All right, as we reconvene, we will pick up more or less where we left off. We've spent a good deal of time on the first three chapters. First Samuel, we will obviously not spend that much time on all the chapters, though we will spend perhaps more time on a few single verses that are very, very important. But at this point, we want to move on to the next section, which deals with the art narrative. And if you see from the outline, I've sort of schematized this in this way. The first three chapters establish God's man, God's new man on the scene who is Samuel, God's prophet. And then in the account of the art narrative, we have a demonstration of God's power. And I think that's why this narrative is so important at this particular juncture. In the art narrative, of course, you've read the story, I'm not going to be able to rehearse all of the content with you. But you know that you know how the art narrative got its start. Israel was involved in a battle with the Philistines. Things were not going well. The people thought, well, let's bring the art. Let's sort of draw the presence of God into this with us. They didn't ask about doing this. They brought the art more or less as a talisman, as a good luck charm. And the Philistines were frightened when they heard about this because they had heard of what God had done for Israel and bringing them out of Egypt. Now they were a little bit confused maybe about what had been done. They say in verse 8, they are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the desert. They're kind of mixing up really what happened. They weren't God's number one. It was one God. And the plagues were in Egypt not in the desert, but they had some of the basic components there. And it frightened them. But they said, be strong Philistines. Be men or you'll be subject to the Hebrews as they have been to you. And fight. And fight they did an Israel lost. And the ark was captured, or perhaps it might be better to say the ark left. Because as we go on into chapter 5, we will discover that the supposed captive, the ark, is in fact the captor. And the Philistines have a good deal of trouble with this particular captive. And after something of a victory marched throughout Philistine territory, the ark returns to Israel. That's kind of the basic outline. Let me go back to chapter 4 for just a minute. Let me show how this keyword that we were talking about, this caveid, or caveode, which means weight or heaviness, is continued as we go on through the account. When the ark was captured, of course, and Eli heard about it, he fell over backwards and he died for he was an old man. And heavy, he died under his own weight. When Eli's daughter-in-law, the wife of Thinius, heard what had happened. She was pregnant at the time, and she gave premature birth to a child whom she named Ikabad. Which either means, where is the glory? Where is the weighty one? Where is the honor? It's the same word. Or there is no glory. There is no honor. So she named the boy Ikabad saying, the glory has departed from Israel. That is the glorious one. The ark has left, which represented God's presence amongst us. That again is that same key word, the word for weightiness, or honor, or glory. The glorious one, the weighty one, has left. And she said this because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, again, at the end of the chapter, the glory, the weighty one, has departed from Israel for the ark of God had been captured. And so the ark finds itself in Philistine territory, and it's first taken into the temple of Daegon in Ash-Dodd. And again, you know the story. The Philistines set up this vanquished God of an enemy people beside the Supreme God, Daegon, their God. And the vanquished God is there to sort of be an attendance. And this is not a problem in a polytheistic society. You would bring in these captured gods for what they were worth. Maybe they could do something for you. And you would array them around whatever was your primary deity. Well, the problem was the primary deity was found face down in the dirt the next morning. And you know, being a seismic region, they thought, well, you know, probably a coincidence. Let's put them up again, which they did. And the next day, he was down again minus his head and his hands. Now, this was typical treatment of vanquished foes. You may have seen piles of hands or piles of heads depicted in... That's what the Assyrians would do sometimes to their vanquished foes. It was a way of sort of having a body count without having to cart lots of bodies around. You just take the small body parts around. Well, this God of the Philistines has been decapitated and his hands also removed, and there these parts are lying on the threshold of the temple. And so it says, in verse 5, that is why, to this day, neither the priests of Degon nor any others who enter Degon's temple of the Ashtod step on the threshold. Now, I'm not sure whether the narrator is saying this is the origin of that custom or whether he's saying, you know how they step over the threshold, you know, and sometimes thresholds were regarded as sort of sacred precincts. There's something special about the entryway. When you're first married, assuming that the husband is reasonably physically fit, sometimes he'll pick up the wife and carry her across the threshold into the first apartment as it usually is, that one room apartment. You know, it's a little ritual that we go through. There's something special about the first time to go into that new abode. And in the ancient Near East, there was often something considered special about the threshold leading from the secular realm, the normal everyday