Canter Bridge

Israel’s first and short-lived king, Saul by name, is arguably the Hebrew Bible’s most tragic figure. He bears that peculiar curse that consists of great things happening to him. He does not invite them. In fact he seems bent on fleeing the tectonic movement of events that bring inexorable fame upon his large, fragile shoulders.

Indeed, his name seems an ironic pointer at his unwanted notoriety: ‘Saul’ means ‘sought out’ or ‘requested’. Israel, we learn from Samuel’s strange discourse, has committed the great sin of asking for a king. The prophet obliges them, giving them their Saul, yet promising the darkest of thunderclouds in their near-term future. Israel would regret their demand. Samuel would intercede with YHWH so that it might not go as badly for them as he anticipates it might. Saul remains silent, perhaps not knowing what to do with his role as Israel’s requested king, unable to summon the boldness it would require to ask YHWH to make his unsought reign something other than tragic.

Following his clandestine anointing by the king-making prophet, Saul goes half-heartedly to his second appointment, the one at which Samuel would unveil to Israel YHWH’s chosen ruler. In what might pass for humility—but in truth turns out to be something far different—Saul hides himself at the appointed time.

So they inquired again of the LORD, ‘Did the man come here?’ and the LORD said, ‘See, he has hidden himself among the baggage.’ Then they ran and brought him from there. When he took his stand among the people, he was head and shoulders taller than any of them. Samuel said to all the people, ‘Do you see the one whom the LORD has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people.’ And all the people shouted, ‘Long live the king!’

Though we might feel the tremors of deep sympathy for this ill-fated man-child, the canonical text as it comes to us will not nourish such sentiment. It detects rather in Saul’s evasive behavior the anticipation of a weak character, the first public blooming of a poisonous herb that will bring Saul and early death and bring Israel, shattered, to its knees.

The story of Saul’s hiding is not told in order to move us to fresh appreciation of humility. It is meant to warn us about cowardice in the face of enigmatic events.

Humility’s self-positioning instinct would come under scrutiny centuries hence. Jesus, in the company of respectful men who had grown incapable of seeing a diseased man as a father sees a lost child or a farmer considers his fallen ox, healed just such a man on the Sabbath. Then, as so often, he comments upon his moral outrage by means of an instructive narrative. In it proper behavior at a private dinner stands in for the human stance a man or woman ought to strike in a socially dissimilated world.

But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Humility is not Saulide. That is cowardice. Humility does not seek exaltation, but allows such to occur by its own momentum and in its proper time.

That the two behaviors appears so similar is simply to observe that ethical behavior depends as much on nuance as upon trumpets and pomp.