As I mentioned in my introductory post, I’m working on a character study of Saul called “The Real Saul.”  Of course, when I say Saul, I don’t mean the Saul of the New Testament who also went by “Paul.”  I mean the Old Testament Saul from the book of 1 Samuel. . . the one who was king, and tried to harpoon David in the thorax a few times.  I’ve always found Saul to be an interesting person, and I’ve wondered if the source of Saul’s eventual downfall as a king and a person wasn’t about pride and arrogance as I’ve often been told, but rather his personal insecurities.

This is the way Saul is introduced to us in 1 Samuel 9: “There was a Benjamite, a man of standing, whose name was Kish son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the son of Aphiah of Benjamin. He had a son named Saul . . .” (1 Sam. 9:1, 2a).

This is not an unusual introduction in the Old Testament.  In ancient cultures, geneaologies were very important.  To know one’s father and one’s father’s father, helps us get a better understanding of the son, grandson, and everyone else descending from that family tree.  Some who come from difficult family situations today might shudder to think someone might draw a conclusion about them based on their father’s or grandfather’s history.  But such is the life of the ancient person.  Family, ancestry, and history were important in understanding the person.

I think we underestimate the significance of ancestry in modern life.  We may not notice the size of it’s generational ripples, or the effects that one’s father’s mistakes may have on our own lives, but the ancients tended to have broader understanding of all of this.

So Saul’s family history is the first thing we learn about him.  We don’t know much about the individuals mentioned, but we have become intimately aquainted with Saul’s tribe, the tribe of Benjamin.  The name-sake for Saul’s tribe was one of the sons of Jacob (also called Israel).  He was  the youngest of the sons, and one of Jacob’s favorites.  When Jacob’s sons went to Egypt during a famine to buy grain, Jacob refused to let Benjamin go because he was afraid his favorite son might get hurt (Gen. 42:3).  Even still, by the end of Genesis (ch. 49), when Jacob gathers his sons to tell them what’s ahead in their ancestor’s futures, this is what he has to say about Benjamin: “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder” (Gen. 49:27)

Thanks dad.

Perhaps the first time this predatory prediction comes true is in the book of Judges.  There’s a bizarre story there called “the Levite and the Concubine” (Judg. 19).  A man from the priestly tribe of Israel (the Levites) and his “sort-of” wife (a concubine), stopped in the town of Gibeah (Saul’s hometown), in the land of Benjamin for a rest.  A non-Benjamite man took the two in for the night, but the people of the town, the Benjamite people, surrounded the man’s home and tried to sexually assault the visitor– Soddom and Gomorrah style.  In the end, the levite averted the attack, but not his concubine.  The Benjamite men gang-raped her in a shocking, night-long attack.  She was dead by morning.  It’s a gruesome story.  And this event triggered a battle pitting the tribe of Benjamin against all of the tribes of Israel.  Benjamin suffered a tremendous loss, and they earned a pretty awful reputation in the process.

This is Saul’s family.  So when the writer of 1 Samuel acknowledges that Saul’s father was a “man of standing” and in the same breath that he was a Benjamite, we detect some irony.  And we sense that irony when Samuel informs Saul that he may be chosen as the next king of Israel. Saul’s response: “But am I not a Benjamite . . ?”

And here, I think we uncover the first layer of Saul’s insecurities . . . Saul’s ancestry and ethnicity.  Saul was carrying, not only the baggage he’d packed with his own issues, but also the burdens, deficiencies, and bad choices of his fathers.

I think many of us walk around, lugging the baggage from generations that came before us.  Many ethnic minorities understand the burden they carry as a result of their disadvantaged ancestry.  While African Americans may be over a hundred years removed from the abolition of slavery, the impact of slavery, injustice, racism, and segregation can still be felt in the deepest sensitivities of African Americans living today.  There are generational insecurities that develop in people, burdens that are still deeply felt.

My wife told me about a day she was driving with her first daughter, Olivia.  This was a few years before we’d started dating, and Kristi had already spent many years grinding through life as a single mother.  From the passenger seat, Olivia asked Kristi, “How old were you when Grandma divorced Grandpa?”

Kristi said, “I was about 5 years old.”

Then Olivia asked, “And how old was I when you and dad got a divorce?”

Krist said, “Well . . . you were about 5.”

Quickly piecing the puzzle together, Olivia replied, “Wow!  So I guess my daughter will be 5 years old when I get a divorce!”

That led to a great conversation between Kristi and Olivia about the cycles families can get stuck in, the baggage we often carry from generation to generation, but also the fact that people aren’t doomed to shoulder the same burdens our mothers and fathers carried before us.  Anyone can break the cycle.  And Olivia had already been given healthy advantages that her mother and grandmother didn’t have– namely, a firm foundation of faith.  Ultimately, it takes faith to know that you are, at your core, who God says you are, not who your family’s history, or anyone else, says you are.

But this was the bedrock of Saul’s struggle.  Saul is from the smallest tribe, the one with the worst reputation, the one stained with scandal.  And this insecurity formed a foundation in Saul’s psyche upon which he would eventually build the makings of his own self-destruction.