Saul as Sacrifice

The Tragedy of Israel's First Monarch

L. Daniel Hawk

Bible Review 12/6 (1996): 20-25, 56.

Few figures in biblical literature provoke as many questions as

King Saul. Was he a man of noble aspirations brought down by

some tragic flaw (impulsiveness, ineptitude, irresolution?) or an

arrogant tyrant infatuated with power? Was he a pitiable

pantywaist, easily swayed by the dictates of others, or a hero,

dignified by his struggle against an inscrutable fate and an

implacable deity? Why was he rejected so quickly and

decisively? And why did Yahweh punish him so severely?

The biblical portrait of Saul is a study in contradictions.

Reluctant at the outset to accept the role of Israel’s king (1

Samuel 9:21), Saul later perceives his young armor-bearer,

David, as a rival and clings ever more tenaciously to his crown.

He is capable of decisive action—as when he rallies the tribes of

Israel to defeat the Ammonites at Jabesh-Gilead (1 Samuel

10:27b-11:11)—but he is curiously vacillatory in confronting

the Philistines at Mt. Gilboa (1 Samuel 28:3-15). A man of

tender feelings, who seeks comfort in music, he turns viciously

on friend and family alike (1 Samuel 20:30-33). A magnanimous

monarch to those who contested his selection as king (1 Samuel

11:12-13), he later slaughters the priests of Nob on the mere

suspicion of betrayal (1 Samuel 22:6-19).

One thing is clear. The perplexities of Saul’s story mirror the

turmoil and uncertainty of the context in which it unfolds—the

creation of the Israelite monarchy. The emergence of the

kingship presented the author of 1 Samuel, writing many years

after the events, with significant ambiguities. First, although

kings brought a measure of good (for example, by uniting the

scattered Israelite tribes into a single nation), they could also be

perceived as rivals of Yahweh, Israel’s true and eternal king.1

Second, Israel’s earliest traditions affirmed that Yahweh had

endorsed a particular structure for Israelite society: a tribal

confederacy led by charismatic leaders, called judges, who were

chosen by Yahweh. Yet the course of Israel’s history revealed

that Yahweh had later blessed a different social order: a

kingdom led by a monarch from a divinely established dynasty

(2 Samuel 7:8-16).

How did Yahweh negotiate this chasm, transferring his

allegiance from the tribal social order established under Moses

to the Davidic monarchy?

At least in part, 1 Samuel was written to resolve these tensions.

The book recounts the transformation of Israelite society from

tribal confederacy to dynastic monarchy, dramatizing this

transformation through the main characters. If the seer, prophet

and priest Samuel represents the old order under the judges, and

King David the new order under an established dynastic

monarchy, then Saul represents a transitional figure, embodying

the profound social (and theological) crisis in which the nation is

reshaped and redefined.

This national crisis is set in motion by the people’s request for a

king. The request displeases both Yahweh and Samuel. Yahweh

perceives the people’s request as a rejection of his rule,

commenting that the people have continually forsaken him for

"other gods" (1 Samuel 8:6-8); Samuel warns the people of the

oppression monarchy will bring (1 Samuel 8:10-17) and predicts

that when the people cry out because of the king’s tyranny,

Yahweh will not answer (1 Samuel 8:18).

In another speech, Samuel underscores Yahweh’s ire at the

establishment of Saul’s kingship (1 Samuel 12:6-17). Samuel

begins with a review of Israel’s history, highlighting the

effectiveness of Yahweh’s leadership under the old order, and

concludes with a declaration that Israel has acted with great

wickedness in seeking a king. When Yahweh ominously

confirms Samuel’s words with thunder and rain, the people are

terror-stricken and concede the wickedness of their request for a

king (1 Samuel 12:18-19).

Curiously, however, Samuel acknowledges the people’s

confession of sin and assures them that Yahweh will not

abandon his people (1 Samuel 12:20-22). How has Yahweh’s

anger been assuaged?

