Drawing on interpretations offered by Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes in their recent study of the politics of the book of Samuel, Peter Leithart analyzes the corrupting influence of power on Israel’s first king and his disintegration into an obsessive envy of the young David, whom at first he had loved like a son:
[Saul] cannot abide the fact that David is praised more highly than he: “Saul has killed his thousands, David his ten thousands.” In fact, David’s success is Saul’s success, but Saul can’t see it. . . .
Saul’s dread of his younger rival transforms Saul into a power-grasping tyrant. Ignoring the Philistine threat, he wastes time, energy, military resources, and public trust chasing David around the countryside. He slaughters the priests at Nob because they assist David, even though the priests are innocent. . . .
More subtly, as Halbertal and Holmes point out, maintaining power becomes the end of Saul’s reign. Power is supposed to be a means to the substantive ends of justice, harmony, and good order, but Saul inverts means and ends. Everything that should be an end becomes a tool for holding the throne. Saul is even willing to use his daughter Michal’s love for David to trap him. . . .
[Saul’s] is the paranoia of the old toward the young, the pathetic, inverted ambition of those who have arrived and don’t want others to catch up. Teachers experience it as they watch former protégés surpass them in productivity and acclaim. Parents become Sauls, and pastors are notorious for keeping a death-grip on their pulpits long after they have passed their use-by dates. It’s a virulent form of envy, when the old resent rather than rejoice in the success of the young.
Read more on First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/05/the-saul-complex