King Saul tends to get such
a bad rap with commentaries about lack of initiative and hesitance (not to
mention disobedience) that it is cool to read that he wasn’t always like
that. This little bit is almost an
afterthought at the end of the incident where Saul is prevented from executing
Jonathan for eating some honey.
46 Then
Saul went up from following the Philistines: and the Philistines went to their
own place.
47 ¶So
Saul took the kingdom over Israel, and fought against all his enemies on every
side, against Moab, and against the children of Ammon, and against Edom, and
against the kings of Zobah, and against the Philistines: and whithersoever he
turned himself, he vexed them.
48 And he
gathered an host, and smote the Amalekites, and delivered Israel out of the
hands of them that spoiled them….
52 And
there was sore war against the Philistines all the days of Saul: and when Saul
saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took him unto him. (1 Sam. 14:46-48,
52)
In fact, these verses
describe a period when Saul seems to have taken the initiative and conducted
what looks like a hit-and-run campaign against Israel’s hostile neighbors. His army was small and hard to keep
together when facing large forces, so it looks like he decided it would be
better if they just made surprise attacks and left before the enemy could
gather a sufficient force to oppose them.
Guerrilla warfare, perhaps?
Also, it looks like Saul
figured out how to deal with the tendency of the Israelites to slip away and
leave the army in tough times—by near constant recruiting efforts and looking
for strong or valiant men who wouldn’t desert when things looked bad.
So Saul eventually learned
how to adapt his tactics to the constraints put on him by the rawness of his
army, and he was able to figure out what measures to adopt that would
eventually turn his raw army into a force to be reckoned with. In that respect he was a good leader.
This was not without cost
though. By adopting a hit-and-run
campaign against so many of Israel’s neighbors, Saul made lots of enemies, and if they had decided to retaliate in a
coordinated effort, Israel would have had too much border to defend all at once
and be stretched extremely thin.
As it was, their war just with the Philistines kept them very busy,
since it is described as “sore war all the days of Saul.” I can’t help but contrast this with
Samuel’s life as a judge when Israel had peace with all their neighbors.
Also, recruiting every
strong, brave man he could find eventually brings Saul to promote David. It is only when David is acclaimed more
than Saul that Saul becomes afraid of losing his kingdom and begins to feel
threatened by David rather than seeing him as the asset he really was.
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