The answer lies in Saul’s role in the story. In terms reminiscent

of Greek tragedy, the biblical writer presents Saul, the central

character in this immense social reconfiguration, as a sacrificial

figure: Saul is the sacrifice needed to appease Yahweh’s anger

over the people’s demands and thus to make possible Israel’s

transformation from confederacy to monarchy.2

The reign of Israel’s first king is a drama in four acts. In the

first, Saul is anointed king by the prophet-priest Samuel. Both

Samuel and Yahweh, in the second act, suddenly and decisively

reject the newly anointed king. In the third act, King Saul

gradually becomes isolated from friends, family and subjects.

Finally, in the climactic fourth act, which takes place on Mt.

Gilboa, Saul ends his life by falling on his sword.

The jarring events of this drama are held in place by the

leitmotif of sacrifice.3 In Act I, Saul, while searching for some

lost asses, decides to consult a seer (Samuel). He asks some

women where to look, and they tell him that a seer is going to

make a sacrifice that very day: "[T]he people will not eat until

he comes, for he must bless the sacrifice; afterward those eat

who are invited" (1 Samuel 9:13). Saul himself turns out to be

the guest of honor. (Is he already the sacrifice for whom the

people have been waiting?) Samuel gives Saul the choicest

portion of the sacrifice and later secretly anoints Saul as king (1

Samuel 9:25-10:1).

Later, when Saul is publicly acclaimed king after his victory

over the Ammonites, the celebration tellingly consists of

sacrifices "before Yahweh" (1 Samuel 11:15).

In Act II, Saul is twice rejected. On the first occasion, Saul and

his restive troops are awaiting Samuel at Gilgal, where Samuel

is to preside at a sacrifice before a battle with the Philistines.

They wait seven days past the appointed time, but Samuel

doesn’t show. Impatient, Saul offers the sacrifice himself. Just as

he finishes, Samuel appears. Brooking no explanation, Samuel

proclaims, "Your dynasty will not endure" (1 Samuel 13:4-14).

Before the second rejection comes a strange, though pivotal,

episode in which Saul unwittingly takes upon himself the status

of a sacrificial victim. During a battle with the Philistines, Saul

pronounces a rash oath: "Cursed be the man who eats any food

before night falls and I take revenge upon my enemies" (1

Samuel 14:24). Except for one person, the famished troops

desist, even when they discover a honeycomb—an image of life

and sweetness in the midst of all this death and cursing (though

the honeycomb, as we will see, is soon to become a symbol of

that very death and cursing).

The one exception is Saul’s son Jonathan, who does not hear his

father’s curse and so tastes the honey. One of the soldiers,

seeing Jonathan eating the honey, tells him of Saul’s curse (1

Samuel 14:28). The soldier’s report underscores the irony of the

act: Jonathan, the representative of the just-rejected dynasty,

now stands under a curse.

The next scene presents nothing less than unbridled chaos.

Famished by fasting, the troops descend on the Philistine booty,

slaughter the livestock and begin eating the meat raw with its

blood (1 Samuel 14:31-32). In a symbolic sense, this act

represents the total breakdown of social prohibitions and a

descent into barbarism. Saul orders the troops to slaughter the

animals instead on a great stone, which serves as a makeshift

altar—"the first altar he erected to Yahweh" (1 Samuel 14:35).

The establishment of this altar is of crucial symbolic

significance: The sacrifices instituted by Saul rescue the people

from chaos and restore order.4

In subsequent events, the focus of the narrative shifts from

Jonathan (and the dynasty) to Saul (the king himself). When

Yahweh does not respond to a request for guidance, Saul

consults the divine lots called Urim and Thummim to determine

who is responsible.5 First, the lots absolve the troops, indicating

that either Jonathan or Saul is to blame. Then the lots point to

Jonathan—he has eaten the honey, thus bringing down upon

himself his father’s curse (1 Samuel 14:37-42).

Recognizing that Yahweh is angry, Saul declares, "As Yahweh

lives, who saves Israel, even if [the sin] is in my son Jonathan,

he shall surely be put to death" (1 Samuel 14:39). Jonathan

admits that he tasted the honey, adding, "I am ready to die" (1

Samuel 14:43). Saul then utters another oath: "God do so to me

and even more [if I do not keep my oath]; you shall surely die,

Jonathan" (1 Samuel 14:44).

