King Saul: A Novel

By John C. Holbert

King Saul is based on the Biblical story of the first king of Israel. It retells the story in a fresh way, offering new looks at the three major characters--Saul, Samuel, and David--and the events that brought them together at the very foundation of the nation of Israel three millennia ago. Holbert's retelling reveals how this old story is surprisingly modern as it turns its gaze on power politics, personal rivalries, and religious use and abuse as the life of early Israel unfolds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Mar 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630872212

John C. Holbert

John C. Holbert is the Lois Craddock Perkins Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several books and articles on preaching.

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King Saul

A Novel

John C. Holbert

King Saul

A Novel

Copyright © 2014 John C. Holbert. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

isbn 13: 978-1-62564-667-5

eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-221-2

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

To Diana, who has now for 44 years been

companion, co-worker, wife, mother, lover, and friend

through all that a life can fling up, dredge up, offer up

to a pair of seekers after truth. She has been there

even when I at times have nearly fallen off

the edge of things, including this time

of attempted novel writing. Here it is, my love.

I hope it bears a tiny shred of what you

have meant to me for so, so long.

Foreword

We are not always able to put ourselves in the place of someone from the past;

but we always try to do so. Since our attempts are never rewarded (or tested) by the eventual appearance of the person in question, they proliferate boundlessly, nourished in their own unfulfilled hopes. We recapitulate what we already know or think we know, changing the sequence, hoping that somewhere in all of these facts

a sudden illumination will offer itself, an inspiration be given us.

¹

T

hough the above quotation

comes from a biography of a very well known historical character, the author’s obvious humility in the face of such a famous person struck me as indicative of my own feelings as I sought to write a fictional life of Israel’s first king. I certainly do not expect Saul to rise up and praise or bless what I have done—though Samuel’s reappearance from the dead in the story does give one pause—nor have I awaited some sudden illumination to allow me to rearrange the facts in ways that will offer a new and uniquely inspired telling of Saul’s story. Of course, the facts come from only one place, the Bible, and more specifically the book of

1

st Samuel found in it. Such facts are literary facts only; whether or not they are fully or partially or not at all facts in the historical sense I leave to the battles among the biblical scholars, who always seem ready to enter the metaphorical ring, academic fists raised, ever anxious to strike a blow for their particular views on these matters. I choose not to don my trunks and join them. Saul’s story for me has been and continues to be just that—a story.

I have written this novel of King Saul, based on the Bible’s account of his life, because I have long experienced it as glorious and rare and strange. And I have been consistently disappointed by those biblical scholars who have not heard its richness and rareness and strangeness, but instead have reduced it to a crude propaganda wherein Saul is monster and Samuel is godly and David is godly beyond all telling. They seem to have swallowed whole the simplistic foolishness of the biblical author of Chronicles who summarily dismissed Saul by saying that he died for his unfaithfulness; he was unfaithful to YHWH in that he did not keep the command of YHWH; besides he had consulted a medium, seeking guidance, and did not seek guidance from YHWH. That is why YHWH killed him and turned the kingdom over to David, son of Jesse (1 Chron 10:13–14). (Reader Note: I will throughout my story use the consonants YHWH when referring to the God of Israel whose name was later in their history deemed too holy for pronouncing out loud. You may, if you wish, try to pronounce out loud those letters, but I fear for your teeth and tongue if you do.)

I find this Chronicles reading chilling, a kind of Saul horror story. And too pat to be at all believable, either historically or literarily. Any even half-baked reading of the story found in 1st and 2nd Samuel ought to engender hoots of derisive laughter at the knuckle-head who wrote that claptrap. But amazingly, that absurd reading has been very influential when assessments of Saul and David are made. It appears that the actual story of the Samuel books, so marvelously rendered, so meticulously fashioned, has, until quite recently, rarely been taken with any seriousness by readers, religious or otherwise.

