The Kings of Israel – 2 / Saul

Saul (c. 1030?–1009 BCE)

The Philistine Threat - The Bible depicts Saul as a study in contrasts. Although he was Israel’s first king, he was ultimately rejected (1 Samuel 15:10–11). His dark, fitful personality suffers by contrast with the two legendary figures between whom he seems wedged—Samuel, the prophet-priest, and David, Saul’s hero-successor. The Bible describes Saul rising to the throne in the face of the Philistine military threat. The Philistines are known both from the Bible and from extrabiblical sources.  Egyptian inscriptions mention them as one of the so-called Sea Peoples. Apparently, they originally came from the Aegean area or from southern Anatolia. Other Sea Peoples include the Tjekkar, the Sheklesh, the Danuna and the Weshesh. The Sea Peoples destroyed a number of cities on the Syro-Phoenician coast at the beginning of the 12th century BCE and even tried to subdue Egypt. However, they were stopped in a large-scale battle, fought both on land and on sea, in the eighth year of the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses III (c. 1177 B.C.E.). Reliefs and hieroglyphic accounts of this battle appear on the walls of Ramesses III’s temple at Medinet Habu in Thebes.  The Sea Peoples settled in various parts of the Egyptian province of Canaan, probably with Egypt’s agreement: The Philistines occupied the coastal plain between Gaza and Jaffa; the Tjekkar occupied the Sharon plain around the city of Dor; the Cherethites (Cretans?), perhaps another Sea People, settled the so-called Negev of the Cherethites (1 Samuel 30:14).

In the coastal plain, the Philistines organized themselves into a pentapolis, a confederation of five cities: Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron. Each city was ruled by a sérèn. (The only Philistine word that is known with certainty, sérèn [Joshua 13:3; Judges 16:5, 8, 23, 27; 1 Samuel 5:8, 11] may be related to the Greek term tyrannos.)
Eventually, the Philistine military expansion near Aphek brought the Philistines close to the territory occupied by the Israelite confederation.  The Philistines were apparently skilled warriors who used the most advanced military equipment of their time. Their weapons were made of both bronze, the predominant metal until about 1200 BCE, and iron, which was becoming increasingly available.

According to the biblical record, the Israelites mustered in the hill country overlooking Aphek. A two-stage battle between the Israelites and the Philistines ensued. In the first phase of the battle, “Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who slew about four thousand men on the field of battle” (1 Samuel 4:2). In desperation, the Israelites brought the Ark of the Covenant, which had been installed at Shiloh, to lead them in battle. In the second phase of the battle, the Israelites were again defeated, and the Ark was captured by the Philistines. After the battle of Ebenezer (1 Samuel 4), the Philistines occupied at least part of the Ephraimite hill country. After their victory at Ebenezer, the Philistines installed garrisons (or governors) in the hill country of Ephraim and Benjamin, the most important of which was at Geba (1 Samuel 13:3–5).

Like the Habiru/‘Apiru of the Late Bronze Age, hundreds of years earlier, and the Jews of the Maccabean revolt, hundreds of years later, some Israelites took to the hill country and hid in natural caves (1 Samuel 14:11, 22).

The Choice of Saul - Facing these dire circumstances, the Israelite tribes determined that they must have a king. The story of the choice of Saul as king appears in three different traditions: In the first, Saul is looking for his father’s lost she-asses when he meets Samuel, who anoints him prince (nasi) over Israel (1 Samuel 9:3–10:16). In the second tradition, Saul is hiding among baggage at Mizpah when Samuel casts lots to choose the king (1 Samuel 10:17–27); in the third and probably most reliable tradition,  Saul, at the head of Israelite columns, has rescued Jabesh-Gilead from an Ammonite attack, and the people, with Samuel’s agreement, proclaim their allegiance to Saul at Gilgal (1 Samuel 11–15). In each of these accounts, Saul is installed and anointed as king by Samuel, now an old man.

Samuel was regarded as the last of the judges (1 Samuel 7:6, 15, 8:1–3), the charismatic leaders who emerged at times of crisis. Another tradition, probably a later one, regarded Samuel as a prophet (1 Samuel 3:20). He also officiated at the tabernacle at Shiloh, where the Ark was kept, which means he was a priest. But Samuel’s leadership was regarded as insufficient. The tribal elders apparently felt that the appointment of a king was a historical necessity: “Now appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations,” they told Samuel (1 Samuel 8:5). Saul, a Benjaminite, seems to have been chosen because he was tall and strong and well qualified to wage war against Israel’s enemies.

