1 Samuel 10:20-21

10:20 Then Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was chosen by lot. 10:21 Then he brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its families, and the family of Matri was chosen by lot. At last Saul son of Kish was chosen by lot. But when they looked for him, he was nowhere to be found.

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 12:1

12:1 Samuel said to all Israel, “I have done ⁶  everything you requested. ⁷  I have given you a king. ⁸ 

Psalms 68:27

68:27 There is little Benjamin, their ruler, ⁹ 

and the princes of Judah in their robes, ¹⁰ 

along with the princes of Zebulun and the princes of Naphtali.

[10:1]  ¹ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Saul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:1]  ² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Samuel) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:1]  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.

[10:1]  ⁴ tn That is, “anointed.”

[10:1]  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.

[12:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “Look, I have listened to your voice.”

[12:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “to all which you said to me.”

[12:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “and I have installed a king over you.”

[68:27]  ⁹ sn Little Benjamin, their ruler. This may allude to the fact that Israel’s first king, Saul, was from the tribe of Benjamin.

[68:27]  ¹⁰ tc The MT reads רִגְמָתָם (rigmatam), which many derive from רָגַם (ragam, “to kill by stoning”) and translates, “[in] their heaps,” that is, in large numbers.