But the troops take Jonathan’s side, vowing that "not a hair of

his head shall fall," for it was Jonathan, with God’s help, who

had brought victory against the Philistines (1 Samuel 14:45).

Saul thus stands alone. He must now face the consequences of

his own oath: If Jonathan is not put to death, Saul has just said,

"God do so to me and even more" (1 Samuel 14:44). This oath

has the unintended consequence of deflecting the curse from

Jonathan onto Saul himself. Because Jonathan is spared, as the

troops demand, Saul becomes the victim of his own curse. He

will die—not Jonathan or the people.

The second rejection of Saul comes after his victory over one of

Israel’s ancient enemies, the Amalekites. Samuel has ordered

Saul to annihilate the Amalekites, but Saul instead spares the

Amalekite king, Agag, and the best of the livestock. As before,

Samuel rejects Saul’s explanation: "Yahweh has rejected you as

king over Israel" (1 Samuel 15:2-26). The first rejection spelled

the end of Saul’s dynasty. Now Saul’s own reign is under

judgment; it is he who is rejected.

In a scathing denunciation, Samuel associates Saul with all

manner of crimes against God: disobedience, rebellion,

obduracy, divination and idolatry (1 Samuel 15:22-23). These

are precisely the crimes ascribed to Israel during the period of

the judges, which ended with the people’s demand for a king.

Now these crimes are attributed to Saul; the king stands in place

of the nation.

Note the words Samuel uses to inform Saul about Yahweh’s

judgment: "Because you have rejected the word of Yahweh, he

has rejected you as king" (1 Samuel 15:26). These words vividly

recall Yahweh’s response to the people’s request for a king:

"They have rejected me from being king over them" (1 Samuel

8:7b).

As we have seen, though, the people have not been abandoned.

Now we understand why: because the king now serves as their

surrogate. Saul, the man Israel requested as king (Saul’s name in

Hebrew, Shaul, means something like "asked for"), ensures the

survival of the people by taking God’s displeasure on himself.

Saul thus prepares the way for a king whom "Yahweh has

sought after his own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14).

Subsequent events in Act III reveal the outpouring of divine

wrath upon Saul as well as his increasing isolation from the

people.

Yahweh takes the divine spirit from Saul and sends an evil spirit

to afflict him (1 Samuel 16:14). Saul must bear the pain of

seeing the one he "loved greatly," David, now becoming the

rival he fears (1 Samuel 18:12). Saul’s own son and daughter

take David’s part against him (1 Samuel 19:1-17). Saul is

publicly humiliated in front of his own troops, not once, but

twice (1 Samuel 24:1-22, 26:1-25).

Why so much torment? Because Yahweh has suffered a long

series of rejections from Israel (1 Samuel 8:7-8, 12:6-13);

therefore, Saul must be rejected repeatedly.

The circumstances of Saul’s death in Act IV resonate with

sacrificial imagery. The Philistines first slay Saul’s three sons.

Himself wounded, Saul asks his arms-bearer to slay him. He

refuses. "Whereupon Saul grasped the sword and fell upon it" (1

Samuel 31:4).

That Saul’s death is by his own hand fulfills one common

criterion of certain ancient sacrifices—that the victim be a

willing participant.6 Sacrificial ritual, moreover, concludes not

with the death of the victim but, rather, with the dismemberment

and disposition of the carcass. When the Philistines come upon

Saul’s body, they behead it and hang the corpse, along with

those of his sons, on the wall of Beth-Shean (1 Samuel 31:8-10).

The men of Jabesh-Gilead, however, steal the bodies and burn

them (1 Samuel 31:11-13), although Saul’s head evidently

remains with the Philistines.7

The tragic conclusion of Saul’s story prepares the way for the

rise of David, under whom Israel experiences something like a

Golden Age. This pattern of social upheaval and restoration

through sacrifice is an old one. In ancient societies, sacrificial

offerings provided a means of understanding and responding to

large-scale disruptions in the world. Sacrifices marked

transitions in the cosmic and social order and brought opposed

forces into harmony. A community suffering under the anger of

a deity might, through sacrifice, restore itself to favor by

redirecting the deity’s wrath toward the sacrifice. The sacrificial

victim thus served both as the focus of communal tensions and

as the vehicle by which necessary transformations might take

place.