Like earlier charismatic leaders, Saul’s principal task was to conduct a war of liberation. Saul’s successful expedition against the Ammonites at Jabesh-Gilead (1 Samuel 11:1–11) was no doubt an important consideration in his selection.  Now he was called upon to lead the people against the Philistines, a people who were well organized, well equipped and motivated by an expansionist ideology that included plans to bring the whole country west of the Jordan under its control.

The first battle—at Michmash—was a victory for Israel (1 Samuel 13:5–14:46). The decision to appoint a king seemed to have been a wise one. But this was by no means the last battle of the war.

Saul the Warrior - “There was hard fighting against the Philistines all the days of Saul; and when Saul saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he attached him to himself” (1 Samuel 14:52).

The Philistine war thus became a guerrilla war, characterized by ambushes and surprise attacks against enemy posts. Generally, it did not involve great numbers of fighters. Saul had only “about six hundred men with him” near Gibeah (1 Samuel 14:2). Unfortunately, the Bible gives only brief intimations of the details of the continuing wars with the Philistines. Saul probably succeeded in driving the Philistines out of the central part of Israel. But the Philistines did not give up. They apparently attacked from the south, threatening Judah in a confrontation in which a young Judahite named David distinguished himself (1 Samuel 17).

Saul seems to have been generally successful as long as he fought in the hills, but his troops could not win a battle in the open plain. Witness what happened near Mt. Gilboa (1 Samuel 28–31). The Philistines attacked from the north through the Jezreel Valley. The Israelites should never have come down into the plain to fight.

The Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and fell slain on Mt. Gilboa … Thus Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men, on the same day together. And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook their cities and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them. (1 Samuel 31:1, 6–7)

This sober presentation of an Israelite disaster has a ring of truth even though, beginning in David’s time, there were divergent traditions concerning the details of Saul’s death (compare 1 Samuel 31:3–5 with 2 Samuel 1:6–10).

Other than the Philistine war, which seems to have been the principal feature of Saul’s reign, the biblical text mentions wars against the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the king of Zobah and the Amalekites (1 Samuel 14:47–48).

The main battle of the war with the Amalekites is described in 1 Samuel 15. The Amalekites were the Israelites’ special enemies because they were the first to confront Israel in the wilderness after the Israelites left Egypt. Without provocation, the Amalekites had attacked Israel from the rear (Exodus 17:8–16).

Samuel instructed Saul and his men to kill all the Amalekites and their animals, according to the tradition of hérèm (compare Joshua 6:18 and 7), which allotted the fruits of victory to the Lord alone. However, Saul spared the Amalekite king Agag and the best of the Amalekites’ domestic animals. For this sin, Samuel denounced Saul and declared that the Lord had irrevocably rejected him. Samuel, the Bible tells us, “never saw Saul again … And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:35).

Tentative Evaluation of Saul’s Reign – We do not know how long Saul ruled. According to the traditional Hebrew text (the Masoretic text), which unfortunately is badly preserved at this point, Saul became king when he was one year old (!) and his reign lasted only “two years” (1 Samuel 13:1).  This of course seems improbable, and several commentators correct the text to read “twenty-two years”; but this remains conjectural.

Although the length of Saul’s reign is uncertain, two biblical passages offer some information about the general economic and political conditions under Saul:

Now there was no smith to be found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, “The Hebrews must not make swords or spears for themselves”; so all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen their plowshare, mattocks, axes, or sickles; and the charge was a pim [two-thirds of a shekel] for the plowshares and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads. So on the day of the battle, neither sword nor spear was to be found in the possession of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan; but Saul and Jonathan his son had them. (1 Samuel 13:19–22)

This first passage reflects a non-specialized society of peasants and shepherds in which even iron implements were rare. The second passage describes Saul’s family:

Now the sons of Saul were Jonathan, Ishvi, and Malchishua; and the names of his two daughters were these: the name of the firstborn was Merab and the name of the younger, Michal. The name of Saul’s wife was Ahinoam daughter of Ahimaaz. And the name of the commander of his army was Abner son of Ner, Saul’s uncle. (1 Samuel 14:49–50)

This passage demonstrates that Saul’s kingship was essentially a family matter. The principal specialized responsibility, leadership of the army, was in the hands of Saul’s cousin Abner.

