Saul

The last few posts have caused some thoughts about David and Bathsheba, but that is also where we have been in our family scripture reading.

I often find myself in sympathy with people in the scriptures who are doing the wrong thing. I can see where their choices would feel reasonable. I always feel badly for Saul.

He started out so well, and his first offense of getting impatient for the delayed Samuel, and feeling like he can't wait any longer, feels familiar. He still should have known better, and clearly he acted out of pride, and not just fear, because his later actions show that is the course that he stayed on. You still see moments when he knows he is wrong, though that never really changes anything.

This time I was thinking about what he could have done to turn things around, and it occurred to me that he should have abdicated. Once Samuel cut Saul off, Saul should have stepped down.

Sometimes royalty seems like a trap where you can't extricate yourself easily, but in this case, David was popular enough that I think it could have been accepted by the people pretty easily, especially with him marrying into the royal family.

That started me thinking about what else might have changed. If David had not spent years on the run, acting as a mercenary and collecting wives, perhaps Israel could have been in a better position with the Philistines. It could have been better for Michal, instead of being abandoned by David, being given to Phalti, who loved her, and then ripped away from  him and back to David after her family was dead and she was just a means of strengthening his claim to the throne. (I have sympathy for Michal too.)

If David had stayed with Michale, ruling and building a family with her, perhaps he would have never been on that rooftop, leading to David's downfall.

That is all merely speculation, and there is no way of knowing. It is a good reminder that our actions affect others. They make their own choices, and there are plenty of ways to make bad choices, and sin, but I don't want to be actively causing pain to others.

Ultimately, that can't all be predicted. The reason Saul should have stepped down was to stop the path of his own rebellion, and work on his own peace with God. The two acts of disobedience that led to the rift were bad, but staying on his course led to Saul trying to murder David, deception, ordering the deaths of innocent people who had helped David without even knowing that David was out of favor, and finally to his suicide on the battlefield where three of his sons died and the Ark was lost.

Staying on a bad course does not make things better, and for his own sake Saul should have gone back. It could have also done a lot of good for others. Our own actions can do the same.