reported to have performed miraculous deeds or to have acted as intercessors with God on Israel’s behalf (such things seem particularly characteristic of prophets from the north).1 But their role as divine messengers is central to the biblical portrayal of most prophets. Accordingly, one of the most characteristic features of prophetic speech is the opening phrase “Thus says the LORD.” Scholars long ago noticed that this same messenger formula, “Thus says X,” was also regularly used by envoys who had been sent by human kings or even just ordinary individuals (Gen. 32:5; 45:9; Exod. 5:10; Num. 20:14; 22:16, and many more). Its standard use by prophets thus makes clear that they were presenting themselves to their listeners essentially as messengers sent by God.2
This is an important point, since many people today associate prophecy with predicting the future. It is true that the messages that prophets carried often did bear on things about to happen, but to think of their messages as predictions is to distort their character. Rather, what prophets typically did was announce God’s verdict or judgment, to be carried out or acted upon soon, if not right away.3 Indeed, one of the most characteristic sorts of message that prophets brought had an altogether legal ring to it, in which first the offending party’s sin was announced and then God’s punishment: “Because you have done such-and-such, therefore I will do thus-and-so.”4 The punishment had yet to be carried out, but the prophet was not a forecaster; he was reporting on a decision that had already been made, announcing the sentence just passed on high.
Many societies, ancient and modern, prominently include prophetlike figures, even if they do not precisely fit the portrait of biblical prophets—sibyls and oracles and soothsayers of various kinds are found across the globe.5 Modern scholars have therefore been eager to discover what, if anything, biblical prophets had in common with such other figures, perhaps with an eye to understanding how the regular institution of prophecy got started.
At one point the Bible itself seems to suggest that, despite the existence of potentially similar figures elsewhere, the Israelite prophet was altogether unique. His uniqueness was in fact a token of the great gap separating Israel’s religion from that of its neighbors:
[Moses tells the Israelites:] When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you . . . [Instead,] the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; he is the one whom you shall heed.
In other words: other nations may have various sorts of people who provide oracles or auguries, but God will give you prophets instead.
Despite the claim of this passage, scholars have pointed to various ancient texts that suggest that the Israelite prophet was not God’s ad hoc creation to make consulting oracles and mediums unnecessary. There was, these scholars say, an organic connection between the biblical prophet and figures known from elsewhere in the ancient Near East. To begin with, a number of prophetlike functionaries have been identified in the writings of Israel’s neighbors, particularly in texts from Mari (eighteenth century BCE)6 and in neo-Assyrian writings (seventh century BCE).7 These people have different titles and, judging by their titles, different roles: 
pilu/piltu (“answerer”), mu
u/muutu (“ecstatic”), raggimu/raggimtu (“proclaimer”), and others.8 Indeed, the most common biblical word for prophet, nabi’, has been found to exist in its Akkadian cognate in the Mari texts (nabû); an Akkadian text from Emar, on the middle Euphrates, dated to around 1300 BCE, refers to a female figure with titles apparently derived from this same root, anabbi’tu and munabbi’tu.9 Sometimes these figures are said specifically to advise the king or other official, as biblical prophets also did. The texts also indicate at times that the source of these figures’ prophecy was a dream (as with biblical prophets, Num. 12:6) or a revelation in a temple (such as Samuel’s, described above), or an ecstatic trance (Num. 11:26; 1 Sam. 10:5); several texts also refer to a god “sending” the messenger or the message. All this suggests that the idea of prophecy—indeed, the very terminology used (nabi’)—did not originate in Israel and was not utterly distinct from prophecy elsewhere in the region. Indeed, the Canaanite god Baal is said in several places to have had prophets (nebi’im) (1 Kings 18:19, 22, 40; 2 Kings 10:19), as did the goddess Asherah (1 Kings 18:19). Likewise, the Deir ‘All
inscription (above, chapter 21) speaks of the non-Israelite Balaam as having had a vision of the god El. Apparently, then, the idea of Israel’s God sending His own agents or messengers was, despite the implications of Deut. 18:15, not altogether unique. Here, it might seem, was yet another blow to traditional religious belief.
At the same time, scholars have found nothing elsewhere that is truly comparable to the actual social niche occupied by the prophet in Israel, nor anything comparable to the writings of Israel’s great “writing prophets”;65 if Israelite prophecy’s origins share something with prophecy elsewhere, the institution soon developed its own unique characteristics.10 With regard to the prophet’s social role, it is striking that Israelite prophets do not just advise the king, but often reproach him on God’s behalf (as Nathan reproaches David, for example). Sometimes the prophet was actually the enemy of the king; Ahab calls Elijah “you troublemaker” (1 Kings 18:17). Nor, more generally, are Mesopotamian prophets spoken of as champions of justice or moral reformers; there is nothing reported of them that might correspond to “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). Moreover, there is nothing from Mesopotamia corresponding to the great collections of prophetic writings found in the Hebrew Bible. In the end, then, most scholars concede that while the Israelite office of prophet has formal analogues elsewhere, those who exercised this function soon became, to judge by the (admittedly) incomplete comparative evidence, a unique phenomenon in the ancient Near East.
