Samuel: Chapter 19

Now you lie, exposed, stripped

what bare forked thing is this?

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Saul's hidden antipathy towards David moves into the open--and the fissures in the royal family gape into ravines under the pressure. Saul urged his son Jonathan and all his courtiers to kill David. But Saul’s son Jonathan desired David exceedingly. The repetition of the filial bond emphasizes the dual pull. Jonathan tries not to make a choice by advocating for David, but manages only to shove the hatred back into hiding: David serves Saul "as before"--and Saul tries to murder him while he plays, exactly as before.

Jonathan willingly stripped himself of pomp and weapons in his love for David; Saul is inexorably stripped--metaphorically, then literally. First his family falls away: his son, Jonathan, loves David; his daughter, Michal, whom Saul thought to use as a “snare” to trap David, entraps her father’s men instead.

If Saul's kingship was originally defined by the boundaries of the "burial" of his ancestress Rachel, he now finds himself trapped in a funhouse version of his ancestress's life. Why did you deceive me? he asks Michal, echoing Jacob's cry at finding Rachel replaced by Leah. The terafim that Rachel stole from her father are used by Michal to deceive him, stealing David away--and pushing against the very bounds of his kingship.

Next, Saul is stripped even of Samuel, the king-maker so enwined with him. Even though Samuel mourns Saul's fall “till the end of his days”, it is David he provides with succor. In doing so, he turns the signs of Saul's kingship against him. Saul’s third sign that he would be king is that he would prophesy and become another man--a transformation so complete it becomes proverbial: is Saul too amongst the prophets?. Now that transformative experience of being taken over by the spirit of God is cheapened, as every group he sends to arrest David are similarly overtaken by prophecy. When Saul at last comes himself, he too is possessed: mitnabe is a reflexive form, as his prophecy fuels his tranformation, which intensifies his possession by God's spirit. This second possession does not return him to himself. Instead, he is literally stripped, rolling naked on the floor. His interaction with God's spirit is indicative of the kingship as a whole: an external imposition that tranformed him, is revealed as a destructive breaking of the bondaries of self.