Who was King Saul?
When they lived Around the eleventh century BC, at the beginning of the monarchy in Israel, before the reign of David.
In short
Saul was the first king of Israel, anointed by Samuel after the people demanded a king like the other nations. He reigned, won battles, was rejected in two separate scenes, hunted David for years, and died in battle on Mount Gilboa along with three of his sons.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 13 min read
The short version of Saul is a moral lesson: the king who disobeyed and lost everything. It fits in a paragraph and does not survive a reading of the books of Samuel, where the story has layers that do not fit that mould — a people demanding a king against God’s declared will and getting one anyway, two rejections with different reasons, a spirit attributed to God, a jealousy that lasts for years, and an enemy who twice refuses to kill him.
What makes Saul hard to read is not that he is evil. It is that the text does not present him that way. He starts out modest to the point of hiding on the day of his own acclamation, and ends in a scene David laments in verse. Between the two is a man steadily losing the ground under him, and the narrator follows that loss without turning it into an example of what not to do.
Before there was a king, there was a demand
The story of Saul does not begin with Saul. It begins with the elders of Israel going to Samuel, now old, and demanding a king to judge them, like all the other nations. Samuel dislikes the request and takes it to God, and the answer comes in two parts: listen to their voice, because it is not you they have rejected but me — but warn them first what a king will do to them.
The warning that follows is concrete: the king will take their sons for the army and the chariots, their daughters for household service, the best of their fields, vineyards and olive groves, and a tenth of the rest. The people hear all of it and insist. It is inside that insistence that Saul is chosen.
There is a tension here that the Old Testament itself carries and does not resolve. Deuteronomy 17 already provided for the institution of a king, with rules, and with no sign of disapproval. First Samuel 8 presents the same request as a rejection of God. Anyone reading both notices that Scripture has more than one voice on the monarchy — and Saul is the man caught between those two voices from day one.
4Therefore, all those greater by birth of Israel, having gathered together, went to Samuel at Ramah.
5And they said to him: “Behold, you are elderly, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Appoint for us a king, so that he may judge us, just as all the nations have.”
6And the word was displeasing in the eyes of Samuel, for they had said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord.
7Then the Lord said to Samuel: “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they are saying to you. For they have not rejected you, but me, lest I reign over them.
8In accord with all their works, which they have done from the day when I led them away from Egypt, even to this day: just as they have forsaken me, and served foreign gods, so now they also do to you.
9Now therefore, hear their voice. Yet truly, testify to them and foretell to them the rights of the king who will reign over them.”
The request and the answer. Note that God grants and warns in the same speech: there is neither approval nor refusal here, and the ambivalence of this scene shadows Saul’s whole reign.
14When you will have entered into the land which the Lord your God will give to you, and you possess it, and you live in it, and you say, ‘I will appoint a king over me, just as all the surrounding nations have done,’
15you shall appoint him whom the Lord your God will choose from among the number of your brothers. You cannot make a man of another people king, one who is not your brother.
The legislation about a king, written earlier and anticipating exactly the request 1 Samuel 8 records — including the comparison with the other nations. Reading the two passages together shows why the monarchy is a contested subject inside the Old Testament itself.
A tall king, a handsome king, and a king in hiding
Saul enters the narrative looking for his father’s lost donkeys. He is from Benjamin, the smallest of the tribes, son of a man of standing named Kish, and the text describes him as the best-looking man in Israel and taller than anyone else from the shoulders up. Samuel anoints him privately, before any public announcement.
The public acclamation comes later, by lot among the tribes, and it is there that the detail defining his beginning appears. When the lot falls on Saul, he is not present. They look for him, do not find him, and the answer that comes back is that he is in hiding. They have to go and fetch him so the people can see him and shout that the king should live.
That is the early Saul: reluctant, retiring, and with a streak of generosity the text records shortly afterwards — when some doubt him, and later when others want the doubters executed, he stops it. Nothing in that portrait anticipates the man who will hunt David through the wilderness for years.
20And Samuel brought near all the tribes of Israel, and the lot fell upon the tribe of Benjamin.
21And he brought near the tribe of Benjamin, with its families, and the lot fell upon the family of Matri. And then it went to Saul, the son of Kish. Therefore, they sought him, but he was not found.