This observation ought to be connected to another made by scholars: as a regular institution in Israel, prophecy was basically coterminous with kingship.11 That is, the prophet Samuel appeared precisely at the moment when Israel was about to appoint its first king. Thereafter, for more than four centuries, prophets and kings continued to coexist (often, not on the friendliest of terms). But then kingship died: the Babylonians conquered the kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, took the king captive, killed his sons, and exiled much of Judah’s population to Babylon, where it remained for half a century. After the Persians conquered the Babylonians and allowed the Jews to return to their old homeland, there was some brief hope that a Davidic heir might also be restored to the throne (even if only as a puppet). But that hope was never to be realized. Interestingly, it is at the point that this bit of bad news began to sink in that prophecy seems to have died out too, or at least to have lost its former place in society and in the public’s confidence. The last canonical prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, belong to the period just after the Jews’ return from exile.
Why should prophecy have begun at the same time as kingship and then ceased to function after kingship was gone? Perhaps, some scholars believe, the two offices had been joined at the hip from birth. That is, the particular role that prophets came to play during the early years of the monarchy (at least, to judge by the historical sources at scholars’ disposal) had something to do with the Israelite tribes’ early and ongoing suspicion of kingship. Even after these disparate tribes had been united into a single kingdom, the population remained fearful of the power a king might wield; how far would he go? Under the circumstances, people were only too happy to have in their midst holy men and women who, speaking as God’s messengers, could approach the king and say, “To do that would be going too far,” or, “What you are doing is wrong.” And indeed, prophets did often rebuke kings in just these terms. As already mentioned, Nathan rebukes David (2 Sam. 12), as does the prophet Gad (2 Sam. 24:10–14); Ahijah of Shiloh speaks out against Solomon (1 Kings 11:11–13), and later against Jeroboam (1 Kings 14); the prophet Shemaiah condemns Rehoboam (1 Kings 12:21–24); Elijah and Elisha, as mentioned, are constant critics of the northern rulers; Isaiah strongly warns King Ahaz (Isaiah 7); and so forth. Such an arrangement may fall short of a modern government’s system of checks and balances, but it at least held out the hope that kingship might, in Israel, be less of an absolute dictatorship than it was elsewhere in the ancient Near East.
Samuel soon took his place among the leaders of his people, serving as a judge at various locations in his home territory of Benjamin (1 Sam. 7:15–17). During this time, he seems to have functioned a bit like the leaders who preceded him in the book of Judges, aiding the people in their struggles against the Philistines (1 Sam. 7:7–14). He was thus already an old man when the people approached Samuel with a request: “Give us a king to rule over us!” (1 Sam. 8:6). Up until then, the Bible says, God had been their only king, and this request was thus a tacit throwing off of God’s direct authority. As God says to Samuel, “They are rejecting Me as their king” (1 Sam. 8:7). The prophet therefore did his best to discourage the people:
He said, “This is how a king will be when he rules over you: he will take your sons and make them his charioteers and his cavalry, and have them run before his own chariot. He will make some of them commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and use others to plow his lands and bring in his harvest, and to make his weaponry and tackle for his horses. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. Then he will take over the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to the men of his court. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officials and court personnel. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to work for him. He will take a tenth of your flocks. Eventually you yourselves will become his servants. And in that day you will cry out because of this king of yours, whom you chose; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
Nevertheless, the people refused to heed Samuel. They said, “No! We will have a king over us, so that we can be like any other nation, and so that our king may govern us and lead us in battle.”
Samuel ultimately gave in to the will of the people. He anointed a man from the tribe of Benjamin, Saul the son of Kish, to be king.12 At least Saul had all the physical requirements for leadership: he was “a handsome man; in fact, there was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood a head taller than everyone else” (1 Sam. 9:2).
Since the beginning of modern scholarship, the story of how Saul came to be king has seemed to scholars a patchwork composed of originally separate strands.
