1 Samuel 10:1

Samuel Anoints Saul

10:1 Then Samuel took a small container of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s ¹  head. Samuel ²  kissed him and said, “The Lord has chosen you ³  to lead his people Israel! You will rule over the Lord’s people and you will deliver them from the power of the enemies who surround them. This will be your sign that the Lord has chosen ⁴  you as leader over his inheritance. ⁵ 

1 Samuel 25:30

25:30 The Lord will do for my lord everything that he promised you, ⁶  and he will make ⁷  you a leader over Israel.

1 Samuel 9:16

9:16 “At this time tomorrow I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin. You must consecrate ⁸  him as a leader over my people Israel. He will save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have looked with favor on my people. Their cry has reached me!”

1 Samuel 13:14

13:14 But now your kingdom will not continue! The Lord has sought out ⁹  for himself a man who is loyal to him ¹⁰  and the Lord has appointed ¹¹  him to be leader over his people, for you have not obeyed what the Lord commanded you.”

¹ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Samuel) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

³ tn Heb “Is it not that the Lord has anointed you?” The question draws attention to the fact and is a rhetorical way of affirming the Lord’s choice of Saul. The translation reflects the rhetorical force of the question.

⁴ tn That is, “anointed.”

⁵ tc The MT reads simply “Is it not that the Lord has anointed you over his inheritance for a leader?” The translation follows the LXX. The MT apparently suffers from parablepsis, whereby a scribe’s eye jumped from the first occurrence of the expression “the Lord has anointed you” to the second occurrence of this expression at the end of v. 1. This mistake caused the accidental omission of the intervening material in the LXX, which appears to preserve the original Hebrew text here.

⁶ tn Heb “according to all which he spoke, the good concerning you.”

⁷ tn Heb “appoint.”

¹¹ tn Heb “anoint.”

¹⁶ tn This verb form, as well as the one that follows (“appointed”), indicates completed action from the standpoint of the speaker. This does not necessarily mean that the Lord had already conducted his search and made his choice, however. The forms may be used for rhetorical effect to emphasize the certainty of the action. The divine search for a new king is as good as done, emphasizing that the days of Saul’s dynasty are numbered.

¹⁷ tn Heb “according to his heart.” The idiomatic expression means to be like-minded with another, as its use in 1 Sam 14:7 indicates.

¹⁸ tn Heb “commanded.”