1 Samuel 15:17-18

15:17 Samuel said, “Is it not true that when you were insignificant in your own eyes, you became head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord chose ¹  you as king over Israel. 15:18 The Lord sent you on a campaign ²  saying, ‘Go and exterminate those sinful Amalekites! Fight against them until you ³  have destroyed them.’

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 ⁴  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 10:1

Samuel Anoints Saul

10:1 Then Samuel took a small container of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s ⁵  head. Samuel ⁶  kissed him and said, “The Lord has chosen you ⁷  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 ⁸  you as leader over his inheritance. ⁹ 

¹ tn Heb “anointed.”

² tn Heb “journey.”

³ tc The translation follows the LXX, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Targum in reading the second person singular suffix (“you”) rather than the third person plural suffix of the MT (“they”).

⁴ tn Heb “anoint.”

⁵ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁶ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Samuel) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ 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.

⁸ tn That is, “anointed.”

⁹ 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.