22And after these things, they consulted the Lord as to whether he would soon arrive there. And the Lord responded, “Behold, he is hidden at home.”
23And so they ran and brought him there. And he stood in the midst of the people, and he was taller than the entire people, from the shoulders upward.
24And Samuel said to all the people: “Certainly, you see the one whom the Lord has chosen, that there is not anyone like him among all the people.” And all the people cried out and said, “Long live the king!”
The acclamation scene, with a king who has to be found before he can be presented. Hold on to the image: it is the exact counterpoint to the man who appears from chapter 18 on.
Two rejections, with different reasons
Saul is rejected twice, in two separate chapters, for two reasons that are not the same. Anyone summarising the story as "he disobeyed" is collapsing the two into one, and losing precisely what is strangest here.
The first is at Gilgal. Saul waits seven days for the prophet, as agreed, and the army starts to melt away while the Philistines mass. He then offers the sacrifice without waiting. Samuel arrives right afterwards and says he has acted foolishly and that the kingdom will not continue with him. The scene is easy to moralise and hard to read calmly: the deadline had been kept, and what he is charged with is acting inside it.
The second is in chapter 15, and it is the hardest passage in the Bible about this character. The order given to Saul is one of total destruction against Amalek — the text lists men, women, children and animals. Saul carries out the campaign but spares Agag, the enemy king, along with the finest of the livestock. That is why he is rejected: not for killing, but for not killing everything. There is no honest way to tell that scene without saying so, and it is one of the passages any reader has the right to find difficult.
It is in this chapter that the best-known sentence about Saul appears, spoken by Samuel: obedience is worth more than sacrifice. And it is here too that the text has God say the appointment of the first king displeases him, and that Saul, when confronted, admits the fault and explains it: he feared the people and gave in to their voice.
8But he waited for seven days, in accord with what was agreed with Samuel. But Samuel did not arrive at Gilgal, for the people were scattering away from him.
9Therefore, Saul said, “Bring me the holocaust and the peace offerings.” And he offered the holocaust.
10And when he had completed the offering of the holocaust, behold, Samuel arrived. And Saul went out to meet him, so that he might greet him.
11And Samuel said to him, “What have you done?” Saul responded: “Since I saw that the people were scattering away from me, and you had not arrived after the agreed upon days, and yet the Philistines had gathered together at Michmash,
12I said: ‘Now the Philistines will descend to me at Gilgal. And I have not appeased the face of the Lord.’ Compelled by necessity, I offered the holocaust.
13And Samuel said to Saul: “You have acted foolishly. You have not kept the commandments of the Lord your God, which he instructed to you. And if you had not acted in this way, the Lord would, here and now, have prepared your kingdom over Israel forever.
14But by no means shall your kingdom rise up any more. The Lord has sought for himself a man according to his own heart. And him the Lord has instructed to be the leader over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord has instructed.”
The first rejection, at Gilgal. Worth noticing the calculation Saul offers as a defence: he describes the army dissolving and the enemy massing, and Samuel’s answer engages with neither point.
22And Samuel said: “Does the Lord want holocausts and victims, and not instead that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifice. And to heed is greater than to offer the fat of rams.
23Therefore, it is like the sin of paganism to rebel. And it is like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey. For this reason, therefore, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord has also rejected you from being king.”
24And Saul said to Samuel: “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the word of the Lord, and your words, by fearing the people and obeying their voice.
The verdict and the confession. Samuel’s sentence is the most quoted line in all the material about Saul, and it is almost always quoted without verse 24 beside it, where Saul says what drove him: fear of his own people.
The spirit, the women’s song, and the years of pursuit
After the second rejection, the text marks a turn with a sentence in two movements: the Lord’s Spirit went away from Saul, and what began to trouble him was a wicked spirit sent — the text says so — by the Lord himself. It is an uncomfortable formulation, and there is no point softening it: the text itself traces that thing back to God, and does not explain.
Music enters here. David is brought to court precisely to play when the spirit came, and the text says Saul loved him and made him his armour-bearer. It was Saul who brought David close — which makes what follows worse, not better.
