Are you a seeker,
or are you saught?
And who do you find
deep down, within?
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This chapter continues seamlessly from the previous one, with its fable-like pattern of trees (3 signs, 3 actions, 3 men, 3 kids, 3 loaves of bread), and it's leitwords of seeking (ב'ק'ש)and found (מ'צ'א). The Saul who set out in quest of the asses is now sought by his father, and later by the entire nation as he hides away from Samuel's announcement of his kingship. Yet now that "God is with him", his hands can do all that they "seek"--he is seeker and saught at once.
After anointing Saul as king, Samuel immediately shifts to giving him a series of signs--implying fundamental doubt. These signs revolve around a series of give (נ'ת'נ) and take (ל'ק'ח)--echoing Samuel's address to the people about the royal right to confiscate at will.
The placement of Saul's encounters by "the burial place of Rachel" further scopes us back to the primal story of Joseph and his brothers, which began with a similar search (It is my brothers I search for"), and splits into a bifurcation between Joseph's receiving and Judah's taking. The signs are not passive proofs, but transformative, forcing Sual to wrest with the issues of kinship: you will become a different man.
One of those issues is prophecy, as Saul's body is taken over by the spirit of God, and he is mitnabeh, in a reflexive form that echoes Hanna's discovery of a new level of prayer. This sign is not only an exercise in transformative submission, it also raises one of the book's thematic concerns: the relation of fathers and sons, and its impact on the question of hereditary leadership. Eli's sons did not follow in his footprints; Samuel's sons did not follow in his. In both cases, this disjunction is juxtaposed to the question of kingship. Here, Saul's prophecy causes people to exclaim, "What’s happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul too among the prophets?” prompting the riposte: “And who are their fathers?”
Some gifts are sui generis, with no relation to antecedents. The prophets prophesize without relation to their fathers, and Saul prophesizes without relation to Kish. And yet, if that is the case, why the turn to kingship, with its focus on fathers and sons, and why the placement of Saul within the context of his foremother Rachel--and within the context of his tribe, Benjamin?
The story is placed within the boundaries of Benjamin, and as it continues, the echoes of Benjamin's story become more insistent. Benhamin is the "smallest of tribes" because they were nearly annihilated in the civil war triggered by the incident that took place at Geva--Saul's own hometown. Saul is appointed king in a lottery that echoes the lottery that accompanied the war on Geva, while he is attacked by bnei Bliyaal--rabble--the same word used to describe the guilty parties in the incident at Geva.
The individual and his family in a fraught, tension-filled dance. Saul is head and shoulders above the rest of the nation, a perfect individual--and very much Kish's son, a Benjaminite. A leader is a person--yet can perhaps become a dynasty. The story is both Samuel's an Saul's, shifting between the two, as Samuel's latest convocation at Mitzpah places the fairytale interlude back within the larger story of the state, and Samuel's negative view of kingship. At stake is the issue of the heart--another leitword of this chapter--as Saul's heart is transformed, and those "with heart" accompany him home.