The first strand is found in 1 Sam. 9:1–10:16, which relates a somewhat comical story. Saul’s father, Kish, has lost some donkeys; he dispatches the young Saul, along with a servant, to go find them. They look all over Saul’s home territory of Benjamin and are about to give up when the servant suddenly mentions that a certain “seer” lives in a nearby town. (What exactly is a “seer”? The narrative adds parenthetically that “the person who is nowadays called a prophet used to be called a seer,” 1 Sam. 9:9.) Presumably, such a seer might be able to locate the missing donkeys by supernatural means. However, being a seer is apparently a paying job, and this worries Saul, since he does not have anything on him to offer as an emolument. By chance, however, the servant has a quarter-shekel of silver, so off they go.
The seer is, of course, Samuel, and God has already told him of Saul’s imminent arrival. As soon as Saul appears, God says to Samuel: “This is the man I told you about. He is the one who will rule over my people” (1 Sam. 9:17). Samuel therefore tells Saul and the servant that they must eat with him and also spend the night. “And don’t worry about the donkeys that got lost three days ago,” Samuel adds. “They’ve been found.”
Early the next morning, Samuel wakes Saul up and says that it is time to leave. As they reach the edge of town, however, Samuel says to Saul, “Tell the servant to walk ahead of us, while you stop here.” He then pulls out a flask of oil and pours it on Saul’s head. “Your Majesty,”13 he says, “The LORD hereby names you to lead His people.” Saul is apparently somewhat flabbergasted, but Samuel goes on to predict a number of signs that will prove that Saul is indeed God’s choice. All the signs predicted by Samuel then come to pass.
But Saul apparently still does not feel like a king. He runs into his uncle, who asks him what he is doing there. “We came looking for the donkeys,” he answers, “but when we saw that they weren’t around, we went to consult Samuel.” “And what did Samuel say to you?” Surely this was the occasion for Saul to relate the extraordinary events that had occurred, leading up to his being anointed king and all the signs that followed. “He said the donkeys had already been found,” is all Saul answers.
To biblical scholars, this narrative sounds—despite its present location—like something straight out of the book of Judges. Like Israel’s other charismatic leaders in that book, Saul does not feel he has any claim to rule: “I am only a Benjaminite,” he says, “from the smallest of Israel’s tribes, and my family is the humblest of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin” (1 Sam. 9:21). This sounds suspiciously like what Gideon says to the angel in Judg. 6:15, “My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” And just as happens again and again with the heroes of the book of Judges (Judg. 6:34; 11:29; 14:6, 19; 15:14), the “spirit of the LORD” comes over Saul and he undergoes a complete transformation (1 Sam. 10:6, 10).66
But then there is a second, apparently quite separate, account of how Saul becomes king. It starts right after the first account.
Samuel summoned the people to the LORD at Mizpah and said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I rescued you from Egyptians and from all the kingdoms that were oppressing you.’ But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your troubles, and you have said, ‘No! but set a king over us.’ Now therefore present yourselves before the LORD by your tribes and by your clans.”
Then Samuel brought forward all the tribes of Israel, and the tribe of Benjamin was chosen by lot. He brought the tribe of Benjamin forward by families, and the family of the Matrites was chosen by lot. Finally he brought the family of the Matrites near, [naming] one man at a time, and Saul the son of Kish was chosen by lot. But when they looked for him, he was nowhere to be found. So they inquired again of the LORD, “Did the man come here?” and the LORD said, “Look! There he is, hiding among the baggage.” Then they ran and brought him out. When he stood up among the people, he was a head taller than any of them. Samuel said to all the people, “Do you see the one whom the LORD has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people.” And all the people shouted, “Long live the king!”
This passage seems to show no awareness of the narrative that just precedes it. Here, Saul is chosen by lots—almost as if his previous selection by God somehow did not count. In fact, he is introduced here by his full name, “Saul the son of Kish,” as if for the first time—even though this introduction had been made earlier (9:1–2). And here we are told once again that Saul is a head taller than any other Israelite—just as in 9:2. The conclusion seems inevitable: these two were originally quite independent accounts of how Saul came to rule Israel.
Scholars have noted other differences between the two accounts. In the first story, “Kish’s Lost Donkeys,” there is not the slightest hint that God objects to naming a king. On the contrary, He tells Samuel, “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines; for I have seen the suffering of my people, because their outcry has come to me” (1 Sam. 9:16). Thus, the new leader is to be nothing less than the instrument of God’s salvation. The other story, “Saul Chosen by Lot,” starts off with Samuel again berating the people for having rejected God’s kingship in favor of a human ruler—as if this story were meant to be a direct continuation of Samuel’s long speech about the evils of kings in 1 Sam. 8:11–20. Here, kingship is definitely bad.
