1 Samuel 10:17 – 11:15

1 Samuel 10

¹⁷ Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mizpah. ¹⁸ He said to the people of Israel, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. I brought Israel up out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all the kingdoms that oppressed you. ¹⁹ But today you have rejected your God, the one who saves you out of all your disasters and your distress, and you have said to him, ‘You must set a king over us.’ Now line up in the presence of the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands.”

²⁰ So Samuel brought forward all the tribes of Israel, and the tribe of Benjamin was chosen. ^{[1] 21} Then he brought forward the tribe of Benjamin by its clans, and the clan of the Matrites was chosen. ^[2] Then Saul the son of Kish was chosen, but when they looked for him, he could not be found. ²² Therefore they asked the Lord again, “Has the man arrived here yet?”

The Lord answered, “He has. Look, he is is hiding among the baggage.”

²³ So they ran and brought him from there. When he stood among the people, he was a head taller than any of the people. ²⁴ Samuel said to all the people, “Do you see the one the Lord has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people.”

All the people shouted, “Long live the king!”

²⁵ Samuel told the people the regulations concerning the kingship, and he wrote them on a scroll, which was placed before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each man to his own house. ²⁶ Saul went home to Gibeah, and the army went with him, those men whose hearts God had touched. ²⁷ But certain worthless good-for-nothings said, “How can this man save us?” They despised him and brought him no gift, but Saul said nothing.

Saul Saves Jabesh Gilead

1 Samuel 11

¹ Nahash ^[3] the Ammonite went and set up camp against Jabesh Gilead. So all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.” ² Nahash the Ammonite said to them, “On this condition I will make a treaty with you: I will gouge out the right eye of every one of you in order to dishonor all Israel.”

³ The elders of Jabesh said to him, “Give us seven days, so that we can send messengers throughout all the borders of Israel. Then, if there is no one to rescue us, we will come out to you.” ⁴ When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul and spoke these words in the hearing of the people, all the people cried out and wept loudly.

⁵ Just then Saul came in from the field, following the oxen. Saul asked, “What has upset the people? Why are they weeping?” So they told him about the words of the men of Jabesh.

⁶ When Saul heard those words, the Spirit of God rushed upon him with power, and his anger burned intensely. ⁷ He took a yoke of oxen and cut them to pieces and sent the pieces throughout all the borders of Israel in the hands of messengers who said, “This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not turn out to follow Saul and Samuel.” The dread of the Lord fell on the people, and they turned out as one man. ⁸ Saul counted them in Bezek. The men of Israel totaled three hundred thousand and the men of Judah thirty thousand.

⁹ They said to the messengers who had come, “Tell the men of Jabesh Gilead, ‘Tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you will be rescued.’”

The messengers came and told the men of Jabesh, and they were very happy. ¹⁰ So the men of Jabesh said, “Tomorrow we will come out to you, and you can do with us whatever seems good to you.”

¹¹ On the next day, Saul split the army into three divisions. They broke into the middle of the Ammonite camp during the last watch before morning and struck them down until the heat of the day. Those who survived were so scattered that no two of them were left together.

¹² Then the people said to Samuel, “Who was it who said, ‘Shall Saul reign over us?’ Hand those men over to us, so we can put them to death!”

¹³ But Saul said, “No one shall be put to death today, because today the Lord has rescued Israel.”

¹⁴ Then Samuel said to the people, “Come! Let’s go to Gilgal and confirm the kingship there.” ¹⁵ So all the people went to Gilgal, and they made Saul king in the presence of the Lord there at Gilgal. There they sacrificed fellowship offerings before the Lord, and Saul and all the men of Israel held a great celebration there.