realm, into the holy precinct. And so it was customary, apparently, among the Philistines to carefully avoid stepping on the threshold. And I think just as God held up to mockery, the gods of Egypt, through this event, it gives an opportunity to sort of hold up to mockery the practice, the religious practice of the Philistines. As the writer says, you know how they kind of stepped so gingerly over the threshold? The reason is that their god once was decapitated on the threshold and lost his hands and was vanquished. It's probably not the real reason they originally did it, but it's a brilliant way of holding up to ridicule that god who was no god. Now, in verse 6, we go on to read that the Lord's hand was heavy upon the people of Ashtot and its vicinity. See, the weight he won has left Israel and has entered Philistine territory and his weight is being felt already. His hand is heavy, same word, upon the people of Ashtot and its vicinity brought devastation upon them and afflicted them with tumors. There have been long tombs and treatises written about what kinds of tumors these are. I won't get into the glory details. I won't get into the glory details, nor will I project anything on the overhead to encourage you with that. But it wasn't pleasant, and the Philistines didn't like it. So the men of Ashtot saw what was happening, and they said, the Ark of God of Israel must not stay here with us because his hand is heavy upon us and upon Deagon our god. The captive has become captor, and the Philistines are trying to escape. So they called together the rulers of the Philistines. There was a pentapolis, kind of five primary cities of the Philistines. They called them together and said, what should we do with the Ark of God of Israel? Now the Greek translation says that the getites, those from Gath answered, have the Ark of God moved to Gath. Now why would they move the Ark from Ashtod to Gath? Well, it may be that they're still testing the coincidence theory because Ashtod was a port city. It was on the coast. And often, as you know, rats, travel on ships, and rats can communicate diseases. Some people think it may have been a kind of bubonic plague or something that they suffered here. And that can be transferred by, transmitted by rodents. And so the idea is, well, let's move the Ark to an inland city to test out to see if this is really something supernatural happening amongst us, or whether there's a natural explanation. And we just got a bad shipment of rats at Ashtod. And the Greek translation does mention the rodents that were present on the ships. It's something that we don't find in the Hebrew text. But later in the Hebrew text, when the Philistines come to send the Ark back to Israel, they make golden replicas of the tumors. And that was the first example of modern art. I think the golden replicas of the tumor. No slight on modern art. And what else? The tumors and the rats. So apparently rats were involved in some way. So the man thought, well, that's just a port city. Let's take it inland and see if the same thing happens. Well, of course, the same thing does happen, and we read in verse 8. But after they moved it, the Lord's hand was against that city throwing it into a great panic. And they suffer the same kinds of tumors that the others had done. So they sent the Ark of God to Echron. And Echron says, enough is enough. We don't really care to have an experiment continued in our place. So they said, send the Ark of God, the Ark of God, of Israel away. Let it go back to its own place, or it will kill us and our people. This captive God, and we took. For death, in verse 11, for death had filled the city with panic. God's hand was very heavy upon it. The glorious one, the weighty one who had departed from Israel, come into Philistine territory, is making his weight felt. And the Philistines began to realize this. And so in chapter 6, we have them returning the Ark through that interesting procedure of putting it on a new cart, hitching it up with some cows that have recently had calves and pointing it in the right direction to see if the cows will go off in that direction. Because see, they're still wondering, is this really something supernatural? So they choose something very unnatural. It would have been very unnatural for cows to leave their calves to strike off in another direction. But that's precisely what they do. They don't seem to be happy about it. It talks about them lowing or moving along the way. They weren't happy to leave, but they were being directed, and so they left. But as they got the cart ready, and were preparing to send the Ark back, notice what the Philistine leaders said. In verse 4, they talk about making the guilt offering the five gold tumors and the five gold rats according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumors and other rats that are destroying the country, and pay honor, give weight to Israel's God. The Philistines were learning the lesson that the House of Eli needed to learn, and indeed Israel needed to learn that God is to be considered waiting. Weight is to be given to God. Weight is to be accorded in. Pay honor to Israel's God, but perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land. Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? Now you may not believe me when I tell you, but the root from which we translate harden, and the word did is also another occurrence of it, is the same root. It's a different theme in Hebrew, but it is the same root from which we get to honor or to give weight to. It's like, why do you weight down your heart? We would say harden your heart, but they said, why do you weight down your heart? Don't weight down your heart as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did. For these reasons, I've highlighted most of the occurrences of this particular root. I think that is a key word throughout these contexts, and it underscores a key theme. What is the theme being established? God is to be honored. God is to be given the greatest weight in the life of the nation, in the life of the individual, in my life, in your life. That's what we're to learn from it. It's not easy to serve two masters. It's impossible to serve two masters. You know, either you'll love the one and hate the other, or you'll love the other and hate the one. God is to receive central honor, central place in our lives. And so they send him back, send the ark back, and the ark does return. The people of Israel receive it gladly, curiously. And in chapter 7, we discover that, or in chapter 6, rather at the end of chapter 6, we discover that the people of Israel have perhaps not learned as well the lesson that the Philistines have learned, and so they look inside the ark. Now, this is not to conjure up images of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and faces melting, you know, all that horrible things. That's not exactly how it would have all looked, but it was a very great catastrophe among the people. As they looked inside the ark, something that was sacred, something that was not to be touched even, and they looked inside. Now, what in the world would have behooved them to look inside? What do you think might have caused them to want to look inside? Remember what had been sent back? Here's the ark of the covenant on the cart, small box of gold tumors and gold rats. Bishop, did you have a comment? Yeah. Right. Yeah. The question is, did they know all that had gone on in Philistine territory? Maybe they were curious to see what's in here. You know, maybe there are rats in here. I don't know that they knew what had gone on. The ark was probably traveling maybe faster than the news, although they probably would have heard something about that there were, that the Philistines were not fairing well with this captive ark. But what would be a human motivation? Yes. I think that may be it. You know, why would they look inside? Maybe they were just pure curious, but they had a little box of gold stuff. It could have been very tempting to say maybe there's more. And they're the big box. And by the way, the ark of the covenant was not overly large. It's about a little over a meter long, about 0.7 meters wide. Not a huge box, but big enough to hold significant quantities of gold. Maybe that's what motivated them. By the way, a little footnote, several years ago I was, some of you may have seen the two-tunk omen exhibit. Did anyone have a chance to visit the so-called two-tunk omen exhibition, young Egyptian Pharaoh whose tomb was discovered unrobbed and so they have a lot of things from it really fascinating things. Have you seen that? Yeah, I saw it in Germany, Düsseldorf. That's it. Okay, there you go. Small world. Well, in Düsseldorf they had this. It traveled around the world, so other people have seen it here in the United States. I was really struck when I saw that exhibit because around about the 14th, 15th century BC, which if you assume the early date of the Exodus toward which I lean, that would have been about the time of Moses. From about that time they had a little portable shrine from the tomb of two-tunk omen which very closely fit the description of the Ark of the Covenant. It was made of wood. It was covered with gold. There was gold plating over it. It's all still there. You could look at it. Now, it wasn't the Ark of the Covenant, of course. It wasn't carried on poles. It had little skids and such. It wasn't exactly like it, but it was about the right size. It was so fascinating to be standing there looking at something and thinking, not only is this a nice representation of what it would have been, but it's from the same time period. That long ago. Sometimes we need that kind of experience to let us know, hey, we're dealing with real things here. This is not just a nice book from the Hori, Hori past that really bears no relation to real life. These were real things, real happenings taking place. Someone have a question over here. Okay, you did? No, okay. All right, she didn't. Well, so in this account of the Ark narrative, we have the stress being on God's power. God is powerful. He is fully capable of taking care of himself. Now God is not in the Ark, but the Ark represented the presence of God. The Ark really does go on a victory march from city to city and in home. God demonstrates through that that he is not dependent on human agency. He is fully capable of taking care of himself. He is powerful. So in the first three chapters, we have the establishment of God's new man. Now we have the demonstration of God's power and the two are sort of brought together in chapter seven. As we see God's power, working through God's prophet to deliver His people, God's victory over the Philistines. In this chapter seven, again the Philistines gather to fight against Israel and God miraculously delivers them from the hands of the Philistines. And this comes right on the threshold of chapter eight. And I think that juxtaposition is very significant. You see chapter seven, I'm not going to go through the details of it. You can read it. You have read it. By the way, your outlines are due next week of first time. You're not this week. But in this chapter, God demonstrates that he is fully capable and willing to deliver His repented people. In fact, one of the striking elements in it after the victory in verse 12, Samuel