Fortunately, this has begun to change. Several scholars of the last two decades of the last century, have taken the actual story of the Bible with great seriousness. Each of these scholars of course has heard with their own ears the myriad subtleties that story brings forth, and has rearranged those discoveries to suit their own hearing which is at it should be in the world of scholarship. I have learned much from them, and I commend them to you if you are looking for that sort of thing, namely careful scholarship, finely delivered, with genuine literary sensitivity.

Other artistic efforts have been called forth by the story. For the music lover, you should get a copy of the wonderful and deeply moving opera, Saul and David, by Carl Nielsen, perhaps Denmark’s greatest composer. (I would recommend the CD on the Chandos label; I am still anxiously awaiting a promised DVD from a Danish National Opera production.) Though the opera is more than one hundred years old, it offers a remarkable reading of the character of Saul, not all of which matches my own. Still, his great aria at his death is well worth pondering. I have in fact borrowed and paraphrased a bit of it to place in the mouth of my Saul as he dies on Gilboa. Of the librettist of the opera I know little or nothing, but his reading of the story is plausible and highly dramatic, operatic in the very best way.

I, though a scholar of some gifts, albeit none to match those of the aforementioned writers, have finally decided that that sort of thing, careful scholarship, finely delivered, is not enough for me. However fine the scholarship about the story, it is not the story. So I have concocted my own story, based squarely on the Bible’s story, but imbued with whatever imagination and literary skill I possess. I have read and reread the biblical account in the ancient language, and I have followed the story’s own shape in nearly every case in my own retelling, with an exception or two for my story’s clarity. And, of course, I have taken liberties aplenty and have followed where the characters have lead on more than a few occasions. It was, however, let me be clear, my intention to tell Saul’s story again, but to tell it new and to tell it slant, as Emily Dickensen so memorably put it. I wanted to tell the story to get it out of the hands of preachers (though, God knows, I am one!) and scholars and back into the hands of real people who are ever thirsty for another great tale with which to shape their lives, practice their living, and learn more about themselves and others and the world they inhabit. Of course, if preachers and scholars care to become real people, they are most welcome to read the novel, too!

I want you, the reader, to hear this old story, not a sermon, not a morality play, not a bowl of religious pabulum, consigned to the boredom of a Sunday sanctuary, or to one’s rocking chair old age.

This is hardly the only way to tell the story; if it were, it would not be worth telling in the first place. I can only hope that you enjoy the reading of it half as much as I enjoyed the telling. King Saul and his prophetic anointer, Samuel, and his chief rival David are each characters that have never died, though all three are quite dead indeed, and have been in their graves for nearly three millennia. But because they still are very much alive in their story, they remain worth hearing from. I can only hope that I have given them fresh voice once again.

John C. Holbert

February 14, 2014

1. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Mozart Farrer Strauss Giroux: New York

1982

,

279

.

1

Send in the next one!" Abior reached for the tankard of beer the better to ease the work of the day. It was that time again when the village elders had to review people who wanted to join the community of Gibeah. 12 men sat at the rough table, placed in front of a large and dusty space under a tamarisk tree to provide some shade from the fierce sun that shone, as always, on the hills outside the walls of the town. It was Chislev , the year’s ninth month, and it was still hot. Abior stretched his right hand to grab the front of his best robe to pull it away from his sweating skin. Best was of course a relative term. His best was rude and rough, made hastily by his wife—she never was much when it came to the work of the needle, he thought. Pretty good in other ways, though, as a slightly lascivious smile creased his thin lips. Six children in ten years was not bad, he said to himself, as he sat up a bit straighter on the hard bench behind the council table, demonstrating for any who cared to see his obvious virility. He looked down the table at his fellow villagers.

There was Shmuel, too small, still unmarried. How did he ever get on the council, he wondered? Oh, yes, of course. He was rich in flocks and herds, and had just built a fine new house of four rooms, four! Such a palace was the largest in Gibeah; one could hardly deny such a formidable man a seat. But without children, well, there was talk of an unsavory sort. Still, Shmuel’s vast and healthy herds shut many a gossiping mouth.

