The tragic tale of Saul, king of Israel

Saul, the first king of Israel, was a tall, strapping fellow, altogether a fine figure of a man, kaynenhora’. But he suffered from a few serious psychological ailments which should have ruled him out of the job before it even came to the shortlist.

Number one, he was deeply melancholic. Number two, he was prone to fits of rage. Number three, he disliked people, preferring the company of sheep and goats instead, and he would have been very happy to spend the rest of his days on the rocky hillside tending his father’s herds. Number four – and this is the gravest of his afflictions – he suffered from paranoia. So he was convinced that David, who really admired him, wanted to take his throne away from him. (Note, by the way, that there is sometimes a grain of truth in paranoid ideation).

So, did The Lord make a mistake in choosing Saul? Perish the thought! The Lord doesn’t make mistakes. The fact that Saul went off the rails more than once was entirely down to Saul himself. But in those days, the people of Israel had to be collectively punished for the transgressions of one person, which meant that they suffered severe casualties on more than one occasion during their frequent wars, and victory only swung their way when Saul repented and got his trolley back on the rails.

But I am getting ahead of myself. At first, all went well with the young king-to-be. During his probationary period, Saul was set the task of rescuing the people of Jabesh-gilead, a nearby Hebrew city, from a terrible fate. They had been advised by their mortal enemy, the Ammonites, that every member of their tribe would have to donate one of their eyes to the Ammonite cause or the whole tribe would be annihilated. On learning about this, Saul flew into one of his rages and made short work of the Ammonites, so he passed the kingship test with flying colours.

Unfortunately, Saul’s reign was marred by a number of lapses, which might seem insignificant to us but which antagonised his mentor, Samuel, and more importantly, The Lord Himself. On one occasion, Saul allowed his people to keep animals captured from the enemy instead of destroying them; on another occasion he did not wait the requisite seven days before making sacrifices while the enemy troops were gathering, but plunged into battle prematurely, against The Lord’s express instructions.

After a while, The Lord lost patience with Saul and made arrangements for David, a young lad with a much more amenable personality, to succeed him to the kingship. Saul must have sensed this, because he refused to shake David’s hand and even signalled his disapproval by hurling his spear at David while the latter was trying to relieve his melancholia with sweet music on his harp. Fortunately, Saul’s hand shook so badly that he missed his target, but that was the end of David’s efforts to cheer Saul up and the beginning of a long game of cat-and-mouse, which lasted until Saul’s death.

Samuel, meanwhile, having written off Saul as a hopeless case, had passed on and was sleeping peacefully after a long and troubled tenure as The Lord’s Agent-in-Chief on both spiritual and temporal matters. While all this was going on, the Philistines were closing in on the Israelites for the big showdown. They heavily outnumbered the Israelites and Saul was understandably worried.

At this point he did something else that he should never have done – he asked a local witch to raise Samuel from the dead so that he could hear the Old Man’s prophecy and plead with him for one last chance to make good. Witches had an undeservedly bad reputation and necromancy was particularly frowned on, so much so that Saul himself had banished them from his kingdom, so he had to disguise himself when he went for his consultation.

We now know that there are no black witches or white witches or even mixed race witches. So-called witches were simply unattached women of a certain age who practised their therapeutic skills in order to eke out a reasonable parnasseh. The trouble was that things sometimes went wrong with their spells and their clients would come to grief. Hence the banning order.

This witch, however, was no fool. She immediately recognised Saul and saw that he was badly in need of TLC, which she promptly administered. She also considered it in her best interests to obey his injunction, so she summoned Samuel up from his sleep to attend to her client. As you can imagine, Samuel was none too pleased at having been so rudely disturbed. He tore a strip off Saul and predicted that he and his whole army would be wiped out, which did nothing for Saul’s black mood.

Next day, the final act of the drama was played out on the slopes of Mount Gilboa. Saul and his three sons, Jonathan, Melchishua and Abinadab, along with his armour-bearer (whose name I forget) died in the ensuing rout, as did most of the Israelite army.

I wanted to ask my Rebbe what lessons could be learned from all this, but he too, like Samuel, had fallen into a deep sleep and I did not have the heart to wake him. Nor could I find a suitable necromancer or therapist to do the job for me, so my many questions remain unanswered.