prophets, many of them false ones as the Bible frequently stresses. To be influential, a prophet had to avoid the extremes of sectarianism and remain in touch with the mainstream of Israelite life. His greatest single function was to act as intermediary between God and people, and to do that he must mingle with the masses. When Samuel matured, he acted as a judge, travelling all over the country. 157 When the powerful Philistine forces struck at the heart of the Israelite settlements, inflicting humiliating defeats, even capturing the Ark itself and (it seems) destroying the Shiloh shrine, it was natural that the people should turn to Samuel and that he should play the critical role in deciding whether, and if so how, the Israelites in their desperation should embrace kingship.
The First Book of Samuel gives us exciting glimpses into the anxious constitutional debates which took place on the issue. There was an obvious candidate, the Benjaminite guerrilla captain Saul, typical of the charismatic Israelite leaders who sprang from nothing by their own energy and divine favour. But Saul was a southerner and lacked the diplomatic skills to conciliate the northerners, whose wholehearted support he never obtained. His dark, saturnine character isbrilliantly portrayed in the Bible: an unpredictable oriental potentate-bandit, alternating between sudden generosity and unbridled rage, a manic-depressive perhaps, always brave and clearly gifted but often hovering on the brink of madness and sometimes slipping over it. Samuel was right to hesitate before anointing this man. He also reminded the people that they had never had a king—one function of the prophets was to deliver popular history lectures-and that, being a theocracy, for Israel to choose rule by king was to reject rule by God, and thus sinful. 158 He outlined the nation’s constitutional history ‘and wrote it in a book and laid it up before the Lord’—that is, deposited it at a shrine. 159 He was willing to anoint Saul as a charismatic leader or nagid , by pouring oil on his head, but hesitated to make him melek or hereditary king, which implied the right to summon the tribal levy. 160 He warned the people of all the disadvantages of monarchy—professional armies, punitive taxation, forced labour. He seems to have changed his mind several times about the precise powers Saul should have. But in the end Saul’s early victories and his striking appearance—he was exceptionally tall and handsome—made the popular will irresistible, and Samuel reluctantly complied, pleading divine guidance: ‘And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make him a King.’ 161
This early constitutional experiment in Kingship ended in disaster. A year after Saul’s coronation, the great Philistine army came up through the Plain of Esdraelon and destroyed the new royal army at Mount Gilboa, Saul and his son Jonathan being killed. Saul obviously lacked the temperament to unite the country behind him but the real reason for his failure was absence of the requisite military background. He was no more than a small-scale resistance-leader and though, as king, he began to recruit a mercenary army, it was clearly beyond his skill to handle large regular forces. But even before the final disaster Saul had lost the support of the clergy and the confidence of Samuel. In Chapter 15 of the First Book of Samuel there is a vivid and heartbreaking scene in which the old prophet turns on the king for acts of religious disobedience over the spoils of war; the king, abashed, admits his sin but begs Samuel to give him his public countenance in front of the people. Samuel does so, but in his anger and frustration he turns on a wretched royal prisoner, Agag King of the Amalekites, who ‘came unto him delicately’, pleading ‘Surely the bitterness of death is past?’ But Samuel ‘hewed Agag in pieces’ on the altar. There had always been a fanatical streak in Samuel, especially against
The First Book of Samuel gives us exciting glimpses into the anxious constitutional debates which took place on the issue. There was an obvious candidate, the Benjaminite guerrilla captain Saul, typical of the charismatic Israelite leaders who sprang from nothing by their own energy and divine favour. But Saul was a southerner and lacked the diplomatic skills to conciliate the northerners, whose wholehearted support he never obtained. His dark, saturnine character isbrilliantly portrayed in the Bible: an unpredictable oriental potentate-bandit, alternating between sudden generosity and unbridled rage, a manic-depressive perhaps, always brave and clearly gifted but often hovering on the brink of madness and sometimes slipping over it. Samuel was right to hesitate before anointing this man. He also reminded the people that they had never had a king—one function of the prophets was to deliver popular history lectures-and that, being a theocracy, for Israel to choose rule by king was to reject rule by God, and thus sinful. 158 He outlined the nation’s constitutional history ‘and wrote it in a book and laid it up before the Lord’—that is, deposited it at a shrine. 159 He was willing to anoint Saul as a charismatic leader or nagid , by pouring oil on his head, but hesitated to make him melek or hereditary king, which implied the right to summon the tribal levy. 160 He warned the people of all the disadvantages of monarchy—professional armies, punitive taxation, forced labour. He seems to have changed his mind several times about the precise powers Saul should have. But in the end Saul’s early victories and his striking appearance—he was exceptionally tall and handsome—made the popular will irresistible, and Samuel reluctantly complied, pleading divine guidance: ‘And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make him a King.’ 161
This early constitutional experiment in Kingship ended in disaster. A year after Saul’s coronation, the great Philistine army came up through the Plain of Esdraelon and destroyed the new royal army at Mount Gilboa, Saul and his son Jonathan being killed. Saul obviously lacked the temperament to unite the country behind him but the real reason for his failure was absence of the requisite military background. He was no more than a small-scale resistance-leader and though, as king, he began to recruit a mercenary army, it was clearly beyond his skill to handle large regular forces. But even before the final disaster Saul had lost the support of the clergy and the confidence of Samuel. In Chapter 15 of the First Book of Samuel there is a vivid and heartbreaking scene in which the old prophet turns on the king for acts of religious disobedience over the spoils of war; the king, abashed, admits his sin but begs Samuel to give him his public countenance in front of the people. Samuel does so, but in his anger and frustration he turns on a wretched royal prisoner, Agag King of the Amalekites, who ‘came unto him delicately’, pleading ‘Surely the bitterness of death is past?’ But Samuel ‘hewed Agag in pieces’ on the altar. There had always been a fanatical streak in Samuel, especially against
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