Next to Shmuel was Carmi. Abior liked Carmi perhaps best of the councilors, because they were so much alike. Carmi had a productive wife, not so beautiful, but a superb mother of seven, including five sons, to insure the future of the village. And Carmi was a magnificent hunter, the village’s best. He went out with Abior regularly and almost never failed to bag a bear or a lion, or at least a deer to flavor the simmering pots that steamed and bubbled every evening. The thought of the pot around his own cooking fire made his mouth fill with spit and sent his stomach on the growl. Carmi’s piercing voice brought Abior back to the council table.

Well, who is next? These last three candidates were a sorry lot, ill-clad, poorly-spoken, foul-smelling, clearly unacceptable. We need more people for the village, but they need to be respectable, productive in the fields and in the home. Big families, bigger families! Bring us more children, more sons! It was ever Carmi’s cry when he spoke in council; more sons, more sons! Of course, whenever Carmi made his familiar speech, Shmuel blushed and looked down at his fine leather sandals, knowing that he had not done his bit to keep the community growing. Yet, even he could not disagree. After all, so many women died on the birth stools, and so many children, too. A village always needed children, and especially sons who could harvest and fight and hunt. The rest of the council grunted their agreement. They were generally good men, thought Abior, though the one at the end, Doeg, always sent a chill up Abior’s spine.

Doeg was tall, swarthy, brittle as a stalk of field thistle, and just as useless, said many in the village. He lived in a filthy hut with one disgusting room, surrounded by many children, which spoke well of him, and was tended to by a tiny woman who may or may not have been his wife. No one had seen the two marry, since they themselves had stood before the council many moons ago, having come from no one knew where. Some whispered Edom, but no one was certain. Doeg was elected to council after his heroic stand against some thieves who had threatened Gibeah sometime in the month of Sivan, the third month of the year, just six months before. It surprised the whole village to witness the ferocity of the man whom few had given a second thought to before the attack. But all knew that without Doeg’s courage, many of those who now found life and success would have surely been dead and forgotten and the village destroyed. He had been chosen for the council straight away. But Abior was hardly the only man of the village to keep a wary eye out for the activity of Doeg and his family. His seat on the council had not cleaned his hut or stopped the rumors about his peculiar relationship with the woman who tended his fires. In fact, Abior had cast one of the negative votes when Doeg had asked to join the village. But he was now on the council, and that was just the way it was going to be—at least for now.

The delay in the proceedings was too long. Well, shouted Abior, Get on with it. My stomach is reminding me that council cannot go on all day! Also, the sun rose higher and hotter in the blue sky; Abior’s very name meant, My father is light, which never failed to remind him of the ever-present sun, rather more present than his father who disappeared from the village long ago, never again to be seen. Abior had plainly outstripped that worthless man in every way.

Murmurs of agreement with Abior’s demand for action were whispered and hooted from every council member. Finally, a strapping man of some forty summers stepped forward.

Kish, a Benjaminite, hoped to settle in Gibeah, to him a miniature but pleasant hillside village, a short walk from Ramah, the city of Samuel. Though the history of the tribe of Benjamin was checkered, to say the least, Kish himself was industrious, clever, and ready to put all that concubine madness well behind him. After all, that had happened long before his birth, and he now was a modern man, ready to take his own place on a well-run farm, close to a successful and growing village. He was convinced that he could become a man of stature in the place, even though his ancestors were all complete unknowns as far back as four or five generations. A respected family was very important as a key to success, particularly for one who had come to a new city. If your immediate and even distant ancestors were suspect, well, you were also suspect, not to be trusted, never allowed finally to be one of the group. When Kish first introduced himself to the city elders, his recitation of his forebears impressed the dour elders not at all.

My father was Abiel, and his father was Zeror, his father Becorath, and his father Aphiah.