The image of Samuel is also quite different in the two accounts. In “Kish’s Lost Donkeys,” Samuel is a very local figure; Saul lives in the same geographic area as Samuel but is apparently quite unaware of his existence until his servant mentions him. And despite the narrative’s parenthetic equation of “seer” with “prophet,” Samuel does not seem very much like a prophet in this story. Instead, he is presented as a small-time operator, the kind of fortune-teller or medium you can turn to and, after paying a fee, have your donkey handed to you. In “Saul Chosen by Lot,” by contrast, Samuel is a national leader: he summons the people to Mizpah and speaks as a prophet; “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel . . .”
What can these differences tell us about where the two versions came from? Scholars have argued about this for more than a century.14 Wellhausen and others saw the “antimonarchic source” as a late addition, reflecting disillusionment with kingship after the fall of Judah to the Babylonian conquerors. The “kingship is bad” passages certainly must have been written later than Deuteronomy, Wellhausen reasoned, since that book clearly views kingship as a natural, and altogether permissible, institution (Deut. 17:14–20). But others have pointed to the antimonarchic strains of the eighth-century prophet Hosea:
[God says to Israel:]
“Where is your king? Where is your champion?
[Where are] all those princes and officers of yours, back when you said, ‘Give me a king and rulers’?
Well, I gave you a king in My anger, and in My wrath I took him away.”
The last line, according to these scholars, is actually an allusion to an old tradition about Saul: he ascended the throne against God’s wishes, “in My anger,” which is pretty much what 1 Sam. 10:18–19 says.15 So, even if the antimonarchic material has been reworked by later editors, it may well repose on ancient tradition.
These chapters of 1 Samuel open a window onto the modus operandi of the Deuteronomistic historian(s). As one recent scholar has highlighted, there was something quite scholarly and detached about this whole project of writing a history of Israel.16 Eliminating all contradictions was not part of the plan. To be sure, seams were sometimes smoothed over, and editorializing additions are sometimes found. Still, nothing would have been easier for a historian than to cut out one version or another, or harmonize them by slashing here and there. But the Deuteronomistic historian(s) had too much respect for ancient traditions and texts to do that. Instead, the two different versions we have seen were fitted together and preserved.
Indeed, it appears that, in addition to these two stories explaining Saul’s rise, yet a third has been included in the Deuteronomistic History, the brief account of Saul’s victory against the Ammonites in 1 Samuel 11. This narrative, some scholars say, may have started out as another, quite independent version of how Saul became king; it is striking that here, even more than elsewhere, Saul is presented as a figure out of the book of Judges. Thus, like Gideon or Samson, Saul is leading an ordinary life until “the spirit of God” seizes him (11:6). He then cuts up a pair of oxen and sends them with a message to the neighboring tribes: “This is what will happen to your cattle,” Saul says, “if you don’t follow Samuel and me into battle” (1 Sam. 11:7). Saul then musters a huge army and handily defeats the Ammonites; as a result, he is made king by acclamation (11:15).17
That these various stories about Saul’s rise to power could be read as sequential rather than contradictory is clear from the fact that, for centuries and centuries, no one seemed to notice the apparent overlaps and inconsistencies. In other words, the Deuteronomistic History was composed as a plausible recitation of the past. Of course, reading that history as a single, harmonious, and perfect account was, for centuries, a natural result of the assumptions with which readers approached the text (in this case, the third of our Four Assumptions). As soon as those assumptions melted away, however, the tensions between the various versions were suddenly obvious, and the composite nature of the biblical text was plain for scholars to see.
Good King Saul
The period of Saul’s rise to power was a unique one in the ancient Near East. Throughout most of its recorded history, the little strip of territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea had been dominated by its larger, more powerful neighbors. In biblical times, these neighbors included Egypt to the south, Babylon and Assyria to the east, Aram/Syria to the north, and still farther north, the Hittites (who ruled part of the territory now occupied by Turkey and Syria).
But the time of Saul and David was one in which all these traditional centers of imperial power were consumed with their own internal problems. This gave the coalescing tribes of Israel a unique opportunity, not only to cast off foreign domination, but to form a mini-empire of their own in the process. In fact, historians theorize, this historic opportunity may have a lot to do with the real reason for Saul’s rise to power: the tribes looked to him principally as a warrior and army organizer. It is no surprise, therefore, that much of the Bible’s account of Saul’s reign is taken up with his military successes: Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Philistines, Amalekites, and other foreign powers are said to have fallen to his sword. (An account of some of these battles is found in 1 Samuel 11; 13–14; 15; 17; 28–31.) Modern scholars suspect that some of these victories may be an exaggeration, but there is little skepticism about the overall character of Saul’s rule. If he was the leader around whom most of the tribes coalesced (there is actually no indication that the mighty southern tribe of Judah was ever part of his kingdom—see 2 Sam. 2:9–10), he must have had, from the start, the makings of a great general.
erem of the Amalekites
The Amalekites were one of Israel’s fiercest enemies. They were the ones who, according to the biblical account (Exod. 17:8–16), attacked the ragtag Israelites shortly after the exodus, at a time when “you were tired and weary; they [the Amalekites] came from behind and picked off all the stragglers behind you—they had no common decency” (Deut. 25:18). No wonder that God had commanded Israel to “wipe out the name of Amalek” when the time was ripe (Deut. 25:19). Now that Israel had suddenly become a regional power, that time seemed to have arrived.
Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one that the LORD sent to make you king over His people Israel. Heed, therefore, what the LORD has said [to me]. Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Now I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Go attack Amalek, and utterly destroy everything that they have; do not spare them, but kill both men and women, children and little babies, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
God’s commandment to kill everything in sight—men, women, and little babies, as well as dumb beasts—has, for centuries, stuck in the throats of Bible readers. How could a God who is supposedly “merciful and compassionate” even allow such a thing to happen—never mind actually order it to happen. Indeed, this passage and similar ones have been disowned by many modern theologians (“This is no God that I know,” declared Martin Buber), and more than one modern commentator has sought to explain away such passages as an “anachronistic literary formulation” that could not actually have taken place.18
Anachronism or not, the practice of putting the entire enemy population to death (that is, putting them under the “ban,” as the Hebrew word 
erem is usually translated) has to be seen in the broader context of ancient Near Eastern warfare. War in that orbit was, by all accounts, unbelievably brutal. Although the circumstances and precise measures varied, captured enemies, whether combatants or not, were regularly taken as booty. Men were turned into slave laborers, women were raped and then taken as concubines or domestic slaves, and frightened young children were handed over to whoever wanted them. As for the domestic animals and other material possessions of the defeated party, these were likewise divided up by the victorious army. Under such circumstances, warfare was actually a most profitable enterprise. One good reason for besieging a foreign city was to get rich—and biblical law seems to approve of the practice (Deut. 20:10–15; 21:10–14).
It is against this background that one must view the peculiar biblical institution of the “ban.” It might best be described as “not-for-profit warfare.” Under this system, instead of the spoils of war going to the conquerors, they were to be utterly destroyed. Having been offered to God as His spoils (indeed, perhaps as a way of ensuring His help in the conquest), the booty could not then be used for the conquerors’ own gain. To do so would be the equivalent of taking anything else that belonged to God—the firstborn of the flocks and herds, or the first fruits of the harvest—and keeping them for one’s own use. That was the gravest of sins.
So, that is what Samuel instructs Saul to do—enforce the “ban” on the Amalekites. Saul agrees. Fortified with this holy mission, Saul then defeats the Amalekites utterly, “from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt” (1 Sam. 15:7). Surveying the captured goods, however, he cannot bring himself to put everything to the torch. Instead, “Saul and the people spared [the Amalekite king] Agag, and the best of the sheep and of the cattle and of the fatlings and the lambs, and all that was valuable. They did not implement the ban [erem]; only that which was despised and worthless did they destroy” (1 Sam. 15:9).
The next morning, Samuel, who has learned of Saul’s disobedience, goes off to find him. The encounter between these two men—the tall, tergiflexuous, rule-stretching Saul and the shorter, aged, but unbending prophet who anointed him—presents a stark contrast in character:
Samuel got up early in the morning to meet Saul. But someone told Samuel, “Saul had to go to Carmel to set up a monument, and on the way back he went down to Gilgal.” So Samuel went to see Saul. Saul said to him, “May you be blessed by the LORD—I have carried out what the LORD said.” Samuel said, “Oh yes? Then what is that bleating sound I hear? And what is that mooing of cows in my ears?” Saul said, “Those . . . they brought them from the Amalekites—the soldiers did, so as to spare the best of the sheep and the cattle, to sacrifice to the LORD your God. But the rest we have completely destroyed.”
Then Samuel said to Saul, “That’s enough! Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night.” He said, “Go on.” Samuel said, “You may be small in your own eyes, but are you not still the head of Israel’s tribes? The LORD made you king over Israel. Then the LORD sent you on a journey and said, ‘Go and utterly destroy those evildoers, the Amalekites. Fight them until none of them is left.’ Why then did you not obey the LORD’s words? Why instead did you swoop down on the spoils, and do what was evil in the sight of the LORD?”
Saul said to Samuel, “I did do what the LORD said to do. I traveled to where the LORD sent me, and I brought back Agag, the Amalekite king—and I utterly destroyed the Amalekites. It is just that the troops took some sheep and cattle from the spoils—the best of the things that were to be destroyed—in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God in Gilgal.”
