David appears upon the scene; he is thenceforth the principal person of the story, and thrusts Saul on one side.  Chapter xv. is the prophetic introduction to this change.  The fact had been handed down that Saul was chosen by Jehovah to be king.  How was it possible that in spite of this his rule had no continuance?  Jehovah, who as a rule does not change His mind, was mistaken in him; and Samuel, who called the king, had now to his great sorrow to pronounce the sentence of rejection against him.  The occasion on which he does this is evidently historical, namely, the festival of victory at Gilgal, at which the captured leader of the Amalekites was offered up as the principal victim.  The sacrifice of Agag being quite repugnant to later custom, it was sought to account for it by saying that Saul spared the king, but Jehovah required his death, and caused him to be hewn in pieces at the altar by Samuel.  The rest could easily be spun out of this; it is superfluous to discuss how.  Chapter xxviii., again, is related to chap. xv. as the second step to the first.  No proof is wanted to show that this is the prophetic shadow cast before the fall of Saul in his last fight with the Philistines.  His turning to the witch to call up to him the departed Samuel suggests in the most powerful way his condition of God-forsakenness since Samuel turned away from him.  And, to conclude-the general colouring of the hostile relation between Saul and Samuel is borrowed from the actual relations which must have come to subsist between the prophets and the kings, particularly in the kingdom of Samaria (I Kings xiv. 7).  In their treatment of this relation our narratives manifestly take up the prophetic position; and the doctrinal ideas of which they are made the vehicles clearly show them to be prophetic conceptions.

VII.II.4.  David is the first hero of Judah whom we meet with; and he at once throws all others into the shade.  His acts are narrated to us in two detailed and connected works which are mutually complementary.  The first of these is contained in 1Samuel xiv. 52-2 Sam viii 18, and in it we are circumstantially informed how David rose to the throne.  There follows his principal achievement as king, the humiliation of the Philistines and the foundation of Jerusalem, the work concluding with a short notice of other remarkable circumstances.  This narrative is preserved to us complete, only not in the earliest form, but with many interruptions and alterations.  The second work, 2Samuel ix.-2Kings ii. is mutilated at its commencement, but otherwise almost completely intact, if 2Samuel xxi.-xxiv. be removed.  It tells chiefly of the occurrences at the court of Jerusalem in the later years of the king, and carefully traces the steps by which Solomon, whose birth, with its attendant circumstances, is narrated at the outset, reached the throne over the heads of his brothers Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, who stood before him.  Both works are marked by