FIRST KING OF ISRAEL · UNITED KINGDOM

Saul. The first king, chosen from Benjamin.

REIGNEDi

40 years c. 1050–1010 BC (dates vary)

CAPITAL

Gibeah

HOUSE

House of Saul 1st of 4 in The united kingdom

VERDICT

✕ Did evil “the LORD hath rejected thee from being king over Israel”

PROPHETS

Samuel · The company of prophets

THE UNITED KINGDOM: 4 RULERS SAUL → SOLOMON

THE ANOINTING

How Saul was anointed

  • Israel's elders asked Samuel for “a king to judge us like all the nations”. The LORD told Samuel that they had rejected him, not Samuel, and to grant it. 1 Samuel 8:4–9 1 Samuel 8:22
  • Looking for his father's lost asses, Saul came to Samuel, who anointed him privately with a vial of oil “to be captain over his inheritance”. 1 Samuel 9:3–20 1 Samuel 10:1
  • At Mizpeh the lot fell on Benjamin and then on Saul, who had hidden “among the stuff”. The people shouted, “God save the king”. 1 Samuel 10:17–24
  • After he rescued Jabesh-gilead from Nahash the Ammonite, “they made Saul king before the LORD in Gilgal”. 1 Samuel 11:1–15
  • From the textSo 1 Samuel tells of three steps: a private anointing, a public choice by lot at Mizpeh, and the renewing of the kingdom at Gilgal. 1 Samuel 10:1 1 Samuel 10:24 1 Samuel 11:14–15

SUCCESSION

The two kingdoms

ON THE WORLD STAGE: The Philistines · Ammon · Amalek · Moab, Edom and Zobah

THE VERDICT

How Scripture judges the reign

“the LORD hath rejected thee from being king over Israel”

1 Samuel 15:26 (KJV) →

BUT ALSO

  • Samuel's words after the war with Amalek: Saul “didst evil in the sight of the LORD”, and “Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king”. 1 Samuel 15:19 1 Samuel 15:23
  • An earlier rebuke came at Gilgal, when Saul offered the burnt offering before Samuel arrived: “now thy kingdom shall not continue”. 1 Samuel 13:8–14
  • Saul twice answered, “I have sinned”. 1 Samuel 15:24 1 Samuel 15:30
  • Chronicles adds a reason Samuel's account does not give in its verdict: he asked “counsel of one that had a familiar spirit” and “enquired not of the LORD”. 1 Samuel tells that visit to Endor at length. 1 Chronicles 10:13–14 1 Samuel 28:7–19
  • David would not harm him, calling him “the LORD's anointed”, and mourned him: “Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives”. 1 Samuel 24:6 1 Samuel 26:9 2 Samuel 1:23

CHRONICLES GIVES IT AS

“So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the LORD”

1 Chronicles 10:13 (KJV) →

THE UNITED KINGDOM: 4 RULERS

✓ Did right ✕ Did evil ◐ Mixed ● No verdict formula

THE KINGDOM

Gibeah and the places of the reign

The united kingdom · tribe of Benjamin. Only places Scripture names are shown, each where the Atlas puts it.

EVENTS

Wars, works and turning points

UNDATED IN SCRIPTURE

THE NATION

What the nation did

  • Saul built an altar after Michmash, “the first altar that he built unto the LORD”. 1 Samuel 14:35
  • He had put “those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land”, and then sought one himself. 1 Samuel 28:3 1 Samuel 28:7
  • He killed the priests of the LORD at Nob. 1 Samuel 22:17–19
  • He tried to destroy the Gibeonites “in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah”, though Israel had sworn to spare them. The famine in David's days was laid to this. 2 Samuel 21:1–2

PROPHETS

Prophets of the reign

  • Sa Samuel “to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams”
  • Th The company of prophets Twice Saul prophesied among a company of prophets, near Gibeah and at Naioth in Ramah. The people's saying “Is Saul also among the prophets?” came from this.

ON THE WORLD STAGE

The powers of the day

THE PHILISTINES

Achish, king of Gath

AMMON

Nahash

AMALEK

Agag

MOAB, EDOM AND ZOBAH

The king of Moab

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE

OUTSIDE THE BIBLE · —

No inscription

TWO ACCOUNTS

Where Samuel–Kings and Chronicles differ

Each ribbon joins the two accounts of one matter, passage to passage.

How Saul died

1 SAMUEL

2 SAMUEL

His body and burial

1 SAMUEL

1 CHRONICLES

Who died with him

1 SAMUEL

1 CHRONICLES · 2 SAMUEL

How much of the reign is told

1 SAMUEL

1 CHRONICLES

DATES DIFFER

When was it?

SCRIPTURE'S NUMBERS

No years given

Acts 13:21: forty years. 1 Samuel 13:1 in the KJV reads “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel”; the KJV margin gives the Hebrew as “the son of one year in his reigning”. No age at accession survives.

MCFALL (2010), BUILDING ON THIELE

c. 1050–1010 BC[3]

McFall keeps Acts 13:21's forty years and counts back from David's accession in 1010 BC. On p. 477 he writes the span as 1050–1011.

TRADITIONAL (USSHER, 1658)

c. 1095–1055 BC[1]

Ussher also takes forty years: Saul made king in the year of the world 2909 (1095 BC); David king in Hebron in 2949 (1055 BC).

