Saul's Selection as King
The selection of Saul as Israel's first king is narrated through two distinct accounts that scholars have long identified as reflecting different source traditions. They sit side by side in the text without harmonization, presenting genuinely different pictures of how Saul came to power. Understanding both accounts, and the tension between them, is essential to reading these chapters honestly.
The First Account: Private Anointing (Chapters 9–10:16)
In this account, Samuel encounters Saul while Saul is searching for his father's lost donkeys. God has already told Samuel to expect a man from Benjamin whom he is to anoint as leader over Israel, to save the people from the Philistines. The encounter is described with a kind of inevitability: Saul arrives at exactly the right moment, and Samuel is waiting. Samuel anoints Saul privately, gives him three signs to confirm the divine choice, and sends him away with the instruction that when the Spirit of God comes upon him, he should do whatever his hand finds to do. All three signs are fulfilled. Saul prophesies among a group of prophets, and those who know him are astonished: "Is Saul also among the prophets?" (10:11). When Saul returns home, he tells his uncle about finding the donkeys but says nothing about the kingship.
The tone of this account is essentially positive. The initiative is divine, the selection is personal and carefully prepared, and Saul is presented as a man equipped by God for the task. There is no critique of monarchy here, no warning about what a king will do, no suggestion that asking for a king is a rejection of God.
The Second Account: Public Selection by Lot (10:17–27 and Chapter 12)
In this account, Samuel calls all Israel together at Mizpah and opens with a speech that frames the assembly as a moment of corporate reckoning. God has delivered Israel from Egypt and from all kingdoms that oppressed them, yet now Israel has rejected God by asking for a king. Having established that the request for a king is a serious act of unfaithfulness, Samuel proceeds to the selection by lot. The lot falls on the tribe of Benjamin, then on the clan of Matri, then on Saul son of Kish. Saul is found hiding among the baggage. He is brought out and presented to the people. Some hail him as king; others despise him and bring him no gifts.
Chapter 12 then contains Samuel's farewell address, which returns to the same theme: the request for a king was wrong, even though God has accommodated it. The message is that covenant faithfulness remains the only basis for national well-being, whether under a king or not.
The Unresolved Tension
The two accounts are not harmonizable in any straightforward way. The private anointing of chapters 9 through 10:16 presupposes a very different understanding of how Saul came to power than the public lot-casting of chapter 10. In one, Saul is divinely chosen and privately prepared before the public assembly occurs. In the other, he is selected by lot at a public assembly convened specifically to rebuke Israel for wanting a king, and is found hiding rather than ready. His response to the crowd is different. The theological framing is different.
Scholars have generally explained this as evidence of two originally separate source traditions combined by editors who found value in preserving both, even at the cost of narrative consistency. The pro-monarchic account may reflect traditions favorable to the Saulide or Davidic dynasties. The anti-monarchic account is widely associated with the Deuteronomistic editorial perspective, which views the monarchy through the lens of its ultimate failure. Whatever their origin, both traditions were preserved in the canonical text, and readers of First Samuel must reckon with both rather than choosing one and ignoring the other.