The turn is a song. Returning from a victory, the women come out singing that Saul’s tally was a thousand and David’s ten thousand. Saul is furious, and the text reproduces the arithmetic he does out loud: they gave David ten thousand and me a thousand, all that is left is the kingdom. From that day on, says the narrator, Saul no longer looked at David with a good eye.
What follows takes up most of 1 Samuel: a spear thrown, traps, a marriage used as a snare, flight, wilderness, and a pursuit involving whole armies that reaches the killing of the priests of Nob for having given David bread. Twice David has Saul within reach and does not kill him, and on one of those occasions Saul weeps and says David is more just than he is. Then he goes back to hunting him.
6Now when David returned, after he had struck down the Philistine, the women went out, from all the cities of Israel, leading the singing and dancing, rejoicing with timbrels and bells, so as to meet king Saul.
7And the women sang, as they played, saying, “Saul has struck down a thousand, and David ten thousand.”
8Then Saul became exceedingly angry, and this word was displeasing in his eyes. And he said: “They have given David ten thousand, and to me they gave only one thousand. What is left for him, except the kingdom itself?”
9Therefore, Saul did not regard David with a good eye, from that day and thereafter.
The song and the arithmetic. The text lays out the king’s entire reasoning in one sentence, and the rest of the chapter depends on it — not on anything David does.
17And when David had completed speaking words in this way to Saul, Saul said, “Could this be your voice, my son David?” And Saul lifted up his voice, and he wept.
18And he said to David: “You are more just than I am. For you have distributed good to me, but I have repaid evil to you.
The cave scene, after David spares him. Saul weeps, calls David his son and admits out loud that he was the one who repaid good with evil. It is the most lucid self-assessment he makes in the whole book — and it does not change his behaviour.
The night at Endor
Samuel is dead by now. The Philistines are camped at Shunem, and Saul, seeing the size of their army, is afraid. He consults the Lord and gets no answer at all — not through dreams, not through the priests, not through prophets. That silence is what sets up the next scene.
He asks his servants to find a woman who consults the dead. The irony is recorded by the text a few verses earlier: it was Saul who had driven those practices out of the land. He disguises himself, goes at night to Endor and asks her to bring up Samuel.
What happens there is described without explanation. The woman sees something, cries out when she recognises the king, and the figure that appears speaks to Saul and repeats the sentence: the kingdom has been taken from him and given to David, and the next day he and his sons will be with the prophet. Saul falls to the ground, and the text explains it with a human detail — he had not eaten for a day and a night.
And then comes the part that almost never gets told. The woman, who risked her life by receiving the king, insists that he eat before leaving. He refuses; she and the servants press him; she kills a fattened calf she had at home, bakes bread and serves the three of them. In a narrative where nobody has treated Saul well for chapters, the person who feeds him on his last night is the woman he had ordered driven out of the land.
3Now Samuel was dead, and all of Israel mourned for him, and they buried him in Ramah, his city. And Saul took away the magi and soothsayers from the land.
4And the Philistines gathered together, and they arrived and made camp at Shunem. Then Saul also gathered all of Israel, and he arrived at Gilboa.
5And Saul saw the camp of the Philistines, and he was afraid, and his heart was exceedingly terrified.
6And he consulted the Lord. But he did not respond to him, neither by dreams, nor by priests, nor by prophets.
7And Saul said to his servants, “Seek for me a woman having a divining spirit, and I will go to her, and consult through her.” And his servants said to him, “There is a woman having a divining spirit at Endor.”
The silence that precedes the decision. It matters to read this part before judging the visit to Endor: the text makes a point of recording that Saul tried the legitimate channels first and got nothing back.
15Then Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disquieted me, so that I would be raised up?” And Saul said: “I am greatly distressed. For the Philistines fight against me, and God has withdrawn from me, and he is not willing to heed me, neither by the hand of prophets, nor by dreams. Therefore, I have summoned you, so that you would reveal to me what I should do.”
16And Samuel said, “Why do you question me, though the Lord has withdrawn from you, and has crossed over to your rival?
17For the Lord will do to you just as he spoke by my hand. And he will tear your kingdom from your hand. And he will give it to your neighbor David.
18For you did not obey the voice of the Lord, and you did not carry out the wrath of his fury upon Amalek. For this reason, the Lord has done to you what you are enduring this day.