It is certainly a telling detail that Saul was off setting up a monument to his own glory (one of those victory steles that archaeologists have turned up here and there on the eastern Mediterranean coast) when Samuel first came looking for him. How different this Saul is from the shy young man whom Samuel had proclaimed king some years earlier! Noteworthy as well is the fact that the normally taciturn Saul is suddenly all talk. “May the LORD bless you,” he says to the prophet, hoping that this pious greeting may help deflect Samuel’s wrath—and then he adds, even before Samuel gets to respond, “I’ve carried out what the LORD told me to do.” Surely a guilty conscience sounds the same in any language. But Samuel is not buying: “Then what are all these sheep and goats and cattle doing here?” he asks. To this question Saul twice gives the same excuse: It’s not my fault—you know how soldiers are—and besides, they saved those animals only in order to offer them as sacrifices.
But Samuel said, “What does the LORD prefer—burnt offerings and sacrifices, or obedience to what the LORD says? ‘Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. Rebellion is as much a sin as divination, and stubbornness is like the wickedness of idol-worship.’67 Therefore, since you have rejected the word of the LORD, He hereby rejects you as king.”
Then Saul said to Samuel, “All right, I made a mistake. I did transgress the LORD’s commandment and your words—but it was because I was afraid of the soldiers and did what they said. So please: forgive my mistake and come back with me, so that I can worship the LORD.” But Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you. Since you have rejected the word of the LORD, the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel.”
As far as Samuel is concerned, Saul is finished as king—and indeed, he will soon meet his tragic end.19
Some readers would no doubt be happier if that were the end of the story of the Amalekite erem, but it is not. Samuel is still determined that the death sentence pronounced by God on Israel’s archenemy be carried out—even if he has to do it himself:
Then Samuel said, “Bring Agag king of the Amalekites here to me.” And Agag came to him hesitatingly. Agag said, “Surely this is the bitterness of death.” Samuel said: “As your sword has made women childless, so your mother shall be childless among women.” And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the LORD in Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
Saul’s Rival, David
Just as scholars have identified conflicting, originally independent accounts of how Saul became king, so have they done with regard to the biblical account of the rise of Saul’s successor, David. Here too there seem to be three independent stories.
According to the first (1 Samuel 16), God dispatches the aging Samuel to Bethlehem to choose a new king (since Saul has been rejected). It will be one of Jesse’s sons, God says to Samuel. When the prophet arrives at Jesse’s house, he is convinced that the oldest son, Eliab, is the one whom God had designated—apparently on the same grounds that Saul had been chosen years earlier: Eliab is tall and handsome. But God says that Eliab is not His choice. He then tries the next, and the next, and the next—seven sons in all—but God rejects each in turn. “Is that all?” Samuel asks. “There is one more,” Jesse says, “the youngest—but he is off with the sheep” (not a very honored occupation).20 “Send for him,” Samuel says, “because I cannot leave until he comes here.” When David arrives, God at once tells Samuel to anoint him, and, as with Israel’s chiefs/judges, “the spirit of the LORD came mightily over David” (1 Sam. 16:13). He is now ready to lead.
This account of David’s rise to power is immediately followed by two more. In the first, King Saul is suffering from bouts of insanity (in the biblical phrase, an “evil spirit from the LORD tormented him,” 1 Sam. 16:14). Music was believed at times to be an effective palliative for insanity, so Saul’s courtiers advise him to hire a musician. But who?
One of the young men answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a warrior, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence; and the LORD is with him.” So Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me your son David who is with the sheep.” . . . So David came to Saul, and entered his service. Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer . . . And whenever the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand, and Saul would be relieved and feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him.
Here, David comes to court not as Saul’s already-anointed successor but as a musician and singer. It is this position that will allow him to walk freely in the corridors of power and, eventually, take over from his employer.