took a stone. And he set it up between mispe and shame. And he named the stone Ebenezer. That's not Ebenezer Baptist church, although there are many, many of those around from which they get this name from Ebenezer. But what does Ebenezer mean? I'm sure you have a text note to that effect. Stone of help. Stone of help. And what did he say? Thus far has the Lord helped us. I now don't think he's meaning just this far geographically. You know, our victory has brought us to this point. I think in a way, Samuel, saying to this point in our history, God has helped us. God has been our king, even though in the period of the judges, we didn't honor him as king and so forth. But God has proved his sufficiency and he proves it here in chapter 7. Now, it's immediately on the heels of that that we come to chapter 8 and the elders of Israel come to Samuel and say, give us a king. And specifically, they say in verse 6, give us a king to lead us, or some translations say to judge us. It is the word from which we get the word judge. Give us a king to judge us and this displeased Samuel. Actually, they first articulated their request in verse 5 when they said, you're old and your sons did not walk in your ways. Now, a point to a king to lead us or judge us, such as all the other nations have. And this request displeased Samuel. And the Lord responded to Samuel. Listen to all that the people are saying. It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. Now, why would God have to say to Samuel, it's not you they have rejected, but me? Well, see, Samuel was the judge. He was profit, but he was the last of the judges as well. And so, when he heard them say, give us a king to judge us, he probably picked up on the word judge and thought, they're after my job. You know, they're toppling me from my position. I'm affronted by this. And he was affronted by it. But God had to remind him, wait a minute, Samuel. Listen to what they're saying. It's not you they're rejecting. It's something far more serious than that. They're rejecting me as king. The operative word is king, not judge. And so, God then tells Samuel to warn the people that they will not be pleased with what this king does. He says, I want you to listen to what they're saying. I want you to grant their request, but not until you warn them. You must warn them first. And so, that he does in the central section of chapter 8. But in verse 19 in response, the people refused to listen to Samuel and they say, no, we want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles. Now, isn't that ironic? I mean, when you think of the narrative flow to this point, Samuel in chapter 7 had said thus far the Lord has delivered us. And the Lord had delivered them very dramatically in chapter 7. We don't know how much time lapse there is in real time between chapter 7 and chapter 8. But certainly in narrative time, the narrator is making a very explicit point. God was sufficient. He had demonstrated his sufficiency. And here the people are coming and saying, we want something different. We want a king like all the other nations. And remember also what Gideon had said earlier, I will not rule over you. The Lord will rule over you. The Lord is your king. There was an understanding that God was rightful king. But the elders say, no, we want a king like all the nations. Someone to lead us and to fight our battles. And so when Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord and the Lord answered, listen to them and give them a king. And Samuel dismissed the people in preparation for doing just that. Now, what do we learn from that response of the Lord to the people's sinful request? He sometimes will grant. He sometimes will grant our requests if we are insistent and persistent and is the only way we are going to learn a lesson. We need to be very careful when we pray that we not insist upon our will, even Jesus himself said, not my will, but your will be done. And so we see that God, if we persist in a wrongful request, he may in fact grant us that request in order to teach us a lesson. And that is the background then for the beginning of the rise of Saul, which we come to next. Now, so let's move on to the beginning of monarchy, that section. And we'll begin talking about that. But let me ask you if there are any comments or questions here before we do that. Yes. If I understand the question, it's hard to summarize it in brief terms. But I think what you're saying is, were they trying to sort of change their status so that they could be more on an equal footing with other nations, rather than having to be dependent on a God who was invisible and in that sense unpredictable, uncontrollable? It required walking by faith, not by sight, if that's kind of what you're asking. I think it's a human temptation to walk by sight. Yeah, possibly a desire to draw back from God and to put some distance between them. Yeah, there may be something to that. I think it's a standard temptation. And I think in our Christian walk, we often encounter sort of this growing weariness with walking by faith. You know, as you get older, you kind of like to get a little more established. And when you're very young and kind of new as you're in your adult life, it's kind of adventurous to say, I don't know how God's going to provide this. But he'll provide it. And I have faith in all of that and the idealism of youth. And then you begin to get older and tired. And you begin to think, I'd like to see how everything's going to work out here. And sometimes God allows that. And other times he says, no, you're still walking by faith. And we're tempted not to say, give me a king like all the other nations, but