The Bible is no exception to this ancient practice. Key junctures

in biblical history are marked by sacrifice. Humanity’s new

beginning through Noah and his family (Genesis 8:20-22),

Yahweh’s covenants with Abram (Genesis 15:7-21) and Israel

(Exodus 24:1-8), Israel’s entrance into the Promised Land

(Joshua 8:30-35), the consecration of the Temple (1 Kings 8:1-

6,62-64; 2 Chronicles 7:1-7), the rejection of Baalism (1 Kings

18:17-40) and the return from the Exile (Ezra 2:68, 3:1-7,

8:35)—all are accompanied by appropriate sacrifices.

For the biblical writer, Saul’s death resolves the paradox of

kingship. The dissolution of the old tribal order and its

replacement by a new one constitutes an affront to Yahweh,

under whom the confederacy was established. Saul’s role as a

surrogate for the people provides a legitimate target of divine

wrath and makes possible the reconstitution of the nation

through kingship, kingdom and Temple. With divine anger spent

and the tribal confederacy dissolved, the Davidic monarchy can

be established and blessed. Saul is the necessary sacrifice,

whose life and death bring about the transformation of Israel.

1 Many scholars believe that the writer of 1 Samuel incorporated sources with diverse perspectives on the Israelite

kingship and often speak of a "pro-monarchical source" and an "anti-monarchical source." 2 In the tragedies of classical Athens, for example, sacrifice appears prominently as a metaphor for social

dissolution and integration. For more on this, see Helene Foley, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1985); and Froma I. Zeitlin, "The Motif of the Corrupted Sacrifice in Aeschylus’ Oresteia," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society 96 (1965), pp. 463-508. 3 "Sacrifice" here is used in its broad sense. Ancient Israel conducted various forms of sacrifice, each with its

specific purpose and ritual. It should be noted that in most instances the sacrificial rituals seem not to have carried the "substitutional" sense prominent in Western perceptions. Nevertheless, the killing of the sacrificial victim was fundamentally enacted for the sake of some communal benefit. For more on this, see the influential work of Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1977), and The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1986); as well as the recent article by James Williams, "Sacrifice and the Beginning of Kingship," Semeia 67 (1994), pp. 73-92. For an excellent introduction to the role of sacrifice in Israel’s social and conceptual life, see Richard D. Nelson, Raising Up a Faithful Priest: Community and Priesthood in Biblical Theology (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), pp. 55-82. 4 In the biblical text, sacrifice is often a barometer of social well-being. In Judges, for example, a society in disarray

is represented by grotesque parodies of sacrifice: the killing of the fat king Eglon (Judges 3:15-23), the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:29-39) and the dismemberment of the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19:27-29). Social renewal or restoration, similarly, is signified by correctly performed sacrifices, as in the revivals under Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 29) and Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:1-19). 5 Saul’s determination to know in response to divine opacity has much in common with the impulse that drives the

hero in Greek tragedy. In Oedipus the King, for example, the king’s compulsion to discover the cause of the plague suffered by Thebes leads to the revelation of his guilt. When he then blinds himself, divine wrath is averted and the plague is lifted. 6 In ancient Greece, for example, bulls were led to the altar and made, by various devices, to nod in assent to their

own death. 7 The peculiar report on the disposition of Saul’s body recalls two other instances of dismemberment. The first

instance is the event that makes Saul’s reputation and brings public support for his kingship; he dismembers plow oxen and sends the parts to the tribes of Israel in order to rally forces for the deliverance of Jabesh-Gilead (1 Samuel 11:5-7). The second instance takes place immediately after his rejection by Samuel at Gilgal (1 Samuel 15:31-35). When Saul begs Samuel to worship Yahweh with him, Samuel agrees. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the mode of worship will be somewhat unconventional. Calling for Agag, the captured Amalekite king, Samuel hacks him to pieces (a foreshadowing of Saul’s fate?). Thus dismemberment figures prominently at the three major junctures of Saul’s story: his ratification by the people, his rejection and his death