The Gibean elders’ eyes began to glaze over as Kish droned on about ancestors who were unknown nobodies, probably village drudges, certainly hicks without pedigree. Many of the names were not known at all by the men, many of whom could trace their own families back into a past so distant as to be nearly mystical.

Yes, yes, Abior interrupted him, enough of that. Abior’s faint memory of his own father, and the man’s abandonment of his family still rankled, and he had no intention of listening another minute to a recitation of unknown and useless ancestors. Tell us about who you are. Have you done anything of value? Are your crops lush? Are your livestock sturdy? Tell us of your children! And he added with a definite sneer, What do you know of the concubine’s story? Carmi and Doeg were particularly keen to hear just how far this Kish might have been implicated in the monstrous tale of the concubine and the ancestral Benjaminites’ foul behavior. Every member of the council of Gibeah had proven beyond doubt that they had no connection to the story and found the actions of their forebears in the story repulsive, unacceptable in every way. The thing had happened some time ago, but the memory was so vivid that it seemed like a very modern event. All of them wished to forget, but none of them could.

Anyone who wished to join a community had to first meet with the elders of the place to determine whether or not the newcomer was worthy of a home in or near the village. This screening was doubly important for villages in Benjamin. A few elderly Israelites still vividly remembered the outrage of the inhospitable people of Benjamin many summers ago that led to the shocking abuse and murder of an innocent concubine of a wandering Levite. The story seemed to be very old, but not so old as to diminish its terror one tiny bit. Mothers in the village would often scare their children into better behavior by telling this story; act correctly or the Levite may come for you! Whenever the tale was told, the Levite grew in size and strength, his nose became increasingly knobby and wart-marked, his eyes more blazing, more penetrating, his hair more frazzled and shaggy, his arms muscular, his legs powerful, his rage unchecked. In reality, the Levite was probably a small, ineffectual man, most priestly types were, but in many of the minds of the current children of Benjamin he had become monstrous. It was certainly a terrible tale, and the elders of Gibeah were inordinately concerned with any unknown newcomer with a Benjaminite background. The new man might have some distant connection with the story, might even be a relation of the concubine, or of her father, or, YHWH forbid, the nasty priest himself. They had no intention of allowing such a person, corrupted by these undying phantoms, to live among their respectable selves.

Many versions of that story continued to make the rounds, but the facts were something like this. Many suns before Kish’s appearance in Benjamin, a Levite, a landless priest, was living in a very remote hut up in the hills above Gibeah. He had devoted himself to prayer and solitude, as many of his kind did in those days, but he soon tired of being alone. He left his hut and travelled to Bethlehem, a few days’ journey east, in order to buy a concubine, a woman who had few hopes of a real marriage, to provide a companion for his days and warmth in his bed at night. She was not much to look at, but she was willing enough; her mother had died at her birth and her father was a poor and ignorant man. She thus had no dowry to bring to any marriage. She too at first seemed glad of the company, as they left Bethlehem to return to the hut above Gibeah.

But things went quickly wrong. Some said that she tired of the life of a Levite’s companion, its poverty, its mumbled words and complex rituals, and became angry at the Levite’s constant demands on her for food and cleaning, as well as his unbridled lust for her body. Others say that she found a more congenial partner, or two or three, in the village of Gibeah. For whatever reason, she left the Levite and returned to the poor house of her father in Bethlehem of Judah.

Four moons passed. The Levite wanted her back; he was lonely again, his hut was filthy without her cleaning, his member was hungry for her flesh. So, he went to Bethlehem in the attempt to woo her back with tender words. He even changed his tunic for the first time in many years. When he showed up at her father’s door, the old and poor man was overjoyed to see him. After all, he barely had food enough to feed himself, let alone his daughter whom he thought he had seen for the last time those four moons ago. He was more than anxious to see the couple reunited so that his troublesome daughter would leave his life for good.

