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 ¹  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 10:1-2

Samuel Anoints Saul

10:1 Then Samuel took a small container of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s ²  head. Samuel ³  kissed him and said, “The Lord has chosen you ⁴  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 ⁵  you as leader over his inheritance. ⁶  10:2 When you leave me today, you will find two men near Rachel’s tomb at Zelzah on Benjamin’s border. They will say to you, ‘The donkeys you have gone looking for have been found. Your father is no longer concerned about the donkeys but has become anxious about you two! ⁷  He is asking, “What should I do about my son?”’

1 Samuel 9:1

Samuel Meets with Saul

9:1 There was a Benjaminite man named Kish son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the son of Aphiah of Benjamin. He was a prominent person.

1 Samuel 9:3

9:3 The donkeys of Saul’s father Kish wandered off, ⁸  so Kish said to his son Saul, “Take one of the servants with you and go ⁹  look for the donkeys.” ¹⁰ 

1 Samuel 9:6

9:6 But the servant said to him, “Look, there is a man of God in this town. He is highly respected. Everything that he says really happens. ¹¹  Now let’s go there. Perhaps he will tell us where we should go from here.” ¹² 

¹ tn Heb “anoint.”

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

³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Samuel) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁴ 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.

⁵ tn That is, “anointed.”

⁶ 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.

⁷ sn In the Hebrew text the pronoun you is plural, suggesting that Saul’s father was concerned about his son and the servant who accompanied him.

⁸ tn Heb “became lost.”

⁹ tn Heb “and arise, go.”

¹⁰ tc The Syriac Peshitta includes the following words: “So Saul arose and went out. He took with him one of the boys and went out to look for his father’s donkeys.”

¹¹ tn The infinitive absolute precedes the verb for emphasis.

¹² tn Heb “our way on which we have gone.”