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go back with you,” said Samuel, “for you have rejected the Lord's command, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel.” (1 Sam. 15:24–29) 26
    Abruptly turning his back on Saul, the old man started to stride away. Abject and desperate, Saul seized the old man's robe and struggled to hold him back. But Samuel's garment tore away in the king's hand.
    Here, we may imagine, the two men stood in tense silence for one long moment, each one contemplating the torn strip of cloth that Saul now held in his hand.
    “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from your hand today,” said the prophet to the king, “and will give it to another, a better man than you.” (1 Sam. 15:28) (NEB)

THE EXECUTIONER
    As if to signal the bloody fate that awaited Saul, the Bible provides us with a strange and unsettling coda to Samuel's grim prophecy that his kingship would pass to a better man than he. Samuel, we are told, resolved to carry out the bloodthirsty order that Yahweh had given and Saul had refused to obey.
    “Bring ye to me Agag the king of the Amalekites,” ordered the old prophet, and the defeated king was dragged before him in chains.
    “Surely,” observed the condemned man, “the bitterness of death is at hand.”
    “As thy sword hath made women childless,” replied Samuel, reminding the Amalekite king of the Israelite blood that had already been spilled, “so shall thy mother be childless among women.”
    And then Samuel—seer, holy man, and prophet of Yahweh— roused himself to do what the warrior-king Saul had failed to do. Seizing a weapon in his own two hands, Samuel hacked the king of the Amalekites into pieces. (1 Sam. 15:32–33)
    Now Samuel and Saul went their separate ways, the prophet to the shrine of Yahweh at Ramah, the king to the fortified household at Gibeah that served as the family home and the royal palace.
    “And Samuel never beheld Saul again to the day of his death.” (1 Sam. 15:35) 32
    Before Samuel passed away, however, God called upon him to anoint one more man as king of Israel. According to the deeply mystical vision of the prophetic source, the question of kingship in ancient Israel was already decided, and the divine plan that began when God planted the seed of Samuel in the womb of a grieving woman was about to be fulfilled.
    * The twice-told tale of Saul's coronation may be an example of what scholars call a “doublet,” that is, parallel accounts of the same incident by different biblical sources in slightly different versions. Doublets are regarded as key evidence of the multiple authorship of the Bible.
* The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was undertaken as early as the third century B.C.E. and is the version of the Hebrew Bible used in Christian tradition.

Chapter Three
     

“HE IS THE ONE”
     
    Now so soon as David appeared at his father's summons—a lad of ruddy colour, with piercing eyes and in other ways handsome—Samuel said softly to himself: “This is he whom it has pleased God to make king.”
    —J OSEPHUS ,
J EWISH A NTIQUITIES
     
    S amuel was old and weary and ready to die, but he was called by God for one more effort at kingmaking. As the holy man sat alone in Ramah, fretting over the fate of King Saul, God roused him with a sharp rebuke.
    “How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel?” complained God. “Fill your horn with oil, and go! I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have chosen myself a king among his sons.”
    “How can I go?” protested a timid Samuel, mindful that Saul might have fallen out of favor with Yahweh but was still king of Israel. “If Saul hears it, he will kill me!” (1 Sam. 16:1–2) 1
    God apparently regarded Samuel's fear of Saul as well founded, and he went to the trouble of cooking up a cover story. “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord,’ ” God instructed Samuel. “Then call Jesse to the