For three days the father and the Levite ate and drank together and told stories of their difficult lives. The father spoke sadly of the death of his wife who was a good woman, and a fair one. The Levite spoke of his calling as priest, of his lonely hut, of the brief time with the father’s daughter, which he remembered with some fondness, though she had surprisingly left him alone for reasons he could not understand. But on the fourth day, when the daughter had not yet made an appearance at the table or in the house, the Levite decided to give up and go back to his hut alone. But the father said, Why not sit again and have some more food; it is a long journey, and you will need strength? In fact, the weather is so foul today—it was raining big cold drops—why don’t you stay one more night? Perhaps she will soften her heart and go with you. The old man was more than anxious to be rid of his daughter, whom he loved not at all. The Levite was willing to give it another day, so he stayed. And he stayed again.

The daughter knew well who was sharing her father’s table, and she hid in her room, hoping that the execrable Levite would go back to that miserable hut that she had no desire to see ever again. As the days passed, one, two, three, she could not believe that the priest had not given up. But, of course, she heard all too clearly how anxious her odious father was to get her off his dirt-caked hands, how he cajoled and pleaded with the Levite to stay, and stay, and stay! Would he never leave? She did, however, remember the lusty fun she had had in Gibeah with a supple young boy or two, when the priest was taken up with his weird mumbo-jumbo, so as the days became four and five, she thought that perhaps she could reacquaint herself with one boy or another, or perhaps even a fresher one or two if she could survive the priest’s incessant demands on her for constant work and unpleasant sexual needs, both of which she had no interest in at all. Maybe, she thought, life with the Levite, with its potential for some joy and fun on the side, would be better than her current life with a loveless father and few local fleshly attractions.

So, finally, on the sixth day, the girl came to the table to eat with her father and the Levite, and the two men convinced her to go back to the hut with the eager priest. Well, unbeknownst to them she had already made up her mind to go with the man, so she needed little convincing. But there was little use in telling either of the stupid men about that.

She was hardly overjoyed to be going back to her lonely life as priest’s companion, but her father clearly did not want her with him, and at least the Levite showed some sign of caring for her, however selfishly, however crudely. The woman was trapped between an inattentive and uncaring father and a dangerously demanding and too attentive man, who smelled of goat and often acted like one. Well, she sighed, at least he had changed his filthy tunic! Scant hope for a changed life, but more hope than life with father. And there were those nubile Gibean boys!

So they left to return to Gibeah. But since they made such a late start, they only got as far as Jerusalem before the sun was about to slip below the mountains of the west. Let us stay here in Jerusalem tonight, and we can complete our journey tomorrow, said the servant, Lemuel by name, whom the concubine’s father had loaned to them for the trip. But the Levite said, We will certainly not spend the night in a city of foreigners; it is hardly safe to bed down with these foul Jebusites! Levites were often very particular about those they rubbed shoulders with. It always struck the concubine as very odd how haughtily the man acted, given his tiny hut, his pathetic resources, not to mention his foul odors. So they pushed ahead, moving quickly toward Gibeah. By the time they reached the village, the sun had been down for some time, the stars were out in full, and a bright moon bathed the familiar city square.

It is customary in Israel that when strangers appear they are to be treated as honored guests, to be brought into someone’s home, to be fed and housed for the night and sent safely on their way in the morning. In modern Gibeah a stranger was assured of a warm and congenial welcome, partly because of the memory of this tale. But when the three travellers entered the square of Gibeah back then there was only silence; no one came to care for them or their beasts. Well, they thought, it is very late, though they had rightly expected someone to appear to offer them help.