we may be tempted to say, give me a salary like all the other guys or give me a retirement account like all the other guys. Or give me, you know, this, that or the other thing. Give me a car like other people drive. And we can begin to look for security, visible securities. And so I think it was some of that. Now, what we need to be careful of is to remember that the notion of a king was not wrong. It was the elders insistence of a king according to their timing and of their description. They wanted a king like all the nations. And we will see as we get into this, the beginning of monarchy that God had in mind, giving his people a king, but it was not to be a king just like all the other nations. So let me move now to talk about the founding of the monarchy, the beginning of monarchy, and the people's demand for a king. We've already been talking about chapter 8. Let me make some general comments about this section, which deals this section 8 to 12, which deals with the rise of Saul. And here I bless you with a couple of big words, locust classicus, source criticism, and such. The locust classicus of source criticism in Samuel. Now, why do I bring that up? Well, because I think it's interesting. And actually it's because it's important for us to first of all understand the problem that people have had in reading these texts about Saul in order that we inspect them closely. And perhaps I hope come to a better understanding of what they're about and a clearer understanding of what happens in the life of Saul. Now, locust classicus means, of course, the primary place to go. If you want to see example of sources that have been combined in less than 100% successful fashion in the books of Samuel. Many critical commentaries will talk about several different sources being combined in this material that describes the rise of Saul. Now, why have they done that? Why has this theory arisen in the first place? And I'm going to write a little something on the board over here. Well, one reason is as they take the sections in this particular stretch of text, they have argued that there are differing attitudes toward the monarchy. In chapter 8, I'll show you the section. Chapter 8, of course, is the section where the elders come and demand a king. In fact, I should probably write elders demand king. Please don't analyze my handwriting. I don't normally write like this. The elders demand a king. And because Samuel warns them, many have said, well, this chapter is anti-monarchical. It's unfavorable toward kingship. So we'll designate that with a simple minus, negative attitude toward kingship. Then we come to chapter, well, I'll do it this way, 9, beginning in verse 1, to chapter 10, verse 16. This is the account of the anointing of Saul. As you know, Saul goes out looking for some lost livestock. And instead of finding the livestock, he ends up encountering Samuel and Samuel anoints Saul to be king. Now, there's nothing particularly negative said about Saul. So let's see, this is Saul anointing. There's nothing particularly negative said about Saul. In fact, the fact of kingship seems to be presumed. And so the scholars have said, oh, well, this is a pro-monarchial, this is favorable toward monarchy, this particular account. Then you come to chapter 10, 17 to 27, 10, 17 to the end. There you have the lotcasting by which Saul is brought to public attention. Remember, he was hiding behind the baggage when the lot fell on him and he had to be brought out. But because this particular section begins as a judgment speech, remember, we were talking about a judgment speech before, the tone, Samuel adopts at the beginning of this section, as he assembles the people at Mizpah, which, by the way, was the place where God had delivered them in chapter 7. Bring some back to Mizpah, maybe, to make a point. The way he begins to address them sounds very much like a judgment speech. And just at the point where you would expect the announcement of judgment, he says, now gather yourselves by your clans, he begins a lotcasting procedure, and Saul is chosen. But because of the kind of negative tone that Samuel adopts, people have said, well, this section 2 is unfavorable or negative toward the monarchy, so we'll mark that with a minus sign. And then chapter 11, the entirety of chapter 11, deals with Saul's defeat of the Ammonites. Can I just say, the Saul's defeat of Ammonites and the rescue of Jbej Giliad. And here, again, there's nothing negative said about the kingship, Saul performs pretty well, and this is regarded as a promenarchical section that leads then immediately to chapter 12. Where Samuel, this is sort of Samuel's, it's probably not right to call it his retirement speech, it probably would be better to say Samuel's final warning on the eve of kingship. Saul in chapter 13 will be now firmly on the throne. And in this final warning, again, Samuel has some rather hard words to speak to the people, and he warns them that kingship may succeed and it may fail. And so, again, scholars have said, well, there again is another anti-monarchical section, so one of the reasons that scholars believe that you have different sources here is because of these differing attitudes toward the monarchy. Sometimes negative, sometimes positive. Negative again, positive again. Now, we'll respond to this in just a minute, so we'll come back and assess that. I want to give you the other reason. However, the other reason that scholars have thought, well, we've got probably different sources here, and we can't really read this as a unified story that makes sense. The other reason is that, really, we have too much happening. One scholar back in 1941 