One of the most powerful and gripping narratives in the Hebrew Bible is that of King Saul’s sudden rise from obscurity to kingship and his eventual descent into madness. In analyzing this segment of the book of Samuel, James A. Diamond explores how Saul goes astray by confounding the proper roles of religion and political leadership:
[I]n Saul’s manipulative hands, sacrifice, the most ubiquitous form of religious worship in the ancient Near East, becomes a tool to maintain the military’s allegiance so that Saul’s own hold on the reins of power will remain intact. Politics has divorced itself from religion in the service of [the monarch’s own] interest. In effect, by using religious observance to retain his own position as king, Saul has replaced God with himself as the ultimate object of sacral worship. At this point, Samuel declares that Saul’s dynasty will not endure, but Saul retains his throne.
At the same time, Saul’s own arrogation of authority to himself is paired with his ceding of authority to the people, which leads to his tragic sin of allowing the Israelites to plunder the Amalekite flocks:
Saul failed to lead and instead set a standard of disobedience for the people to follow. . . . A battle launched by a rallying call to listen to God perversely unfolds as one driven by a listening to the sound of the people.
More about: Book of Samuel, King Saul, Religion and politics