1 Sam 9-14 - That Saul, folks!

The readings - Days 88 & 89 - 1 Samuel 9-14

Two important lessons can be learned from these six chapters of First Samuel.

1) Saul, as generally vilified and derided as he remains, was at the beginning a chosen God-picked superstar.

and

2) Kings (dictators, tyrants, etc) are more often than not undone (at least initially) by their own irrepressible arrogance and stupidity.



It's easy to forget in the brilliance of David's legend as king of Israel that Saul was actually God's first choice to rule the nation that had spurned Him as their leader. Saul was perfect for the job, and more importantly, had God's vote, so that pretty much sealed the deal.

Immediately (at least in the narrative's timeline) after he is publicly introduced as king, Saul gathers an army of hundreds of thousands and goes and whomps the Philistines but good - an auspicious start for any national ruler.

However, from there things start to go a bit downhill. So far, by chapter 14's end, Saul still hasn't gone against a commandment of God, so he's got that going for him, but he has been a bit of an idiot as far as letting his own ego take over his common sense, not for the last time.

What general orders that his soldiers starve until the whole war is over? Saul - that's who. And it extends to his own son, Jonathan, who ate some tasty, tasty honey after having missed the memo about the moratorium on food. Eventually the people of Israel have to talk Saul out of killing his own son, so Saul's not exactly the trifling type.

One interesting thing that comes up again in this passage is the way Saul determines that it was Jonathan who broke the no-eating rule. Again, the divination of guilt/innocence comes down to a crap-shoot. Having cast lots to determine that it was either himself or Jonathan and not every other person in Israel, they cast lots again to find out that Jonathan's the cause.

I've met many people who would consider flipping a coin to be a completely invalid (and probably - to some - quite heretical) way of determining God's will, or the actual truth of any situation, but I still get the feeling there's an element of deep faith involved in the practice of casting lots to determine stuff in the OT that people could probably do with a lot more of in their lives.