said, we have so many accounts of how Saul became king, one of the other would do, but to have so many baffles credence, how can you believe that all of these events took place? It's just too much. I mean, the elders asked for king, Saul's anointed. Couldn't that have made him king? Or he was selected by law? Well, do we need really both of these? Couldn't one of the other have done? Or maybe it was just that he defeated the amonites, and in judge-like fashion, the people said, hey, there's a guy, he can deliver us, let's make him king. But how do you stitch it all together? How does it make sense? These are the two major arguments, differing attitudes to the monarchy, and the idea that there are multiple accession accounts to use a fancy word. Multiple accounts of how Saul exceeded to the throne, how he became king. Well, how do we respond to something like that? What about the negative and positive coloring of these episodes? Let me ask this, a kind of a probing question. What do all the negative episodes have in common? What is common among all three of those? Samuel speaking in what context? To the whole people in the context of an assembly. In each of these instances, we have Samuel speaking to Israel, which has a symbol to him, either the elders, or all Israel in terms of the lot-casting, or representatives of all the tribes. Again, speaking to Israel at his retirement, he actually wasn't retiring, he was redrawing his job description, but on the eve of the monarchy, he was speaking to all the people. Now, this is the context in which you would expect him to voice his opinion, to speak out about the wisdom or the lack of wisdom of what the people are doing in demanding a king. Now, these other two, the so-called pro-monarchical accounts, really are simply reports of action. Samuel is not addressing the people. It's not the context of an assembly. Samuel is simply following through with what God had told him to do. King's ship is presupposed in this section because God had said, given the king, and so that's what Samuel does. He goes out and under God's leading discovers Saul anoints Saul to be king. Likewise, down here, this is the account of Saul's defeat of the Ammonites, and there's no reason to particularly express opinions about the wisdom or lack of wisdom of the people asking for a king at this particular juncture. So I think the pro-monarchical, anti-monarchical coloring that people have recognized is quite explicable simply by asking, as Lyle Esslinger has suggested we ask, who is saying what to whom, and we might say in what context? If we take that into account, we recognize what it makes sense that if there were concerns about the people's sinful request for a king, those would be expressed when Samuel is addressing the people, and they wouldn't come to expression in these reports of actions that were taken. That may be all there is there. But what about the other problem, the so-called multiple accession accounts? What do we make of that? How do we deal with that? Well, that's maybe a little harder question, so let me add something to the mix. Recent studies have shown, I think, convincingly that in the period of the judges, and likewise, on into the period of the kings, an individual would be brought to power through a multi-stage process. It wasn't just you received a letter in the mail from the government of the people of Israel saying, congratulations, you have been chosen king, we'll see in your office tomorrow. But rather, there was a three-part process that was typically involved in God bringing someone to power, and the three steps, as it were, are, first of all, step number one designation. This will be very important, these three steps. We may want to note these designation in this instance, well, in the first instance, Saul's anointing designated him as God's choice to be king. And then the second was demonstration, that is, the one who had been designated, was expected to, in some way, demonstrate that God had chosen him. Take Gideon, for instance. The angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said, go in your own strength, go in your strength and say the people, and, you know, after considerable delay on Gideon's part and a number of signs reassuring him, et cetera, et cetera. Find Gideon is willing, and God says, first of all, go destroy the altar of bail. Remember that? That wasn't the primary deliverance, but that was a demonstration that God had chosen Gideon to lead. And he did that, he did it under cover of darkness, because he was afraid, but at least he did it, and people knew, okay, Gideon's the guy, Gideon's the one who's out doing things. So the designation would typically be followed by a demonstration that this person has been chosen, and then there would follow a confirmation by the people, and I suppose by God as well, that yes, this is the individual. So this three-part process we will see when we come back after our break in just a minute becomes very important in understanding this question of, aren't there too many accounts? Aren't there too many explanations of how Saul became king? We will see, in fact, that the story as we have it makes very, very good sense. And that's been one of the chief reasons that people have suspected the history of this account, as they say, the story doesn't make sense, and if it doesn't make sense as a story, can't possibly make sense as history. So we'll, I'm trying to think of when we started. Yeah, I think we'll go ahead and take a break, if you would come back when the big hand reaches the, we'll go a little bit longer break, come back when the big hand reaches the 12 this time, and we'll continue on.