19And the Lord also will give Israel into the hands of the Philistines, along with you. Then tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. But the Lord will also deliver the camp of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.”
The dialogue. Note that the speech attributed to Samuel brings no new information: it repeats the verdict of chapter 15 and announces the outcome of the next day, offering no way out.
Gilboa, and the lament David wrote
The battle takes place on Mount Gilboa and it is a complete defeat. Three of Saul’s sons die there, Jonathan among them. Wounded by the archers and surrounded, Saul asks his armour-bearer to kill him; the armour-bearer refuses out of fear, and the king dies on the field that same day. This page does not describe how — the chapter is open to anyone who wants to read it, and nothing that can be said about Saul depends on repeating that scene here.
What comes afterwards deserves attention. The Philistines display the body on the wall of Bethshan, and the men of Jabesh Gilead — the first city Saul had rescued, at the start of his reign — walk all night to recover the bodies and bury them, then fast for seven days. It is the last scene of the first book of Samuel, and it is not about guilt: it is about someone being treated with dignity by people who remembered what he did.
And there is the lament. David, who spent years being hunted by this man, composes an elegy for him and for Jonathan, orders it taught to Judah, and puts not one line of score-settling in it. He calls the two of them beloved and worthy of love, says they were not divided in death, and asks the daughters of Israel to weep for Saul. Anyone wanting to know how the Bible assesses Saul has to set that poem beside Samuel’s verdict — the text keeps both.
Centuries later, the Chronicler gives a harsher summary: he says Saul died for his own iniquity and for consulting a woman diviner instead of trusting the Lord. It is the reading of a later author, written for another purpose, and it too is in the canon. The two assessments coexist, and neither cancels the other.
23Saul and Jonathan, worthy to be loved, and stately in their life: even in death they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions.
24O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you with scarlet finery, who offered ornaments of gold for your adornment.
The centre of David’s lament. Note that Saul is not remembered here for the ending, but for what he gave the people — a funeral eulogy in the exact sense, written by the one man with more reason than anyone not to write it.
13Thus did Saul die for his iniquities, because he betrayed the commandment of the Lord which he had instructed, and did not keep it. And moreover, he even consulted a woman diviner;
14for he did not trust in the Lord. Because of this, he caused his death, and he transferred his kingdom to David, the son of Jesse.
The Chronicler’s assessment, much later and much more severe. Worth reading right after the lament: two biblical judgements on the same life, and the canon preserved both without choosing between them.
What the text does not say
Biblical figures gather layers of tradition that Scripture does not support. Telling the two apart does not diminish the story — it gives back what is actually written.
What is commonly said
Saul was rejected because he disobeyed once, out of impatience.
What Scripture says
There are two rejection scenes, in separate chapters, with distinct reasons. In 1 Samuel 13 he offers the sacrifice at Gilgal after waiting the agreed period; in 1 Samuel 15 he is rejected for not carrying out to the end an order of total destruction against Amalek, having spared the enemy king and the finest of the livestock. Summing both up as "disobedience" erases the difference between them and erases what the second one actually charges.
What is commonly said
God did not want to give Israel a king, and Saul was a mistake from beginning to end.
What Scripture says
The Old Testament has more than one voice on this. Deuteronomy 17 legislates about a king with no sign of disapproval; 1 Samuel 8 presents the request as a rejection of God and still orders it granted; and it is God who points Saul out to Samuel. The text sustains the ambivalence rather than resolving it, and Saul is anointed inside it.
What is commonly said
The evil spirit that troubled Saul was the Devil, or was depression.
What Scripture says
The text says the spirit came from the Lord, and does not identify it with the Devil or describe symptoms. The two most common modern readings — demonological and psychiatric — are later interpretations applied to a sentence Scripture leaves unexplained. What the text narrates is the effect: music relieved him, and that is why David was brought to court.
What is commonly said
Saul consulted a witch at Endor.
What Scripture says
The woman is not named and is not called a witch: the text describes her by the practice, as someone who consults the dead. She charges nothing, points out that she risked her life, and the chapter ends with her persuading the king to eat and preparing a meal for him and his servants. She is the only person who treats Saul with care that night.
