in front of me in darkness, to which I was to walk, swerving not a hair’s breadth, that the Amalekite was to be destroyed utterly; and always when the Light was before me I strove to reach it, never looking this way nor that way.  Before Saul also the Light was set, but he went aside, thinking he could come to it if he bent his path and compassed other things, not knowing that the track is very narrow, and that if we diverge therefrom and take our eyes off the Light we are lost.  Who was Agag, that I should show any tenderness to him, a foul worshipper of false gods?  I rejoiced when he lay bound for the knife in the agony of death, and his blood was a sacrifice with which God was well pleased.

David now waits until Saul’s death, for the king is still a strength in Israel.  I fear that David will dishonour himself with grievous sin, for he is a lover of women, and a man of words and of song:  treacherous is he also at times.  But he belongs to us; he fears the Lord and His prophets and priests; he may go a-whoring, but it will not be after Baal; he will war against the heathen, and will not show mercy to them.  Now I am about to die, and to descend into the darkness whither my fathers, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses have gone before me.  I bless the Lord that I have lived, for I have preserved the knowledge of Him and His Law.  My life ends, but the Lord liveth, all honour and glory to His sacred name.

SAUL.

Rizpah, the Horite, in her old age, talks of Saul to the wife of Armoni, her son.

This is the day on which your husband’s father fell on the mountains of Gilboa.  Though I was no Israelite, but born in the desert, I was his beloved before he became king.  I am eighty years old now, but the blood moves in me, and I grow warm as I think of him.  There was not a goodlier person than he—­from his shoulders and upwards he was higher than any of the people.  Why did the Lord choose him?  He never coveted that honour, and he suffered because there was laid on him that which he did not seek.  Yet the Lord was right, for there was not one in all Israel so royal as he, and it was he who redeemed it and made it a nation.  Samuel had grown old—­he was always a priest rather than a captain—­and his sons, whom he made judges, turned aside after lucre, took bribes, and perverted judgment.  The people were weary of their oppression and the hand of the Amalekites and the Philistines were very heavy on the land.  They therefore prayed for a king, and the thing displeased Samuel, and he tried to turn them from it.  But they refused to listen to him, and when they came together at Mizpeh, Saul was the man upon whom the lot fell.  Again, I say, he desired not to be king.  He had hidden himself on that day, but he could not be hidden, and he was dragged forth to glory and to ruin.  I was there:  I heard the shouts as they cried God save the king.