KEIL AND DELITZSCH (TR. 1866)

No years given[5]

No BC years. They hold that numbers have dropped out of 1 Samuel 13:1 and that the reign lasted about twenty or twenty-two years.

A saying, not an age

The Aramaic Targum, and the Greek version of Symmachus (2nd century AD), as reported by Driver (1890)

The Targum reads “as a child a year old who has no sins, was Saul when he became king”; Symmachus also turns the words into a description rather than an age.[6]

One year after the Philistines were subdued

James Ussher (1658)

Ussher read “son of one year” as one year after Samuel subdued the Philistines, and the “two years” as two years Saul reigned free of them, within a reign of forty years.[1]

Numbers have dropped out

Keil and Delitzsch (tr. 1866); Driver (1890)

The verse has the shape of the regular formula, so an age once stood after “son of”. Keil thought Saul was at least forty, since Jonathan already led troops, and that a number such as twenty fell out before “two years”. Driver adds that the whole verse is missing from the Greek Old Testament and may be a late insertion.[5][6]

The 'two' is not original

Julius Wellhausen (tr. 1885)

Wellhausen held that the age was never filled in, and that “two” grew out of the Hebrew word for “year” that follows it.[7]

Dated by an era from David's birth

Leslie McFall (2010)

McFall keeps Acts 13:21's forty years and reads 13:1 as dating Saul's rejection by an era beginning at David's birth, which he puts in 1040 BC. On his reckoning Saul was rejected about 1037 BC, in his fourteenth year.[3]

IN SCRIPTURE

Every passage

CHAPTERS · 30

1 Samuel 8 1 Samuel 9 1 Samuel 10 1 Samuel 11 1 Samuel 12 1 Samuel 13 1 Samuel 14 1 Samuel 15 1 Samuel 16 1 Samuel 17 1 Samuel 18 1 Samuel 19 1 Samuel 20 1 Samuel 21 1 Samuel 22 1 Samuel 23 1 Samuel 24 1 Samuel 25 1 Samuel 26 1 Samuel 27 1 Samuel 28 1 Samuel 29 1 Samuel 30 1 Samuel 31 2 Samuel 1 2 Samuel 21 1 Chronicles 8 1 Chronicles 9 1 Chronicles 10 Acts 13

PASSAGES · 7

1 Samuel 8:1–31:13 2 Samuel 1:1–27 2 Samuel 21:1–14 1 Chronicles 8:33 1 Chronicles 9:39 1 Chronicles 10:1–14 Acts 13:21

WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT SAY

  • Saul's age when he became king is not given: the number is missing in 1 Samuel 13:1.
  • Scripture does not say how many years passed between Saul's anointing and his rejection, or between his rejection and his death.
  • Scripture does not name Saul's mother.
  • Scripture does not explain how the woman at Endor brought up Samuel; the text simply calls the figure Samuel (1 Samuel 28:12–16).
  • Scripture gives no account of Saul's wars with Moab, Edom and the kings of Zobah beyond the list in 1 Samuel 14:47.
  • 1 Samuel 14:49 does not list Ish-bosheth among Saul's sons; it names Jonathan, Ishui and Melchi-shua.

SOURCES

Where this page comes from

  • James Ussher, The Annals of the World (English translation of the Annales, 1650–54) (1658), pp. 33–41 (years of the world 2909–3029, with the years before Christ in the margin).
  • Rodger C. Young, "When Did Solomon Die?", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46/4 (2003), pp. 589–603, esp. 590 and 599–603 (facts only; copyrighted).
  • Leslie McFall, "The Chronology of Saul and David", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53/3 (2010), pp. 475–483, 486–487, 494–495, 498–501, 526–528 (facts only; copyrighted).
  • W. F. Albright, "The Chronology of the Divided Monarchy of Israel", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 100 (1945), p. 20: the division of the kingdom in 922 BC (as cited by McFall 2010, p. 486 n. 24; facts only).
  • C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, tr. James Martin, Biblical Commentary on the Books of Samuel (Clark's Foreign Theological Library; translation first published 1866, this printing 1876) (1866), pp. 123–124 (1 Sam 13:1), 285–286 (2 Sam 1), 294–296 (2 Sam 2:8–11), 318–321 (Hiram), 459–460 (2 Sam 21:19), 502–503 (2 Sam 24:1).
  • S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel (1890), pp. 74–75, on 1 Sam 13:1.
  • Julius Wellhausen, tr. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1885), ch. VI, §I.1–3 (Chronicles on David's accession, the census, Solomon at Gibeon); ch. VI, §III.2 (480 years as twelve generations of forty); ch. VII, §II.1 (the numbers in 1 Sam 13:1 and 2 Sam 2:10).
  • Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, "An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan", Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993), pp. 81–98, esp. 95–98 on the reading 'house of David' (facts only; copyrighted).
  • Philip R. Davies, "'House of David' Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers", Biblical Archaeology Review 20/4 (1994), pp. 54–55 (facts only; copyrighted).
  • E. A. Wallis Budge (tr.), The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek (the Kebra Nagast) (1922), Introduction (the colophons' date for the Arabic version, AD 1314–1344; the names Makeda and Balkis).

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