Canter Bridge

The seer Samuel’s proximity to YHWH’s counsel makes him the pivotal figure in the Saul narrative. His gaze penetrates the smoky gray of events, illuminating in forboding sentences the direction that YHWH would have them go.

Samuel must have made unpleasant company, not the kind for smalltalk and hors d’oeuvres. One felt his presence as an interruption. Like the prophets of which he would become a prototype, Samuel was more often than not both late and unwelcome.

Saul’s tragic and erratic life is peppered by Samuel appearances. One senses that YHWH and his always privy prophet had early grown disillusioned with Israel’s first king. He had a penchant for answering more to circumstances than to principle and a refined gift for self-justification. He is not offered the benefit of doubts. Saul is both victim and perpetrator of his own demise. Fear stalks his early and latter manouevres, indeed it lingers at the heart of his character as its condemning deficiency.

When Samuel’s impeccable knack for bad timing brings him into Saul’s encampment just as the latter has indulged himself in some priestly licence, Saul’s most quotable words frame the confrontation:

Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the LORD?
Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is no less a sin than divination,
and stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has also rejected you from being king.

Even if the eloquence surprises, the outcome seems almost predetermined. Samuel’s reticence about Saul has been apparent from the outset. In the textured context of the narrative, it was bound to represent YHWH’s doubts as well.

So does the story lurch to its bruised denouement:

Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.

YHWH the merciful is also YHWH the severe, not least when the destiny of his flock is threatened by an errant shepherd. Saul will fall prey to the larger purpose. His own fear was the weapon. The mastery of it changes lives, and the world.