he arrived.  At this moment Samuel has gone down to the town between the sacrificial act and the meal which followed it, and just as he is going back to his guests he meets in the gate Saul, who is asking for him, and at a whisper from Jehovah he recognises in him his man.  He takes him up with him to the bamah, reassures him about the asses, and then at once tells him to what high things he is called, and gives him convincing proofs that he had reckoned on his presence at the feast as the guest of the occasion.  He then gives him lodgings for the night, and accompanies him on his way next morning.  The servant is sent on a little way before, Samuel stands still and anoints Saul, for a sign that he is chosen by Jehovah to be the king and deliverer of Israel, and in conclusion instructs him that, when the opportunity for action comes, he is to use it, in the consciousness that God is with him.  On his way home three signs come to pass which the seer had announced to him.  He is thus assured that all that was said to him was true; his heart is changed by degrees till he cannot contain himself; on his arrival at Gibeah his acquaintances are struck with his strange demeanour, but he does not disclose even to his most intimate friend at home what Samuel had said to him, but waits for the things that shall come to pass.

This is the point arrived at in x. 16.  It is clear that thus far no conclusion has yet been reached:  the seed that is sown must spring up, the changed spirit must produce its effects.  And this requirement is abundantly satisfied if chap. xi. is regarded as immediately continuing the story from x. 16.  After about a month, the opportunity presents itself for Saul to act, which Samuel had bidden him to look for.  While others are weeping at the disgrace which threatens an Israelite town at the hands of the Ammonites, he is filled with the Spirit and with rage, the arrow is still in his heart from that conversation, and he now does “what his hand finds to do.”  The result is a great success; the word of the seer finds its fulfilment in the most natural way in the world.

If chap. xi. belongs originally to the narrative of ix. 1.-x. 16, it follows at once that the other sections are dependent and later.  But what is the inner relation of the one version to the other?  They coincide in their ideas here and there.  In the one story Saul seeks the asses and finds the crown, in the other he hides himself among the stuff and is drawn forth king.  In the one he is called by the seer, in the other he is chosen by lot—­the divine causality operative in both cases.  But how the idea is exaggerated at the later stage, and how nakedly it is put forward!  And if there is this similarity of view, yet the deviation of the secondary version from the original is much more striking than the resemblance.  For its tendency we are prepared by chapter vii.  Samuel has set his countrymen free from their enemies, and ruled over