Is Saul Among the Prophets?

Is Saul among the prophets?” This is a supposed adage or snippet of a popular verse that occurs twice in 1 Samuel. First when Saul is anointed king, “God gave him another heart.” And among other things, he fell to the ground, raving and acting like mad.
And again in 1 Samuel 19:24, wherein the people remark ironically on their king who, when the spirit of God came upon him, behaved oddly. Apparently, this happened often, and the people were surprised and astonished to find their king tearing his clothes, and speaking in tongues.
There is so much on which to ponder in this passage. First, to see a roving band of mad prophets was not in itself that odd. They went around begging, and the people tolerated them, sustained them, and either listened to or ignored their ravings, as seemed fitting. What was odd in this case was to see their king among them. So on the face of it, “Is Saul among the prophets” probably just means “has the king gone crazy again?”

But my thoughts on reading this are turbulent, confused and mixed. Even before making a close reading of 1 and 2 Samuel in The David Story, I started to get the impression that Samuel was kind of a jerk. The people demanded he find a king to lead them in battle, because they were getting their asses kicked from the left and the right. Finally he grudgingly accepted, but not before giving them a cranky and bitter lecture on the evils of monarchy.
Eventually he picked this strapping farm boy, standing head and shoulders above his mates, but apparently not the sharpest tool in the drawer. Maybe that’s why Samuel picked him, thinking he would be someone easily controlled and manipulated. Or maybe Samuel had some kind of power over Saul, because Saul’s fits of what we would call madness always seemed to follow an encounter with the “seer” as he was called. But then as you read on, Saul’s madness becomes more and more pronounced, if episodic, and he suffers terrible mood swings and inconsistent behavior. As for example he at first sees conspiracies around him, but then repents, and seeks the love and companionship of the supposed conspirators.
Although in some cases, Saul’s paranoia was justified, and definitely induced by Samuel, who had secretly anointed David king, even while Saul reigned. David is variously described as a gifted musician and singer, brought in to sing for the king during his bouts of melancholy, and also a great fighter and tactician, and the king’s armor bearer. It’s hard to figure. The conventional view is that the story as we have received it is the result of some unknown editor combining and fusing at least two, possibly more different strands of prior legend. That in itself represents a kind of authorship.
But there’s no question it was a bloody age. Saul gives David his daughter in marriage if David will pay the price. The price? One hundred Philistine foreskins. These David acquired. The hard way. Yuch. Thus the other popular adage we find in several places: “Saul slew his thousands, David his tens of thousands.”
This pissed Saul off, and just fed his paranoia. As it is written, “an evil spirit from God” came over him. Ah, so. Ever more to ponder. Evil spirits exist, but they are sent from God. Or maybe there’s another interpretation, because in other cases, Saul just seems to act nuts. Like one time over dinner, when his son Jonathan defends David, Saul throws a spear across the room at him. Ha. Reminds me of my family, growing up in the sixties.
Afterward, Saul seems to show remorse though, as in 1 Samuel 24:19 where after having chased David around the wilderness, Saul is about to give up, and David calls out to him from his hiding place in a cave. Saul says somewhat pathetically, “Is that your voice, my son David?”
Maybe he suffered from bipolar disorder, or some other malady.
Ultimately, Samuel regretted selecting Saul as king. Why? Samuel had instructed Saul to completely wipe out the Amalekites, men, women and children, oxen, cattle, sheep and mules. Nothing was to remain. What we would today call genocide, and then some. This Saul and his men did, but they failed to destroy all the animals, and kept a few for themselves.
Samuel himself slew Agag, king of the Amalekites in a kind of gruesome ritual butchering. But for failing to follow his instructions precisely, Saul will be deprived of his kingdom. Later, the ghost of Samuel indicts him: “because you disobeyed the Lord’s command and would not carry out his fierce anger against Amalek, the Lord has done this to you today.” Until finally “the Lord repented that He had made Saul king over Israel.”
The word ni·ḥām (נָחַם) is variously translated as “regretted”, “repented”, or “was sorry.” The Lord repented having made Saul king of Israel. What can it possibly mean for the Lord to repent something?  Yahweh had been sorry before (for example, see Genesis 6:6), but its still a puzzler.
If God knows everything that’s going to happen, how can He have selected Saul in the first place knowing Saul would disappoint Him? Or did He simply change His mind? Or in this case, should we interpret God’s regret as a manifestation of the mysterious interplay between predestination and free will? Interestingly, we do not read that He repented having sent the evil spirits with which poor Saul had been inflicted. But then that brings up all the difficult questions Job once asked, and to those we certainly have sufficient answer. “Will we have arguing with the Almighty by the critic? Let him who would correct God give answer!” Ha. It’s both deeply scary and funny, when you really hear it.
Maybe whatever it is that God regrets is somehow a consequence of Saul’s failure, his sin, his illness or his free will, however you wish to frame it? Or maybe it is the result of Samuel’s error for choosing Saul over some other? That’s an unorthodox interpretation, but Samuel and his sons were the last in a long line of corrupt and incompetent judges. We are told in detail of the corruption of Eli’s sons for example. And Samuel’s sons were not above taking bribes. Though Samuel himself isn’t shown to be corrupt, his actions and failings are outlined in enough detail, the reader can easily judge his character and nature for himself.