Finally, after almost deciding to leave the village and trudge on to their remote hut, though they were nearly asleep standing up, an old man walked slowly into the village after a long day’s work in the fields. They were in fact amazed to see a single man returning from his work so late and so alone. His back was bowed with the hard labor of farming, his hands caked with the mud of the field. He was less than eager to spend another minute away from his waiting fire and simple food, but when he saw the strangers, the ancient and hallowed demand for hospitality overcame his exhaustion. He politely asked them where they were from. The Levite told him their story, saying that they needed no food either for the donkeys or themselves, but they did desire a roof for the night. The old man replied, Shalom to you! I will care for all of your needs, but you must not spend the night in this square! His tiredness dissipated and his back straightened when he uttered the last part of his sentence with real vehemence, shuddering as he glanced furtively around the village center, bathed in the lovely, soft moonlight. The travellers felt very uneasy as they watched the old man’s eyes dart in the light. He urged them to follow him quickly to his house, and moved off much more swiftly than his age would have suggested.

His hut was small but neat. His aged wife, or sister, or companion, YHWH alone knew which, had tended the small fire well, and it crackled with a cheery flame, nicely heating the tiny space. It was a farmer’s house, various implements of that life leaning against the shadowy walls, two hoes with metal tips, an old bronze sword, dull and ill-used, several clay jars, poorly made and weathered with cracks, leaking liquid down their sides. A wooden bench served as the only place for a seat, and the old man fell heavily onto it, the woman scurrying to bring the food to the large wooden table, three rough boards held together with what looked like camel ropes, replacing the metal clamps that had long ago rusted away.

As they were eating a small meal, bread from gritty flour, a few dates and olives, meat from an unknown and stringy animal, the people of Gibeah encircled the house of the old man and began pounding on the door. Bring that man who is visiting you outside now. We wish to have our way with him! But the old man bravely confronted the mob, and said, My neighbors, do not act with such wickedness. This man is my guest; you well know the demands of hospitality. When a stranger comes, the custom stipulates their complete protection and safety. I have a virgin daughter and this man has a concubine. I will bring them out to you, and you can do with them whatever your filthy imaginations can conceive. The crowd was plainly a depraved lot!

But the mob would not listen, so the Levite pushed his screaming concubine out to the mob and slammed the door after her. The old man, his daughter, and the Levite retired to bed, while the cruel mob of Gibeah, the men, the women, and even some children, attacked the concubine all night long, raping her and assaulting her in ways too appalling to recount. (At this point in the telling, how graphic the details became was dependent on the character of the teller and on the number of cups of wine consumed.) As the sun rose, they let her go, throwing her down on the ground, not knowing or caring whether she was dead or alive. The poor woman crawled feebly toward the house, stretched out her hand to grasp its threshold, and collapsed unconscious.

And in the morning, the Levite got up and opened the door. There, lying on the threshold, was the concubine, bloody and bruised, her tunic ripped, most of her body exposed to the sun’s first light. Get up, he said to her, We are going. He offered no comfort; he expressed no surprise; he showed no anger at the monstrousness of the deed. He merely wanted her to get up and go with him to his hut.

But she did not answer. Was she dead or just nearly dead? Some say one, some the other. In any case, the Levite lifted her limp body onto his donkey. And then he did the thing that so terrifies young and old whenever the story was told. When he arrived back at his hut in the mountains, he grabbed the concubine, and taking a huge knife, the one with which he regularly butchered his meat, he cut her into 12 pieces, limb by limb, and sent the bloody chunks throughout all the land of Israel. He commanded each man who carried a piece of the concubine as follows: Say this to all Israelites; ‘Has such a thing ever happened since the day the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day?’ Consider well, take careful counsel, and then act!

With every telling of this unforgettably brutal story the Levite became larger, uglier, more terrifying. But the upshot of the Levite’s action was particularly well remembered. Israel had nearly descended to outright civil war, its tribe of Benjamin almost wiped from the earth. Because of all this it was crucial that any would-be member of the territory be closely investigated; it would hardly do to be neighbors with anyone who did not ascribe to the very highest standards of morality, and morality was identical to village custom. They needed no more mobs to deny the sacred rights and agreed upon customs of a respected Israelite village. It was that story that lay behind the elders’ careful questions of any newcomer.