The third account (1 Samuel 17) is the best known: a great Philistine bully, Goliath, is threatening and taunting the Israelites. According to the traditional Hebrew text, Goliath is some nine feet tall—a giant—and he keeps challenging the Israelites to send forth their best man to fight him mano a mano. The Israelites are terrified. Finally, after forty days of such taunts, David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons, appears and persuades King Saul to send him out against Goliath. He is so young and small that he cannot wear the traditional armor or bear the arms that usually go with it; instead, he takes only his slingshot and five smooth stones. With a single shot he fells the arrogant Philistine, then finishes him off with his own sword.21
When Saul first saw David go out against the Philistine, he asked Abner, the commander of the army, “Abner, whose son is that boy?” Abner said, “By your life, your Majesty, I do not know.” The king said, “Then find out whose son that young fellow is.” So, when David had come back from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his hand. Saul said to him, “Whose son are you, young fellow?” And David answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”
It is simply a coincidence, but these three accounts happen to highlight the three (in fact, four) main aspects of David’s “image” among ancient interpreters. Taken together, they encapsulate much of what David meant to readers of the Bible for centuries and centuries.22
In the first account, Samuel chooses David from among his seven brothers and immediately anoints him king. But what did it mean to anoint someone? Quite literally, “anoint” means to pour or rub oil on the person’s head. To us, this is likely to sound rather messy and unpleasant, but that is because we tend to think of the gooey sort of oils used for salad dressing and frying. The oils used for anointing were highly refined. More important, they were perfumed—that was their whole purpose, in fact. In the ancient world, people enjoyed rubbing their bodies with the most wonderful scents they could obtain, surrounding themselves with a world of olfactory sensation. The Bible gives ample evidence that spice merchants traveled long distances with their products—from Arabia and points still farther away—and the anointing oils produced from their wares were clearly a luxury item.23 Thus, when Amos denounces the selfish upper classes of Israel, he mentions specifically those who “drink wine from fancy bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils” (Amos 6:6). So willing were people to pay hefty prices for scented oils that the precise processes for manufacturing certain spices were sometimes kept secret.24 Abstaining from anointing oneself even for a single day was felt to be a form of self-affliction, comparable to fasting.25
To pour anointing oil on someone was thus a nice thing to do, in fact, an honorific gesture, and in Israel it became the symbolic act by which a person was granted exalted office: kings were anointed, and so, at a certain point, were high priests.26 So much was anointing associated with the office of king that the word mashia, “anointed one,” became an elegant synonym for king in biblical Hebrew.
It may have taken some time for David to become king after Samuel had anointed him (and if so, this was quite atypical, since anointing usually symbolized the actual assumption of the new office), but eventually he did take the throne; indeed, he was, by the Bible’s own account, Israel’s dynastic founder and greatest king. And so, many centuries later, when the nation’s heyday was only a distant memory and what was left of the Jewish people now suffered under foreign domination, hope was kindled that sometime in the future things might somehow return to what they had once been: Israel would regain its former glory through the restoration of a Davidic king, a mashia, to the throne. This hope has never been abandoned in Judaism; indeed, long ago it became an established item of Jewish faith: three times a day, pious Jews turn in prayer toward Jerusalem to ask for (among other things) the restoration of the Davidic king, since this will inaugurate a return to the way things were when Israel held sway. As the ancestor of this future king, David thus acquired a particular coloring among ancient interpreters: he was, despite whatever missteps he might have taken in his life, the very model of the royal ideal.
In Christianity the theme of David the mashia acquired, if possible, even greater significance. The first Christians held that Jesus was indeed the long-awaited mashia and so referred to him as the Messiah (from the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew word) as well as the christos (Greek for “anointed one”). As a consequence, David was seen as a forerunner, and a foreshadowing, of Christ: the story of his struggles with enemies and his ultimate victory were understood by Christians to presage the suffering and final triumph of Jesus. His being anointed by Samuel and becoming the christos were therefore a highly significant part of the biblical saga—and yet another proof that “what is hidden in the Old lies open in the New.”
Sweet Singer of Israel
That David came to Saul’s court as a musician and singer was connected to another part of David’s image among ancient (and modern) Bible readers, David the musician and singer. Relatively few political leaders are remembered as talented musicians; their gifts usually lie in other, less aesthetic areas. This alone marked David as unusual—and indeed, his accomplishments as a singer and player seem to have accompanied him throughout his days. When Saul and his sons died in battle, David is said to have composed a moving elegy (2 Sam. 1:19–27); later in life, free from the cares of warfare, he is credited with authoring a hymn of praise (2 Samuel 22). Indeed, David is referred to in 2 Sam. 23:1 as ne‘im zemirot yisra’el, traditionally translated as the “sweet singer of Israel.” And quite apart from the narrative in 1 and 2 Samuel, David’s talents as a musician are highlighted at various other spots in the Bible. Thus, the book of Chronicles credits David with having arranged the Levites’ singing and playing in the temple (1 Chron. 15:16; 16:4) and even with designing the musical instruments used there for praising God (1 Chron. 23:6; 2 Chron. 7:6); long before, the prophet Amos seemed to have said as much (Amos 6:5).
