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tions of Jehovah was now visited by that final rejection of his family from succeeding liim on the throne which had before been threatened (xiii, 13, 14; xv, 23), and which was now significantly represented, or mystically predicted, by the rending of the ])ro|)het's mantle. The struggle between Samuel and Saul in their final parting is also indicated, as he tears himself away from Said's grasp (for the gesture, see Joseplius, yl«^ vi, 7, 5), and by the long mourning of Samuel for the separation — '•Samuel mourned for Saul." "How long wilt thou mourn for Saul'?" (1 Sam. xiv, 35; xvi, 1). After this second and flagrant disobedience, accordingly, Saul re- ceived no more public countenance from the venerable prophet, who now left him to his sins and his punish- ment; "nevertheless the Lord repented that he had made Saul king" (xv, 35). See Sajiuki..
5. Saurs Conduct tovarch David. — 'I'iie rest of Saul's life is one long tragedy. The frenzy which had given indications of itself before now at times took almost en- tire possession of him. It is described in mixed phrases as " an evil spirit of God" (much as we might speak of "religious madness"), which, when it came upon him, almost choked or strangled him from its violence (1 Sam. xvi, 1-1; Sept.; Josephus, Ant. vi, 8, 2). The de- inuiciations of Samuel sank into the heart of Saul, and produced a deep melancholv, which either really was, or which his physicians (1 Sam. xvi, 14, 15; comp. Gen. 1, 2) told him was, occasioned by a supernatural influ- ence; unless we understand the phrase il"'^ H^i, an ei-il spirit, subjectively, as denoting the condition itself of Saul's mind, instead of the cause of that condition (Isa. xxix, 10; Xumb. v, 14; Rom. xi, 8). We can con- ceive that music might affect Saul's feelings, might cheer his despondency, or divert his melancholy; but how it should have the power to chase awaj' a spiritual messenger whom the Lord had sent to chasten the mon- arch for his transgressions is not so easily understood. Saul's case must probably be judged of by the same principles as that of the dremoniacs mentioned in the New Test. See D.emoniac. In this crisis David was recommended to him by one of the young men of his guard (in the Jewish tradition groundlessly supposed to be Doeg [Jerome, Qu. Hah. ad loc.]) on account of his skill as a musician (1 Sam. xvi, lG-23). But the nar- rative of his introduction to Saul, his subsequently kill- ing Goliath, Saul's ignorance of David's person after he had been his attendant and armor-bearer, with various other circumstances in the narrative (xvi, 14-23; xvii; xviii, 1-4), present difiiculties which neither the arbi- trary omissions in the Sept. nor the ingenuity of subse- quent critics has fully succeeded in removing, and which have led many eminent scholars to suppose the exist- ence of extensive dislocations in this part of the Old Test. The change proposed by Hales and others seems to be the most ready, which would place the passage xvi, 14-23 after xviii, 9; yet why should Saul's attend- ants need to describe so minutely a person whom he and all Israel knew so well already '? Also, how can we con- ceive that Saul should love so much (xvi, 21) a person against whom his jealousy and hatred had been so pow- erfulh' excited as his probable successor in the kingdom? f xviii, 9). Besides, David had occupied already a much higher ])ositi()u (ver. 5) ; and, therefore, his being made Said's armor-bearer must have been the very opposite of promotion, which the text (xvi, 21) supposes it was. The most rational solution of the difiiculty a|)i)ears to be the supposition that David had in the interim grown so much that the monarch diil not now recognise him. Sec David.
Though not acquainted with the unction of David, yet having received intimation that the kingdom should be given to another, Saul soon suspected, from his ac- complislimcnts, heroism, wisdom, and popularitj', that David was his destined successor; and, instead of con- cluding that his resistance to the divine purpose would only accelerate his own ruin, Saul, in the spirit of jeal-
ousy and rage, commenced a series of murderous at- tempts on the life of his rival that must have lost him the respect and sj'mpathj' of his people, which they se- cured for the object of his malice and envy, whose noble qualities also they both exercised and rendered more conspicuous. He attempted twice to assassinate him with his own hand (1 Sam. xviii, 10, 11; xix, 10); he sent him on dangerous military expeditions (xviii, 5, 13, 17) ; he proposed that David should marry first his elder daughter, wdiom j-et he gave to another, and then his younger, that the procuring of the dowry might prove fatal to David; and then he sought to make his daugh- ter an instrument of her husband's destruction; and it seems probable that unless miraculously prevented he would have imbrued his hands in the blood of the ven- erable Samuel himself (xix, 18), while the text seems to intimate (xx, 33) that even the life of Jonathan was not safe from his fury, though the subsequent context may warrant a doubt whether Jonathan was the party aimed at by Saul. The slaughter of Ahimelech the priest (ch. xxii), under pretence of his being a partisan of David, and of eighty-five other priests of the house of Eli, to whom nothing could be imputed, as well as the whole inhabitants of Nob, was an atrocity perhaps never ex- ceeded; and yet the wickedness of the act was not greater than its infatuation, for it must have inspired his subjects not only with abhorrence of their king as an inhuman tyrant, but with horror of him as an im- pious and sacrilegious monster. This crime of Saul put David in possession of the sacred lot, which Abiathar, the only surviving member of Eli's priestly family, brought with him, and by which he was enabled to ob- tain oracles directing him in his critical affairs (xxii, 21-23; xxiii, 1,2).