It is difficult to give a balanced historical assessment of Saul’s reign.  In the biblical tradition, he seems to be presented as the typical bad king,  in contrast to his adversary and successor, David. This contrast is the central theme of the stories in 1 Samuel 16–27, the bulk of which seems to have been written by David’s companion and priest Abiathar (cf. 1 Samuel 22:20) or someone close to him.  These chapters may contain some reliable information,  but it is presented in a one-sided and tendentious way. They describe, in sometimes divergent traditions, the stormy relationship between Saul and the young David. David had distinguished himself in the Philistine wars and had been given Saul’s second daughter, Michal, in marriage. Saul became increasingly jealous of David, accusing his son-in-law of conspiring against him. On several occasions, Saul tried to kill David.

David fled to Judah, but Saul pursued him. Finally, David took refuge in Philistine territory. Written from David’s viewpoint, the stories in 1 Samuel 16–27 tend to depict David as right in rebelling against Saul and seeking refuge in Philistine territory.  But they also reveal that people from Bethlehem in Judah joined Saul in battle when the Philistines tried to invade the central hill country from the southwest (1 Samuel 17:1). Saul obviously exerted some political influence south of Jerusalem in the northern mountains of Judah, preparing the way for the federation of Israel and Judah under David.

The historicity of many of Saul’s other wars, however, is doubtful. The wars against the Moabites, the Edomites, the king of Zobah and even the Amalekites (1 Samuel 14:47–48, 15) may simply be a transposition from David to Saul made by the Judahite historian because he had so little information about Saul. Such wars far from Saul’s home base seem improbable, especially when the Philistine threat was so strong and Saul’s army was so poorly organized.

Unfortunately, we are left with little solid information about Saul or his reign. All that can be said with confidence is that Saul seems to have been named king so that he would lead the Israelites in their wars against the Philistines.

Saul’s “kingdom” was not very large. It probably included Mt. Ephraim, Benjamin and Gilead. He also exerted some influence in the northern mountains of Judah and beyond the Jezreel Valley. Instead of having a capital city or a palace, Saul set up his tent “in the outskirts of Gibeah under the pomegranate tree which is at Migron” (1 Samuel 14:2) or in Gibeah, where he sat “under the tamarisk tree on the height with his spear in his hand, and all his servants [i.e., ministers] were standing about him” (1 Samuel 22:6).

Saul’s “kingship,” as might be expected from the biblical record, left hardly a trace archaeologically speaking. Surveys and excavations in the hill country of Manasseh,  Ephraim  and Benjamin,  and at sites like ‘Izbet Sartah,  have revealed farms, small villages and open-air cult places on hilltops. To the south, in northern Judah, settlement was even sparser.  The fortified site of Khirbet ed-Dawwara, northeast of Jerusalem, had perhaps a hundred inhabitants,  and this was large for Saul’s kingdom. The principal Israelite site of the previous period, Shiloh,  seems to have been destroyed in the mid-11th century B.C.E.  by an intense conflagration. This destruction is often attributed to the Philistines as a follow-up operation after their victory over the Israelites at Ebenezer (1 Samuel 4). Shiloh is mentioned only once in the stories of Saul and David (1 Samuel 14:3).

Archaeology seems to confirm that until about 1000 BCE, the end of Iron Age I, Israelite society was essentially a society of farmers and stockbreeders without any truly centralized organization and administration.  Recent population estimates set “a figure of about 50,000 settled Israelites west of the Jordan at the end of the eleventh century BC.”

By contrast, Philistine urban civilization was flourishing in the 11th century BCE, as revealed by  excavations at Ashdod, Tel Gerisa, Tel Miqne (biblical Ekron) and Ashkelon.

Saul’s reign ended in total failure with his tragic death. After the rout on Mt. Gilboa, the Israelite revolt against Philistine domination seemed hopeless. Under the leadership of Saul’s adversary, David, however, the fight for independence from the Philistines—the raison d’être of Saul’s kingship—was taken up once again.