Saul (King)

146:7.1At En­dor Je­sus es­caped for a few days from the clam­or­ing mul­ti­tudes in quest of phys­i­cal heal­ing. Dur­ing their so­journ at this place the Mas­ter re­counted for the in­struc­tion of the apos­tles the story of King Saul and the witch of En­dor. Je­sus plainly told his apos­tles that the stray and re­bel­lious mid­way­ers who had of­ten­times im­per­son­ated the sup­posed spir­its of the dead would soon be brought un­der con­trol so that they could no more do these strange things. He told his fol­low­ers that, af­ter he re­turned to the Fa­ther, and af­ter they had poured out their spirit upon all flesh, no more could such semispirit be­ings—so-called un­clean spir­its—pos­sess the fee­ble- and evil-minded among mor­tals.

97:9.5The great­est of all dis­tor­tions of Jew­ish his­tory had to do with David. Af­ter Saul’s vic­tory over the Am­monites (which he as­cribed to Yah­weh) the Phil­is­tines be­came alarmed and be­gan at­tacks on the north­ern clans. David and Saul never could agree. David with six hun­dred men en­tered into a Phil­is­tine al­liance and marched up the coast to Es­draelon. At Gath the Phil­is­tines or­dered David off the field; they feared he might go over to Saul. David re­tired; the Phil­is­tines at­tacked and de­feated Saul. They could not have done this had David been loyal to Is­rael. David’s army was a poly­glot as­sort­ment of mal­con­tents, be­ing for the most part made up of so­cial mis­fits and fugi­tives from jus­tice.

97:9.6Saul’s tragic de­feat at Gil­boa by the Phil­is­tines brought Yah­weh to a low point among the gods in the eyes of the sur­round­ing Ca­naan­ites. Or­di­nar­ily, Saul’s de­feat would have been as­cribed to apos­tasy from Yah­weh, but this time the Ju­dahite ed­i­tors at­tributed it to rit­ual er­rors. They re­quired the tra­di­tion of Saul and Samuel as a back­ground for the king­ship of David.

124:3.6About the mid­dle of May the lad ac­com­pa­nied his fa­ther on a busi­ness trip to Scythopo­lis, the chief Greek city of the De­capo­lis, the an­cient He­brew city of Beth-shean. On the way Joseph re­counted much of the olden his­tory of King Saul, the Phil­is­tines, and the sub­se­quent events of Is­rael’s tur­bu­lent his­tory. Je­sus was tremen­dously im­pressed with the clean ap­pear­ance and well-or­dered ar­range­ment of this so-called hea­then city. He mar­veled at the open-air the­ater and ad­mired the beau­ti­ful mar­ble tem­ple ded­i­cated to the wor­ship of the “hea­then” gods. Joseph was much per­turbed by the lad’s en­thu­si­asm and sought to coun­ter­act these fa­vor­able im­pres­sions by ex­tolling the beauty and grandeur of the Jew­ish tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem. Je­sus had of­ten gazed cu­ri­ously upon this mag­nif­i­cent Greek city from the hill of Naz­a­reth and had many times in­quired about its ex­ten­sive pub­lic works and or­nate build­ings, but his fa­ther had al­ways sought to avoid an­swer­ing these ques­tions. Now they were face to face with the beau­ties of this gen­tile city, and Joseph could not grace­fully ig­nore Je­sus’ in­quiries.

97:9.10David sought to build him­self up po­lit­i­cally by first mar­ry­ing Saul’s daugh­ter, then the widow of Na­bal the rich Edomite, and then the daugh­ter of Tal­mai, the king of Geshur. He took six wives from the women of Je­bus, not to men­tion Bathsheba, the wife of the Hit­tite.

97:9.13David ex­plained Saul’s de­feat at Gil­boa by point­ing out that Saul had at­tacked a Ca­naan­ite city, Gib­eon, whose peo­ple had a peace treaty with the Ephraimites. Be­cause of this, Yah­weh for­sook him. Even in Saul’s time David had de­fended the Ca­naan­ite city of Keilah against the Phil­is­tines, and then he lo­cated his cap­i­tal in a Ca­naan­ite city. In keep­ing with the pol­icy of com­pro­mise with the Ca­naan­ites, David turned seven of Saul’s de­scen­dants over to the Gibeonites to be hanged.

97:9.4Im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing the de­feat of the Am­monites, Saul was made king by pop­u­lar elec­tion by his troops. No priest or prophet par­tic­i­pated in this af­fair. But the priests later on put it in the rec­ord that Saul was crowned king by the prophet Samuel in ac­cor­dance with di­vine di­rec­tions. This they did in or­der to es­tab­lish a “di­vine line of de­scent” for David’s Ju­dahite king­ship.

97:9.3Pre­ten­tious He­brew his­tory be­gins with Saul’s ral­ly­ing the north­ern clans to with­stand an at­tack by the Am­monites upon their fel­low tribes­men—the Gilea­dites—east of the Jor­dan. With an army of a lit­tle more than three thou­sand he de­feated the en­emy, and it was this ex­ploit that led the hill tribes to make him king. When the ex­iled priests rewrote this story, they raised Saul’s army to 330,000 and added “Ju­dah” to the list of tribes par­tic­i­pat­ing in the bat­tle.

70:1.18Very early in the his­tory of the race, poi­soned weapons were used. All sorts of mu­ti­la­tions were prac­ticed. Saul did not hes­i­tate to re­quire one hun­dred Phil­is­tine fore­skins as the dowry David should pay for his daugh­ter Michal.

124:6.3Be­fore reach­ing the Jezreel junc­tion, and as they jour­neyed on, very soon, on the left, they passed the an­cient vil­lage of Shunem, and Je­sus heard again about the most beau­ti­ful maiden of all Is­rael who once lived there and also about the won­der­ful works El­isha per­formed there. In pass­ing by Jezreel, Je­sus’ par­ents re­counted the do­ings of Ahab and Jezebel and the ex­ploits of Jehu. In pass­ing around Mount Gil­boa, they talked much about Saul, who took his life on the slopes of this moun­tain, King David, and the as­so­ci­a­tions of this his­toric spot.

134:9.5In the midst of the week of cel­e­bra­tion and ere the fes­tiv­i­ties were fin­ished, Je­sus took leave of John, say­ing that he de­sired to re­tire to the hills where he might the bet­ter com­mune with his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. John would have gone with him, but Je­sus in­sisted that he stay through the fes­tiv­i­ties, say­ing: “It is not re­quired of you to bear the bur­den of the Son of Man; only the watch­man must keep vigil while the city sleeps in peace.” Je­sus did not re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter al­most a week alone in the hills near Beth­any, he de­parted for Ca­per­naum. On the way home he spent a day and a night alone on the slopes of Gil­boa, near where King Saul had taken his life; and when he ar­rived at Ca­per­naum, he seemed more cheer­ful than when he had left John in Je­ru­sa­lem.