WAS KING SAUL A VILLAIN? (I SAMUEL 9-31)

Some people apparently think only in terms of black and white when they read a book or watch a movie so that, for example, whether it is a romance, war drama, or mystery, the main thing they are looking for is to sort out the good guys from the bad guys. In the early days before the talkies, those two extremes were easy to distinguish from one another since the villain in a melodrama generally had a long mustache which he loved to twirl between his fingers or, if it was a cowboy movie, he wore a black hat in contrast to the hero who always had a white one. As audiences became more sophisticated, the clues became much more subtle.

Then when Alfred Hitchcock came along, he turned the tables on the audience entirely by often making the villains the most charming or sympathetic characters in his movies, while it was the “heroes” who generally possessed some fatal flaw. Hitchcock did this to demonstrate that each of us has within ourselves the potential to act in either an admirable or despicable manner.

So when we approach an epic story like that in I and II Samuel centering around King Saul's fall from power and David's rise, we should avoid the temptation to simply label Saul as the villain in the piece and David as the man in the white hat. As William B. Grey wrote in an old poem, “She [or He in this case] is more to be pitied than censured.” If we don't try to see ourselves in each of these men's shoes, we will be missing out on many of the lessons God has intended for us.

We should first of all remember that when Samuel was seeking God's choice for the first king of Israel, he was led to Saul. But instead of Saul being flattered that such an important man was talking to him, Saul's comment, as recorded in I Samuel 9:21, was simply, “Am I not a Benjaminite, from the least of the tribes of Israel? And is not my family the humblest of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then have you spoken to me in this way?”

I will admit that I see myself here in that reply. At my workplace, they were looking for a replacement for a group leader who had been transferred to another location. Our Lab Director called me into his office and tried to sell me on taking the job myself. My honest reply was, “Why didn't you ask [I named two more chemists whom I myself would have chosen] instead?” Unlike Samuel's words and actions, our rather blunt Director blurted out, “Do you really think I would have approached you if those two hadn't already turned me down?”

It happened that, like Saul, I eventually got that promotion from a command at our headquarters somewhat against my will and quite certainly against our Director's will. We actually see the same sort of thing in I Samuel 10 when lots are being openly drawn to reveal God's candidate for king. It all comes down to Saul, but he is nowhere to be found. In v. 22 God himself has to show everyone where Saul is hiding among the baggage while hoping he will not be discovered. Saul is revealed in this episode as being anything but a power-hungry man. But time and circumstances will change him for the worse.

The first hint we are given as to Saul's fatal flaw is found in Chapter 13 when Saul has assembled a rather frightened army to fight the advancing Philistine troops. Instead of waiting until Samuel arrived to give a sacrifice to God to bless their endeavor, Saul took that duty on himself in violation of Samuel's instructions. Saul's motive in taking that drastic action is explained as being due to Saul's fear that his troops would desert if he waited any longer.

We find that same unfortunate attitude in a slightly different guise in many of the more fundamentalist churches with which I have been acquainted. Their constant mantra is not “What is right in God's eye?” but “What will people think?” Thus, they seem to view other people, whether believers or unbelievers, as the judge they must fear and satisfy rather than the only true Judge. These people have not really rejected God, but they are exhibiting by their words and actions that they are far more concerned with how they might appear in their fellow men's eyes.

I Samuel 14 contains another telling episode in which Saul attempts to do the right thing in God's eyes but in the end backs down to peer pressure. On the plus side, Saul punishes his troops who are so hungry after the successful battle that they eat meat before first ritually draining out the blood. But on the negative side, Saul's desire to give in to the will of the majority rather than following God's will is exhibited again when it turns out that his own son Jonathan had inadvertently disobeyed a curse Saul had placed on any of his troops who ate before the battle was over. Although Jonathan is willing to be punished for his actions, in violation of Saul's own vow to God, he spares Jonathan's life once his troops demand it of him.

I Samuel 15 describes another successful battle, this time against the Amelekites. But the aftermath is just as disastrous as in the previous chapter. For instead of totally demolishing the enemy and all they possessed, as God commanded, Saul decided to save their king as a sort of trophy and let the troops keep all the enemy livestock. When Samuel confronts him with his disobedience, Saul makes the excuse in v. 21 that it was okay for his troops to take the animals since they were planning to sacrifice them to God at Gilgal. Whether or not that would ever have been taken, Saul had again definitely violated God's direct command. At least this time after Samuel's harsh rebuke, Saul breaks down in v. 24 and admits that his motive was not to go against his people's wishes out of fear that they might rebel.

The incident ends in a rather strange way in that after Samuel has made it clear to Saul that God will take his kingdom away from him, Saul asks Samuel to honor him in front of the people and Samuel agrees with that request. In other words, just pretend for a little longer that everything is all right between you, me and God.

I can identify in a way with Samuel here since I was once asked to do the same thing for a chemist in my section who was fired. He asked me to pretend as if he had just decided to retire on his own and to give him a sending-off party so that he could put on a good front for his family and peers. I felt a little uneasy carrying on that pretense but it appeared to go well for all.

In I Samuel 16, things take a darker turn for Saul since we learn in verse 14 that God's Spirit was withdrawn from Saul, who then began to be tormented by an evil spirit. That statement needs a little clarification. McKane says that “the charismatic endowment reserved for the king of Israel has passed to David, leaving Saul not merely impotent, but demented and ravelled, so that he needs the solace of music. And Porter explains that the evil spirit being 'from the Lord' is “no doubt in the sense that all things are within the ultimate control of Yahweh.”

The end result for poor Saul can be medically described, as Howard does, in terms of “a severe manic / depressive illness with marked schizoid overtones. His paranoia, lack of foresight, faulty judgment, etc. are all classical signs.”

The results bring up problematic issues for the reader such that Porter concludes by stating, “His [i.e. God's] choice as king is difficult to understand. How could Yahweh select as king one predestined to failure? His call is, to the human mind, as incomprehensible as that of Judas Iscariot.”

I will not further detail the downhill spiraling course of Saul's life other than to mention than in his more lucid moments he admits to David, the man he has been relentlessly pursuing to kill, that David is far more noble than he is (see I Samuel 24:16-22; 26:21-25). The lowest point for poor Saul comes when he is so desperate to get any word from God that he consults the witch (i.e. spiritual medium) of Endor, even though he himself had outlawed all such people from his land. The spirit of the departed Samuel appears to him and confirms that David will soon be king in his stead and that Saul will die in battle, both of which happen.

One can also analyze Saul's situation in terms of the well-known and rightly important management axiom called the Peter principle, which states: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Again, I can relate to that based on my own years of experience working within a hierarchical structure. I did get promoted several times before I retired, but topped out at a certain point when someone else got a key job everyone, including myself, thought I was going to get instead. Soon afterward, I became very happy that I hadn't gotten that promotion because I realized that I would not have been able to handle it nearly as well as the man who became my new boss.