Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 9:1

"Now there was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the son of Aphiah, the son of a Benjamite, a mighty man of valor." — 1 Samuel 9:1 (ASV)

Saul. — The inspired compiler of these books—having related the circumstances that accompanied the people’s request to the last of the judges for a king—closed the first part of the story of this momentous change in the fortunes of the chosen people with the words of the prophet-judge, bidding the representative elders to return to their homes and wait for the result of his solemn communion with the Eternal Friend of Israel on the subject of this king they so earnestly desired.

The Eternal answered His servant either in a vision, by Urim, or by an angelic visitor. In most cases, we are left in ignorance regarding the precise method by which God communicated with these highly-favored men—His elect servants. The chosen Israelite whom Samuel was to anoint as the first king in Israel would meet the prophet—so said the word of the Lord to Samuel—on a certain day and hour, at a given place.

The ninth chapter begins with a short account of the family of this man chosen for so high an office, and after a word or two of personal description, goes on to relate the circumstances under which he met Samuel. Saul, a man in the prime of manhood, distinguished among his fellows by his great stature and for his grace and manly beauty, was the son of a noble and opulent Benjamite of Gibeah, a small city in the south of the Land of Promise.

The whole of this episode in our ancient book is singularly picturesque. We see the still unproclaimed king occupied in his father’s business, throwing his full energy into the everyday transactions of the farm on the slopes of Mount Ephraim. In a few words, the historian describes how the modest and retiring Saul was roused from the quiet pastoral pursuits in which his previously uneventful life had been spent. The reverent, perhaps slightly reluctant, admiration with which the seer of God gazed at the future king of Israel; the prophet’s significant address; the symbolic gifts; the graceful hospitality; and, above all, the solemn and (no doubt) burning words of the generous old man, woke up the sleeping hero-spirit and prepared the young Benjamite for his future mighty work.

But there was no unseemly elation at the prospect that lay before him, no hurried grasping at the splendid prize that the seer told him the God of his fathers had destined for him.

Quietly he took leave of the famous Samuel. The predicted signs of his coming greatness were, one by one, literally fulfilled. But Saul returned to the ancestral farm in the hills of Benjamin and was subject to his father, as in former days. When at last the public summons to the throne came to him, he seems to have accepted the great office for which he had been marked with genuine reluctance and shrinking. Nor does he appear to have significantly altered his old, simple way of living until a great national disgrace called for a devoted patriot to avenge it. Then the heroic heart of the Lord’s anointed awoke, and Saul, when the hour came, showed himself a king indeed.

Kish, the son of Abiel. — On comparison with the genealogical summaries given in Genesis 46:21; 1 Samuel 9:1; 1 Samuel 14:51; 1 Chronicles 7:6–8, and others, the line of Saul appears as follows:

Benjamin → Becher → Aphiah (possibly Abiah) → Bechorah → Zeror (possibly Zur) → Abiel → Ner → Kish → Saul

Yet even here certain links are omitted, for we hear of a Matri in 1 Samuel 10:21, and Jehiel in 1 Chronicles 9:35.

The truth is that in each of the genealogical summaries the transcriber of the original family document left out certain names not needed for his special purpose. The names omitted are not always the same; thus, often in these tables, the apparent discrepancies.

Dean Payne Smith, too, suggests that the hopeless entanglement in the Benjamite genealogies is partly due to the terrible civil war that resulted from the crime related in Judges 20. In the confusion that naturally resulted from the massacres and ceaseless wars of this early period, many of the older records of the tribes must have perished.