In view of these many references, ancient interpreters came to think of David—despite his standing as Israel’s king—primarily as a composer of songs and prayers. For reasons to be explored presently, David was thought to be the author of the book of Psalms—150 chapters of divine praise, thanksgiving, and petition. But for some ancient readers, that was hardly enough! A text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls actually credits David with more than four thousand works:
And David the son of Jesse was wise, and radiant27 as the light of the sun, and a sage—wise and unblemished in all his ways before God and men. And the LORD gave him a discerning and radiant spirit, and he wrote three thousand six hundred psalms; and songs to sing each and every day before the altar over the tamid sacrifice—for all the days of the year, three hundred and sixty-four; and for the sabbath sacrifices, fifty-two songs; and for the sacrifices of the New Moon and for all the festival days and for the Day of Atonement, thirty songs. Thus, all the songs that he composed were four hundred and forty-six; and songs to be performed against evil spirits, four. Thus, the grand total was four thousand and fifty. All these he composed through prophecy which was given to him by the Most High.
11QPs.a (“David’s Compositions”)
David the Prophet
David was not merely a musician; by singing and playing on the lyre (a small harp) he was able to drive away the “evil spirit from the LORD” that afflicted Saul. This suggested to ancient interpreters that David’s singing itself must have had God’s backing; and since the lyre was frequently used by prophets to bring on their prophecy (1 Sam. 10:5; 2 Kings 3:14–16), it did not seem too much of a stretch to suppose that David himself might have been, in some sense, a prophet—that is, God’s emissary and a transmitter of His words. Indeed, at the end of his life, David pronounced what is clearly described as a prophetic oracle (2 Sam. 23:1), in which he introduces himself in these terms:
The spirit of the LORD speaks through me, His word is upon my tongue; the God of Israel has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me . . .
From such considerations arose a further refinement of the biblical picture of David and his lyre: David the prophet.28 This theme is already adumbrated in the Dead Sea Scrolls passage cited earlier, in which David is said to have composed his four-thousand-plus compositions “through prophecy which was given to him by the Most High.” At roughly the same time that these words were being written, Philo of Alexandria was referring to David as “a certain prophetic fellow” (Who Is Heir 290). If these two sources seem hesitant to call David a prophet outright (saying only that he spoke “through prophecy” or was “prophetic”), that hesitation soon disappeared. Early Christian and rabbinic texts frequently refer to David as a prophet plain and simple.
Indeed, David’s status as a regular prophet was particularly crucial to Christians since, among other texts, verses from the psalms were marshaled to demonstrate that the events of the Gospels had been prophetically foretold (Mk. 12:10–11, 35–37 and parallels; Matt. 4:6; 13:34; etc.). David must therefore have spoken “in the Holy Spirit” (Mk. 12:36). The book of Acts asserts that the Holy Spirit “spoke beforehand by the mouth of David” (Acts 1:16) and that God “spoke by the mouth of our father David His servant” (4:25). Elsewhere in that book, Peter addresses the crowd with these words:
“Fellow countrymen, we all know29 that the patriarch David died and was buried, indeed, his tomb is in our midst to this day. Since he was a prophet, however, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that He would put one of his descendants on his throne [2 Sam. 12:7–13; Ps. 132:11]. Foreseeing this, he [David] spoke of the coming30 of the Messiah, saying that he [David] ‘was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption’” [cf. Septuagint translation of Ps. 15 (MT 16):10.]31
David the Warrior
The story of David and Goliath was often understood in the light of the former themes, “David the prophet” and “David the singer.” On the face of it, the biblical story seems intended to celebrate David’s gifts as a warrior—even at a young age he proved himself on the field of battle against the fiercest of enemies. But for later generations it was the fact that David went out to meet Goliath essentially unarmed and invoked God’s name (1 Sam. 17:46–47) that was important—this is how an unarmed prophet makes war:
In his youth, did he not kill a giant, and take away the people’s disgrace,
when he whirled the stone in the sling and struck down the boasting Goliath?
For he called on the LORD, the Most High, and He gave strength to his right arm
to strike down a mighty warrior, and to exalt the power of his people.
Saul admired the lad’s daring and courage, but could not place full confidence in him by reason of his years, because of which, he said, he was too weak to fight with a skilled warrior. “The promises,” replied David, “I make with the assurance that God is with me, for I have already had proof of aid.”
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 6:181
Such was the David of the Bible as it was read for centuries—anointed forerunner of the Messiah, sweet singer and prophet, God’s warrior who had no need of weapons. If you were to ask anyone from the closing centuries BCE to the nineteenth century CE who David was, this is the David you would get. Particularly by dint of his authorship of the book of Psalms, David’s was a towering presence in the Hebrew Bible: he was one of God’s chosen ones, an example for generations of Jews and Christians. But the truth that modern scholars present is, as usual, somewhat different.