When did King Saul go off the rails?  We know that finally God was fed up with him and told him he would be replaced by a man after His own heart. Before it got to that point, he was given multiple chances to be a truly successful monarch—but he failed time after time.

So when did the pattern of failure begin?  An argument can be made that it was on the very day Samuel anointed him to be the future king. The record is in 1 Samuel 9 and 10. The actual anointing is in 10:1, then in the following verses Samuel gives Saul a series of signs that will show him it’s truly the Lord’s doing. The culmination is in verses 6-7: “Then the Spirit of the LORD will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.  Now when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you.”  See what this says?  Samuel tells him, the Spirit will come upon you, and then you need to act.

Act doing what??  Translations variously say, “do as occasion serve thee”, “do what the situation requires”, “do what you think is right”, “do what must be done”, or something equivalent. What all of them say is, DO something, and they suggest it will be obvious what to do.  Is it really all that obvious?

The only other use of the phrase that I’m aware of is in Judges 9:33, part of the story of Abimelech the son of Gideon. In this verse Zebul of Shechem says to Abimelech, “And when he and the people who are with him come out against you, you may do to them as your hand finds to do.”  In other words, there would be a trigger to take action, and the action to be taken was to take the battle to the enemy.

Does this apply to the Saul situation?  As Samuel anoints Saul, he tells him that he will reign over the people of the Lord and save them from the hand of their enemies. Samuel gives Saul the signs, and in verse 5 he says, “After that you shall come to Gibeath-elohim, where there is a garrison of the Philistines…”  The trigger event was to encounter prophets prophesying and the Spirit coming on Saul himself.  The opportunity, the expected action, would appear to be to lead an attack on the Philistine garrison. Did he do so?  No. All the signs came to pass that day (v 9). Saul prophesied as predicted, and then what?  “When he had finished prophesying he came to the high place.” (v 13)  And that’s all. He went home.  It isn’t until quite a bit later that a challenge is made on a garrison of the Philistines, and it’s Jonathan who does it (13:3), not Saul.

I think what we’re seeing is that, on the day of his anointing, Saul was given an opportunity to make a start, the start God wanted, on overcoming the Philistines. Samson had been commissioned to begin delivering Israel from them. Samuel had continued it, and Saul was to take the next step. And right there, on day 1, the pattern of failure began.

All of which is just academic.  Unless there’s something to be learned?  There’s always something to be learned!  I think the thing to be learned here is that our God expects us to act on the opportunities presented to us.  “Do what your hand finds to do.”  Saul’s commission was to take the fight to the enemy.  In a figurative sense, that’s our commission as well, given by the Lord Jesus: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15)

 So the question to pose to ourselves is whether we’re doing what opportunity provides. Have we seen convincing signs (like the resurrection!) that it’s really God at work?  If so, then we are to DO.  You know, it wasn’t actually a bad thing for Saul to head on up to the high place. But it was passive, and whatever worship he may have offered was made meaningless by the failure to DO what the Lord had put there for his hand to do.

 Love, introspectively,

Paul

If you have any feedback, please contact me at: paul.zilmer@gmail.com