God decides it’s time to make good on that curse He laid down back in I think Exodus about how He would wipe out the Amalekites for interfering with the Israelite’s flight from Egypt. He tells Saul to wipe out every man, woman, child, goat and cow among the Amalekites.
Saul goes down south to Amalek and sets an ambush. He tells the Kenites to go take a walk because they’ve been good to the Israelites and he doesn’t want them to accidently get vanquished as well. After they leave, Saul slaughters all the Amalekites. Well, almost all of them. He takes the Amalekite king prisoner and sets aside a few of the choicest of their livestock to sacrifice to the Lord, but that hardly counts.
Well, actually, it turns out that it counts a whole lot. God is so incensed at Saul’s impertinance, and his fundamental misunderstanding of how to make the Lord happy, that He tells Samuel that He’s done with Saul. He is withdrawing Saul’s divine mandate.
God tells Samuel to go up to Bethlehem to anoint a new king form the sons of Jesse. Saul is beset by demons though and no longer connected to God at all so Samuel has to hide his intentions to keep Saul from killing him. He goes up to Bethlehem and anoints David as Israel’s new king.
Unfortunately, being anointed king doesn’t automatically give David any super-powers or an army, so Saul’s still running the country for now. Saul’s attendants suggest that maybe he’ll get some relief from this whole evil spirit thing if he listens to some nice music, and you’ll never guess who just so happens to be a great musician. Yes, David is brought in to sooth Saul’s episodes. Saul feels much better and keeps David around as his armor bearer.
Shortly after this, Saul completely loses all memory of David, because when a giant Philistine starts causing trouble in the battle field and David shows up and kills him, Saul shows no sign of recognition.
Obviously, the philistine’s name was Goliath, by the way, and David showed up that day simply to deliver some grain to his older brothers who were following Saul. When Goliath issued a challenge to all of Israel to come and fight him one on one, no one would respond except David, who was confident that the Lord would see him through it.
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