Saul’s greatest weakness was that he loved the adulation of the mob. He struggled to act independently of it. When Samuel first approached him with the command of God to kill Amalek and destroy everything the Amalekites owned it was a fear of displeasing the people that stayed his hand.
When Samuel told him to wait for his coming before going out to battle it was fear of public ridicule and mutiny that led Saul to act rashly and officiate as a priest in Samuel’s stead by offering sacrifices to God.
It is no small surprise then that when Saul saw David slaying Goliath on the battlefield that he would have felt a prickle of unease. After all, no other man in Israel had the courage and faith to do what David had just done, not even the King himself.
This prickle of unease bloomed into a full-blown cloud of jealousy when Saul, with David and the rest of the warriors of Israel, returned from battle. The women, with their timbrels shimmering in the sun, sang “Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands”
The refrain rankled enough to set Saul’s teeth on edge with envy and rage. To be compared to the young shepherd at all would have been difficult to stomach but to be bested by him and for that triumph to be immortalized in song was something Saul was not prepared to accept.
This marked the beginning of a long and bitter campaign against David. Saul masked his jealousy for a while and tried to destroy David covertly, by sending him into battle again but David always returned unscathed and worse yet more celebrated than ever before.
In fact, Saul’s own children were dazzled by David. His son and heir Jonathan loved David like a brother and his daughter Michal wanted to marry him. Soon Saul’s rage could not be contained beneath a thin veneer of civility.
