- The Witch of Endor, the Ghost of Samuel and King Saul
People who know me know I’ve been kicking around the idea to write a novel based on the life of King Saul, my favorite Old Testament character.
A little love for King Saul, if you don’t mind. Remember: Here’s a guy who didn’t want the job as King of Israel. He spent his entire reign hounded by that weasel Samuel. He never personally profited from his position. He unified 12 feudin’, fussin’ tribes into a nation. He was heroic in battle.
And he was a good dad.
Really.
Today, King David gets all of the good press. By if you line them up side by side, David’s sins dwarf Saul’s. (And Saul always genuinely repented.)
And there’s the business of the children. But more on that later …
When Samuel publicly announced to the Hebrew people that Saul had been chosen as their first king, they found hiding behind the luggage (1 Samuel 10:22). Afterwards, instead of demanding a lavish new tent or mansion, he simply went home.
When the evil Nahash the Ammonite besieged the Hebrew people, messengers found their new king quietly farming with his oxen. (1 Samuel 11:5)
Saul declined to mercilessly slaughter his defeated enemies. And when he triumphed in battle, he always shared the spoils with his people. Thus by example, King Saul slowly built a stable nation.
Throughout it all, Saul remained modest and obedient, eschewing the trappings of wealth and power, always trying – despite his many failures – to do what’s right.
Which brings us back to the dad business.
We don’t know much about Mrs. Saul. But we know a lot about Saul’s son, Jonathan. Beautiful, loyal, courageous Jonathan. He’s one of the few characters in the entire O.T. who gets a free ride from the chroniclers. He’s always shown in a positive light. And we know David loved him.
Saul, apparently alone among his kingly successors, managed to keep a good balance between work and family. When he was king, he was king. When he wasn’t protecting the entire nation of Israel against hordes of iron-wielding Philistines, he was back home farming and spending quality time with the kids.
Jonathan doubtless noticed.
We can guess from Jonathan’s life that Saul tried to provide a good example, as best he knew how.
Even during Saul’s darkest days, when faced both with David’s rebellion and the external threats from a dozen powerful neighboring kingdom states, he behaved with moderation and restraint.
God eventually chose David and so Saul’s reign came to a bloody end. But even then, Saul’s innate nobility and decency shone through. In the time of his country’s greatest trial, he consulted the Witch of Endor, desperately seeking advice on how to save his people. Not for his own benefit, mind you. He risked damnation to help his people. But even from beyond the grave, Samuel chose instead to taunt and humiliate him. (1 Samuel 28: 1-19).
Some people need to just get over themselves.
In the end, a massive force of Philistines overwhelmed the loyal soldiers who remained. On that awful day, King Saul stood virtually alone on Mount Gilboa with his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchishu. He could have taken his sons and have fled with the royal treasury. And his sons could have slipped away the night before.
But they didn’t. They remained steadfast and shared their father’s fate.
There is more to the story, no doubt, more to Saul we just don’t know:
The Bible says that Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD; he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a medium for guidance, 14 and did not inquire of the LORD. So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse. (1 Chron 10:13-14)
Um, doesn’t that seem a little extreme?
Think what you will of King Saul, but he must have been a worthy, loving father for those closest to him to remain faithful unto death. How many kings of Israel will be able to say that in the centuries to come?
And in that, if nothing else he is an example to us today: There is no difference between your life at work and your family life. You can’t be ruthless, corrupt, and dictatorial at the office and yet be gentle and loving at home and expect your friends and family not to be impacted by your example. You are called by God to be equally responsible in both.
There is no separation between the two.
There was no separation during the time of King Saul and there isn’t any such separation now.
It simply can’t be done.
Bob, sounds cool. Correct my ignorance, but … was it King Saul who was thought to have written the book of Ecclesiastes?
If not, he certainly had good cause to! Samuel spent most of Saul’s reign stabbing him in the back!
It is good to try and point out that people are human and not just black & white caricatures but we must resist the temptation to go too far in the other direction and ignore the facts.
The incident with Nahash was the high point of Saul’s reign. From then on, he let the Philistines pretty much run rampant across the countryside unless it was his home. And while it isn’t recorded that he built himself a lavish dwelling, he drafted every strong-looking young man he met into his army and the country then had to support and feed them. 3,000 troops is a lot of mouths to feed. Is this the action of a humble farmer?
If Saul was supposedly so merciful, why did he slaughter all the weak, the old, and the young Amalekites and only keep their king alive who would look great walking in chains in front of him during his triumphal parade? Because he was selfish, thought only of himself and refused to repent of it. This was the point at which he was told he was unfit for kingship.
If Saul was such a good leader of Israel, why did he make multiple vows that would only cripple his army’s ability to fight and why did he make the punishment death for not obeying? And when he found out his son, Jonathan, was the one who unknowingly violated one of the vows, why was Saul willing to kill him and the army had to be the ones to protect his life? If he was such a good leader, why did he repeatedly try to put the nation’s hero, David, in situations that would get him killed?
If he was such a loving father, why, when he found out his daughter Micah loved David, did he set a brideprice of 100 Philistine foreskins? Either David would be killed in the attempt or be made public enemy #1 among the Philistines. That is not a loving act.
Why, after David became his son-in-law, did Saul continue to send him on missions where he hoped he would be killed? Why, if he was so loving, did Saul grow paranoid and concoct that David was trying to rebel against him? Why, when his son Jonathan spoke up on David’s behalf, did Saul curse him and his mother and attempt to kill him, too? Why, after Saul attempted to kill Jonathan, did he send assasins to his David’s house, forcing David to flee from his loving wife? Why did Saul force his own daughter to marry someone else when she was still legally and willingly married to David?
If Saul was such a good leader of Israel, why did he order the slaughter an entire town of unarmed Levites–all their men, women, children and animals–simply because one of them gave David a few loaves of bread? And why did he plot the destruction of another town simply because David had rescued them from Philistine attack?
If Saul truly repented of trying to kill David, why were his repentances only after David pointed out that he was not rebelling? And if they were true repentances, why did he turn right around and attempt to hunt David down, time after time?
As to the witch of Endor, why say Saul is being noble when Scripture only says he is terrified? Why would Saul pointlessly consult a dead Levite, who was not a strategist? Why didn’t Saul develop a good battle strategy like he had in the obedient days of his reign? The answer here is simple: he was so far gone mentally in his sin, paranoia and delusions that he could not think of a plan.
If he was such a loving father and leader, why insist on leading the 3,000+ troops and his sons into battle the next day by positioning them on a hill where they were easily surrounded and slaughtered? Why not disband the army to fight another day?
As to Saul’s death, why do you say it is an extreme action when Saul had 20 years of life between Samuel’s warning and the battle on Mount Gilboa? Wasn’t that ample time for Saul to have “genuinely repented” for his rebellion against God? Where are these Scriptures where Saul genuinely repented? He makes excuses for himself many times, but never repents. Also note that the death sentence is happens because that is the punishment for consulting a medium.
Your goal to show that we need integrity of life at work and home is excellent, but Saul is the poorest choice to use as an example from the Bible.