What is commonly said
The Bible condemns Saul and presents him as an example of what not to do.
What Scripture says
The canon keeps two assessments. One is the Chronicler’s, which puts his death down to his iniquity and to consulting a diviner. The other is David’s lament in 2 Samuel 1, which calls him beloved, asks the people to weep for him and mentions no fault at all. Neither was removed, and the text does not indicate which should prevail.
Where this person appears
4Therefore, all those greater by birth of Israel, having gathered together, went to Samuel at Ramah.
5And they said to him: “Behold, you are elderly, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Appoint for us a king, so that he may judge us, just as all the nations have.”
6And the word was displeasing in the eyes of Samuel, for they had said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord.
7Then the Lord said to Samuel: “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they are saying to you. For they have not rejected you, but me, lest I reign over them.
8In accord with all their works, which they have done from the day when I led them away from Egypt, even to this day: just as they have forsaken me, and served foreign gods, so now they also do to you.
9Now therefore, hear their voice. Yet truly, testify to them and foretell to them the rights of the king who will reign over them.”
The people’s demand and the ambivalent answer. This is where the story of Saul actually starts, and without this scene the rest of his reign has no context.
20And Samuel brought near all the tribes of Israel, and the lot fell upon the tribe of Benjamin.
21And he brought near the tribe of Benjamin, with its families, and the lot fell upon the family of Matri. And then it went to Saul, the son of Kish. Therefore, they sought him, but he was not found.
22And after these things, they consulted the Lord as to whether he would soon arrive there. And the Lord responded, “Behold, he is hidden at home.”
23And so they ran and brought him there. And he stood in the midst of the people, and he was taller than the entire people, from the shoulders upward.
24And Samuel said to all the people: “Certainly, you see the one whom the Lord has chosen, that there is not anyone like him among all the people.” And all the people cried out and said, “Long live the king!”
The acclamation, with the king who had to be searched for. The contrast with the following chapters is the backbone of the narrative.
22And Samuel said: “Does the Lord want holocausts and victims, and not instead that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifice. And to heed is greater than to offer the fat of rams.
23Therefore, it is like the sin of paganism to rebel. And it is like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey. For this reason, therefore, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord has also rejected you from being king.”
24And Saul said to Samuel: “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the word of the Lord, and your words, by fearing the people and obeying their voice.
Samuel’s verdict and the explanation Saul gives for what he did. The two verses are usually separated, and together they tell a different story.
6Now when David returned, after he had struck down the Philistine, the women went out, from all the cities of Israel, leading the singing and dancing, rejoicing with timbrels and bells, so as to meet king Saul.
7And the women sang, as they played, saying, “Saul has struck down a thousand, and David ten thousand.”
8Then Saul became exceedingly angry, and this word was displeasing in his eyes. And he said: “They have given David ten thousand, and to me they gave only one thousand. What is left for him, except the kingdom itself?”
9Therefore, Saul did not regard David with a good eye, from that day and thereafter.
The exact moment the jealousy starts, dated by the narrator: from that day onward.
15Then Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disquieted me, so that I would be raised up?” And Saul said: “I am greatly distressed. For the Philistines fight against me, and God has withdrawn from me, and he is not willing to heed me, neither by the hand of prophets, nor by dreams. Therefore, I have summoned you, so that you would reveal to me what I should do.”
16And Samuel said, “Why do you question me, though the Lord has withdrawn from you, and has crossed over to your rival?
17For the Lord will do to you just as he spoke by my hand. And he will tear your kingdom from your hand. And he will give it to your neighbor David.
18For you did not obey the voice of the Lord, and you did not carry out the wrath of his fury upon Amalek. For this reason, the Lord has done to you what you are enduring this day.
19And the Lord also will give Israel into the hands of the Philistines, along with you. Then tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. But the Lord will also deliver the camp of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.”
Endor. The strangest scene in the book, narrated without the text explaining what exactly happened there.
23Saul and Jonathan, worthy to be loved, and stately in their life: even in death they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions.
24O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you with scarlet finery, who offered ornaments of gold for your adornment.
David’s lament. The last biblical word on Saul inside the books of Samuel is this one, and it is praise.