So they questioned Kish closely as he applied to join the elders in Gibeah. Carmi wanted him to repeat that long list of unknown forbears, but Abior quickly rejected the idea as unnecessary, thinking to himself that he simply could not listen to the vapid names one more time! Shmuel asked about Kish’s religious beliefs, although one could always say the name YHWH enough times to convince anyone that he was safe enough as a believer. Abior asked if there were any more questions, and hearing none, asked for a vote. On certain occasions, when the council was badly divided they would cast lots, ancient animal bones that the priests said could reveal truths that simple humans could not, but in the case of Kish, there was no need for the rattle of the bones. They finally accepted him, nearly unanimously, but, as usual, some with reluctance. The elders always acted with reluctance whenever anyone asked to live in their Gibeah, clearly the best village in all of Benjamin, if not in the whole land. But Kish was accepted at the last and found a good plot of land quite close to the village, no more than half a morning’s walk. Kish , his wife, and young sons, soon made their way to their new farm and settled in to a fresh life on the outskirts of Gibeah.

2

The decision worked well this time for both sides as Kish’s flocks and herds expanded and his fields were thick with grain at the times of harvest. He had numerous sturdy sons, all of whom were strapping boys, strong workers, devoted to Kish and to Kish’s God, YHWH. It was particularly important that Kish and his family prove themselves devotees of YHWH, the mysterious God of the far-away mountain who had created everything and who offered to the faithful the riches of the land. The elders had built a shrine to YHWH at the highest place near the village, and all were expected to bring appropriate offerings to the God as well as to learn of the many demands that YHWH had laid on those who would be the God’s followers. It was no problem for Kish to be regular in his sacrificial practice for in truth he grew deeply devoted to YHWH, the often hidden deity, in response to the increasing successes of his farm. Kish was careful to speak often of YHWH to his family, and easily had YHWH’s name on his lips whenever any of the elders came for a visit to Kish’s farm. And Kish and his sons made regular trips to the shrine, bringing with them gifts of ripe grain and on special occasions like spring lambing season, a pure animal for sacrifice. Kish and family soon became respected members of the village, and he was elected to the council of elders as quickly as any new comer ever had.

One of Kish’s sons stood out from his brothers in nearly every way. He was very good-looking, any girl in Benjamin could tell you that. Years of hard farm labor filled out his arms and shoulders, and since his particular job was plowing behind the yoked oxen, his legs became heavily muscled as well. Walking in the muddy fields, trying to keep the huge oxen straight in the rows, forced arms and legs to strain almost every minute, so the boy became a chiseled figure of a man. All commented that this boy, Saul, was very pleasing to the eyes of all who saw him. But that was not the most noticeable thing about him. He was no doubt handsome, but most of all he was magically tall. No one could remember seeing a man as tall as he; four cubits (that is the height of a very tall camel, a cubit representing the distance between the middle finger and the elbow) at least he was. It was something of a joke as the boy grew, how he first towered over his mother by age ten, and then dwarfed his father by age fifteen. Carmi and Doeg took bets on just how tall Saul would finally become, while Abior wagered with Carmi, ever the one for a wager, on just when he would stop growing. When he grew nearly a span (the space between last finger and thumb) in his fifteenth year, he would cry out in the night because of the pain in his legs, the bones and sinews stretching and stretching.

Old Kish, his father, first beamed with pride at his enormous and handsome son, but as his growing continued, he became fearful that perhaps his boy was some sort of freak, a misfit in a shorter, more normal world, a monster to terrify little children, the stuff of scary stories in the night. Saul was special, all right, but he was also odd, peculiar, and could not be treated quite like Kish’s other children. He could not share a sleeping place with anyone else, since he took up the whole of any normal sleeping rug. His appetite was prodigious; Kish’s wife had to cook more and more food for the family as Saul ate enough for three or four children, and eventually enough for three or four adults. Of course, he was very handy about the farm; only Saul could handle alone the great team of oxen that was so essential to the work of plowing and planting; only Saul could lift the enormous stones that the plowing always turned up. It was often said that stones were the finest product of the fields of Israel, so stone moving was a central job when working the land. And no one could move stones like Saul.

