or you will not stand.
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The kingship has only just been established, and hairline cracks are already spreading.
Saul was a year old when he was crowned, indicating something shiny-new. Yet the Saul introduced as a dutiful son is suddenly a father, with Jonathan holding the fateful Geba, using it as a springboard to attack the Philistines--while Saul gets the credit. We are once again in the Oedipal realm between fathers and sons (be they Eli with Chofni and Pinchas, or Samuel with his unnamed children), returning to the central tension that defined the Book of Judges.
Now Geba, locus of civil war, is launching a war with external enemies--yet the Israelites join this war less willingly than they joined the war against their kin. Some join because they feel they have no choice, others hide in caves, tunnels, cisterns, while yet others cross the Jordan.
The people's fear is reflected in their king's irresolution. Here he is, back in Gilgal--site of the "renewal" of the kingship, where he and Israel felt joy; recreating the meeting point point that Samuel anounced back when he gave Saul a series of signs that God is with you (10:7): After that, you are to go down to Gilgal ahead of me, and I will come down to you to present burnt offerings and offer sacrifices of well-being. Wait seven days until I come. Yet now the man who stood head and shoulders above Israel is unable to stand and wait. After holding on for seven days, he cracks, and brings the sacrifices just before Samuel appears.
In a recreation of their first meeting, he meets the prophet just as he arrives, with the same evocative use of ve-hineh, "and behold." What is beheld this time is dissolution rather than establishment. GOD would have established your dynasty over Israel forever, but now it will not stand. If Saul's heart was once transformed, as he drew the true-hearted in his wake, now he is no longer chosen by God's heart, his heart insuffincently willing. The doubled pair of Saul and Samuel splits--and with it the triangulation between Saul-Samuel-God and Saul-Samuel-the people. The monarchy is falling before it ever fully stood, disintegrating from its very core.
