But worse was yet to come. Saul proposed to pursue the Philistines in the night, and accordingly the oracle of Yahveh was again appealed to. No answer, however, was returned to the questioners. Neither priest nor ephod availed anything, and it became clear that sin had been committed in Israel. When the lots were cast, they fell upon Jonathan, who then confessed that he had, in ignorance of his father’s vow, eaten a little honey. The religious fanatic was stronger in Saul than the father, and he pronounced sentence that Jonathan must die. Jonathan, in fact, was the firstborn whose sacrifice was demanded by Yahveh as the price of the victory. Fortunately the religious convictions of the Hebrew soldiers were less intense than those of their king. It was Jonathan to whom the victory was due, and in the hour of his triumph they refused to allow him to die. Saul yielded, perhaps willingly; but the Philistines were permitted to disperse to their own homes.[[422]]
Was the sacrifice of Jonathan urged by Ahimelech and the priests? They at any rate did not interfere to prevent it, and the lots were cast under their supervision. What is certain is that from this time forward there was an increasing estrangement between Saul and the priesthood, which ended in the secret anointing of David as king of Israel, and in the massacre of the priests at Nob. We hear no more of Ahimelech and the ark in the camp of Saul.
Samuel, the aged and venerated representative of the Shilonite priesthood, had much to do with this growing estrangement. From the first he had looked upon Saul as a rival who had robbed him of his former power. Even after Saul had proved his fitness to rule by the rescue of Jabesh, and had been publicly acclaimed king by the people at Gilgal, he could not conceal his mortification and hostility. Were not he and his sons still with them? he asked the assembled Israelites; why then had they added this ‘wickedness’ unto ‘all their sins,’ to demand a king? In the thunder which rolled overhead he bade them recognise the anger of Yahveh at their thus rejecting His representative, and he ended with the threat that both they and their king should be ‘consumed.’[[423]]
Samuel was not long in embodying his hostility in deeds. According to one of the authorities used by the compiler of the books of Samuel, seven days only had elapsed after Saul’s election when the seer upbraided him in the presence of his army and told him that Yahveh had chosen another king in his place.[[424]] Here, however, two occurrences have been confused together—Saul’s confirmation as king by the people at Gilgal, and his subsequent encampment at the same place in the second year of his reign. By this time the breach had grown and widened between the old Judge and the new ‘Captain’ of Israel. Saul, in spite of his religious convictions and excitability, had not shown himself the obedient disciple and tool of Samuel that might have been expected; he proved to have a strong and violent will of his own, which he was fully ready to exercise when not under the influence of religious excitement. It was only temporarily that Saul was ‘among the prophets.’ Nor did he possess that tact and pliability which would have enabled David under the same circumstances to avoid an open quarrel with the aged seer. Saul was too earnest, too convinced that what he believed was the truth, to understand a compromise, much less a course of duplicity.
That the incident at Gilgal is historical, there can be no doubt. It is only the time of its occurrence that is misplaced. It belonged to those days of danger and difficulty when the Philistines seemed to have triumphed finally, and the hope of Israel lay in the six hundred desperate men who still followed Saul. Saul had waited vainly for the coming of Samuel, and at length, tired of waiting, had offered the burnt-offering for the safety and success of the army which Samuel had agreed to present. Hardly had it been offered when the seer appeared. Then it was that the king of Israel was told that he had been rejected by the Lord, and that another had been selected in his place. The occasion was indeed well chosen; the Israelites were already sufficiently discouraged and inclined to believe that their king had been even less successful against the Philistines than Samuel and his sons. Under the rule of Samuel, at all events, the territory of Benjamin had not been devastated, and its inhabitants compelled to hide themselves in the holes of the earth.
Samuel returned from Gilgal to ‘Gibeah of Benjamin.’ The victory at Michmash, which disappointed his predictions,[[425]] changed the aspect of affairs, and Saul’s throne seemed now to be firmly established. Once more, however, Samuel made an effort to shake it, and it was again at Gilgal that the event took place. Saul’s power rested on his soldiery, and the surest way, therefore, of striking at it was through the soldiery in the camp of Gilgal.
It was after an expedition against the Amalekites. The Israelites had marched towards El-Arîsh and smitten the Bedâwin of the desert ‘from Havilah’ in Northern Arabia to the great Wall of Egypt.[[426]] They had brought back with them a vast amount of spoil, as well as Agag, the Bedâwin chief, ‘everything that was vile and refuse,’ including the mass of the people, having been ‘destroyed utterly.’ But this was not enough. The Amalekites were to be treated as the Canaanites had been by Joshua; they and all that belonged to them had been laid under the ban and condemned to extermination.[[427]] Samuel, therefore, went in haste to the Israelitish camp, and there charged Saul with disobedience to the commands of Yahveh. Saul’s plea that the cattle and herds had been saved by ‘the people’ in order that they might be sacrificed to the Lord, was not accepted, and the fierce old seer himself ‘hewed Agag in pieces before Yahveh.’ At the same time, he told the Israelitish king that the kingdom had been rent from him and given to a neighbour that was better than he. It was the last time that the king and the seer met. Samuel went back to his home at Ramah and Saul returned to Gibeah. Between Saul and the priesthood there was open war.
The attack upon the Amalekites implies that the Philistines had for a time ceased to be formidable. The extract from the state chronicles given in 1 Sam. xiv. 47-52 makes it follow the other wars of Saul. Among these wars we hear of one against Moab, of another against Edom (or rather Geshur), and of a third against ‘the kings of Zobah.’[[428]] The Aramæans of Zobah, called Tsubitê in the Assyrian texts, and placed northward of the Haurân, were beginning to be powerful, and as we learn from the history of David, were about to establish a kingdom under Hadadezer which extended to the Euphrates and included Damascus. But at present they were still governed by more than one chief.[[429]]
The campaign against Zobah makes it clear that Saul’s authority was acknowledged in Gilead as well as on the western side of the Jordan. It is not surprising, therefore, that after his death his son should have resided there, well out of the reach of the Philistines, or that Eshbaal’s kingdom should have comprised all the northern tribes. Little by little, in spite of the opposition of Samuel, Saul worked his way to general acknowledgment and power. The Israelites, for the first time, were welded into a homogeneous state, and their enemies were kept at bay. The organisation of the kingdom went hand in hand with the military successes of its king. Israel at last was not only feared abroad, but at peace and unity within.
With all this, Saul preserved the old simplicity of his life and manners. He never yielded to the usual temptations of the Oriental despot; he had no harîm like David or Solomon, no palaces, no gardens, no trains of cooks and idle servants.[[430]] The people were not taxed to supply him with luxuries, nor dragged from their homes for his buildings and wars. In some of these royal pleasures doubtless he could not indulge: the conditions under which he reigned prevented it. But it was only by his own free choice that he remained faithful to one wife—Ahinoam, the daughter of Ahimaaz,—and that he held court at Gibeah under the shade of a tamarisk instead of a palace, with a spear in his hand in place of a sceptre.[[431]]