Israel's first king went looking for lost donkeys and found a crown
In one biblical telling, a young man from the tribe of Benjamin is sent to track down his father's runaway donkeys. On the way he consults a seer named Samuel and leaves anointed as king. Saul's reign marked Israel's shift from loose tribal rule to a state, and ended in tragedy on Mount Gilboa.
His name means asked for or prayed for, and tradition places his reign in the late eleventh century BC. Almost everything known comes from the Books of Samuel, so historians do not all accept that he or the United Monarchy existed as described. The text even disagrees with itself: it offers three separate accounts of how he became king, and the Hebrew gives his reign as two years, which most scholars think is a copying error for 20 or 22, while the Book of Acts says forty.
Those three routes to the throne differ sharply. In one he searches for donkeys and meets Samuel. In another Samuel gathers the tribes at Mizpah and chooses him by casting sacred lots. In the third he rallies the tribes to rescue the besieged town of Jabesh-Gilead from the Ammonites and is acclaimed at Gilgal; the scholar André Lemaire judges this last version the most reliable. Ruling from Gibeah, Saul went on to fight the Moabites, Edomites, Philistines and others, and the text credits him with victory wherever he turned.
Then came conflict with his prophet. Saul offered a sacrifice himself when Samuel was late, and later spared the Amalekite king Agag and the best livestock against orders, after which Samuel declared that God had rejected him. From then on the story revolves around David, the young harpist brought to soothe Saul's troubled spirit, who killed Goliath and grew so popular that Saul came to see him as a rival. Saul's son Jonathan, meanwhile, became David's devoted friend and recognised him as the rightful heir.
According to the text, Saul fell on his own sword at Mount Gilboa while fighting the Philistines, and three of his sons died there too. His son Ish-bosheth ruled for two years before his own captains killed him, and David took the throne.
Source: Saul