Or maybe we should consider this expression of God’ regret as simply synonymous with Samuel’s regret? This is one of the many places where subsequent editing and revision of the ancients serves later theological doctrine. The effect is only compounded through the art of biblical translation, and then that derivative product may itself be subject to interpretation and parsed in microscopic detail by we moderns, ignorant of all the subtle ambiguity and nuance of the source, with predictably worthless results. Oh, we all pick and choose what to emphasize and what to overlook or omit from our interpretation of the scriptures.
In my latter days, I say on the one hand it can’t be helped, and may be justified as we have no reason to think the ancients had any better insight into the Lord’s will than we do. But then on the other hand, why does so much hinge on one particular interpretation of some obscure passage, while some other perhaps more significant passages raise so many troubling questions that somehow remain unasked?
Or put another way, if the Lord ever did choose to send us prophets, why would He cease doing so? Or rather was it we who ceased to honor and listen to them?
Saul is indeed the Lord’s anointed, but traditional interpretation is that the Lord withheld prophecy from him. “He consulted the Lord; but the Lord gave no answer, whether in dreams or by the Urim or through prophets.” Samuel had certainly turned his back on him. But Saul is also spoken of as having “assumed a prophetic state.” And then we are told that Saul was possessed of an evil spirit from God. Like everything else, even Saul’s madness comes from God, who then repents. Its a puzzle.
If Saul was himself among the prophets, the Lord might have spoken through him. But does a prophet command the Lord’s message, or the other way around? Since the Urim and Thummim apparently gave answers to yes/no questions, they could not have failed to give an answer at all, unless Saul had no access to them, or didn’t know how to work them. It’s not perfectly clear, but they appear to have been somehow part of the priestly garb, the Ephod, functioning kind of like a pair of dice. Maybe we should bear in mind that Saul had earlier commanded all the priests to be put to death for helping David. That itself was a fulfillment of a curse against the house of Eli. We know they were a bunch of corrupt and crooked bastards, and probably deserved it. But in any case, only one survived, Abiathar, and he escaped and went over to David.
And it’s not clear that Saul even consulted a priest or prophet. So maybe he just didn’t know what he was doing. We do know he was ignorant and superstitious, and that he had banned witchcraft and divination. Apparently, witchcraft and all sorts of divination had previously been permitted, if perhaps frowned upon. But being superstitious, he believed in it himself, and had even used a ghostwife to summon the spirit of the dead Samuel from beyond the grave. And the ghost of Samuel appears, cranky as ever, saying “Why do you disturb me by conjuring me up?” The whole story is comical in a way, and yet also tragic. Saul saw darkness and heard silence because the Lord’s message for him was dark and obscure.
Ask yourself this: is genocide ever justified? Seek you the answer in the Lord’s word, believer. And if you choose not to hear, then cease your claim to His justification.
There is this constant theme of Saul being unwilling or unable to see, and David in contrast consistently consulting with the Lord, and having both foresight and good luck as a result. And it was finally on the day of Israel’s great defeat at Mt. Gilboa, when Saul finally foresaw his fate. It was the end, after Jonathan had been killed and Saul begged his armor bearer to kill him, but his armor bearer would not, and Saul finally fell on his sword to avoid capture and disgrace at the hands of the Philistines.
But later, when David learned of the defeat, it was from an Amalekite. David and his six hundred men lived kind of like bandits, hiding out in caves, going out from time to time to rob and plunder or to fight other bands of outlaws, all the while on the run from Saul. But finally David figured Saul would eventually catch up with him, so he went over to the Philistines.
He sought protection from his buddy Achish, son of Maoch, king of Gath. They gave him Ziklag, a town on the outskirts to live in and also it seems, to protect. David and his men would go out and raid the towns round about, leaving not a man or woman alive, and giving the plunder to Achish. David was no saint.
David and his men were called up to battle against Israel and would have done, but were instead dismissed by the Philistines, who did not believe he could be trusted to fight against his own people. David and his men left the field of battle and returned to Ziklag, only to find it sacked and plundered. A band of Amalekite raiders had attacked the defenseless town, taking the people as slaves before burning everything to the ground. There is no doubt the Amalekites were bad people, and Saul had not entirely wiped them out as he had been told to do.
David had just returned from defeating the Amalekite raiders, recovering his wives, as well as the families and property of his men, when he got the news of Saul’s defeat and death.
And David asked the man who gave him the news, “of what nation are you?” And the man said “I am an Amalekite.” And David asked “how do you come by these things?” Referring to Saul’s headgear and armband, the symbols of royalty. And the man said, “Saul lay dying and he asked me to kill him before the Philistines could come and dishonor him. So I finished him off and took these things to bring them to you.” And David said to his lads, “come, run this man through! His own words condemn him. For who can lay hands on the Lord’s anointed and live?”
There’s so many angles to it. Saul had chased David for years. David had several chances to kill him, but would not do it. Not only was Saul’s mission to wipe out the Amalekites left uncompleted, but it would turn out to be an Amalekite who would give him the final blow. And David would continue toward the eventual completion of the task. This is part of the grim symmetry of biblical logic. You can’t pick and choose what part of the Lord’s commands to follow and what part to ignore or reinterpret into oblivion. If you do take that path, then know that you’re on your own, and don’t go pretending otherwise, and then when trouble comes, try to run to the rock for shelter, for there will be no rock.
So I say yes, Saul must be numbered among the prophets. But the prophets are nothing but a bunch of babbling madmen, many but not all spouting mostly unintelligible nonsense. Even now they walk among us, carrying a message from the Lord, which we ignore at our own peril.