Stories about Saul were told far and wide in the land. One described the day that he killed a lion in the field with his bare hands; another spoke of the time he grabbed two eagles right out of the air, the eagles apparently not aware that even they could not overtop the towering Saul. Many wags in the alehouses whispered that Saul must be endowed with a member the size of a bull, and they told tales of a prodigious sexual appetite that had put smiles on the faces of many willing Israelite women. Though Saul was not yet twenty summers, his fame spread as fires sweeping up the canyons of the hill country.

It is not likely that any of these stories were true; or if they had a grain of truth, they had been expanded well beyond validity. In fact, Saul was a simple boy, a capable farmer, and a dutiful son to Kish. Oh, he was a huge man, no question of that. But he was a man, not a monster, not a freak, not sexually or emotionally extraordinary in any special ways. Quite the opposite. Saul was rather a loner and quite shy; his size cut him off from others; he had little interest in being the center of attention. Saul just wanted to fit in, have some friends, some simple fun, love a fine woman, marry and have children. That’s all he wanted really. But everywhere he went he stood out, a full head and more taller than anyone else had ever been, as people liked to say. Whether he wanted to or not, Saul was special, unique, more physically gifted than any man. More powerfully handsome than all other men, too.

On longer summer days, after the farm chores were done, Saul loved to climb one of the hills that bordered Kish’s land, sit on the top, gazing at the meadows down below. He wanted to be alone. Here on the top of the mountain, he could feel small in the face of the great land of mountain and valley spread all around him. Here he was not singled out for size; here he thought about his life and YHWH, creator of earth and sky. His father taught his boys well the stories, laws, and poems that made up the traditions of the ancestors. Saul loved all religious things; he reveled in the sacrifices the family made, especially when they took the day-long journey east to Gilgal and its hallowed shrine, a much more impressive place than the small shrine in Gibeah. He rejoiced in the singing of the psalms of the faith, some new compositions, and some borrowed and changed from the ancient Canaanites whose descendants still lived in the hills to the north. Saul, himself, loved to sing, his rich bass regularly heard above the smaller voices of his brothers and friends. He studied the laws of Israel carefully, attempting to understand their modern applications. He especially loved the account of the Exodus from Egypt, how YHWH had defeated the vast armies of pharaoh after saving the chosen people from certain defeat at the Sea of Reeds, a marshy lake of uncertain location far in the west. He thrilled at the exploits of the great Moses who had led the reluctant and often terrified and foolish Israelites to that sea, through it, and beyond it toward the land of promise, part of which Saul now was seeing and living in. He loved the tale of the gift of the law at the smoking and heaving mountain of Sinai, how Moses brought the tablets of that law down from the mountain, only to shatter them in anger when he witnessed the orgy of idolatry centered on the molten calf, created by Aaron, and worshipped by those same people, who had been saved from bondage by YHWH. He shook his great head always when he heard these stories; he just could not imagine how his ancestors had so quickly rejected the freedom of YHWH, turning instead to a ridiculous pathetic little calf of gold. If he had been there, he thought, he would have joined Moses in melting that disgusting idol and would have readily force-fed the golden liquid down the throats of those ingrates!

Saul often felt that he was closest to his God when he was alone on his favorite hill, remembering the stories of the past. And he was convinced in his heart that he had a special destiny from that God; why else would YHWH have made him so tall? Why else could he eat and work like four men? Perhaps he was to be a priest in some shrine or other? Perhaps he should wait to see if he received a word as a prophet? The prophet Samuel was very old, and Saul had heard that Samuel’s sons were not going to succeed their father in the tasks of ruling Israel. Why not he? Why not the tallest and most handsome man