"asked/prayed for") was a monarch of ancient Israel and Judah and, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, the first king of the United Monarchy, a polity of uncertain historicity.

His reign, traditionally placed in the late eleventh century BCE,[3] supposedly marked the transition of the Israelites from a scattered tribal society ruled by various judges to organized statehood.

Saul is said to have committed suicide when he fell on his sword during a battle with the Philistines at Mount Gilboa, in which three of his sons were also killed.

The biblical narrative of Saul's rise to kingship and his death contains several textual inconsistencies and plays on words that scholars have discussed.

[3] In the New Testament book of Acts 13:21, the Apostle Paul indicates that Saul's reign lasted for forty years.

[16] For five months their bodies were hung out in the elements, and the grieving Rizpah guarded them from being eaten by the beasts and birds of prey.

[17] Finally, David had the bodies taken down and buried in the family grave at Zelah with the remains of Saul and their half-brother Jonathan.

[19] The only male descendant of Saul to survive was Mephibosheth, Jonathan's lame son,[20] who was five years old at the time of his father's and grandfather's deaths.

The last of these is that Saul will be met by an ecstatic group of prophets leaving a high place and playing the lyre, tambourine, and flutes.

[33] After relieving the siege of Jabesh-Gilead, Saul conducts military campaigns against the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Aram Rehob and the kings of Zobah, the Philistines, and the Amalekites.

Methodist commentator Joseph Benson suggests that "Saul's intention in putting this oath was undoubtedly to save time, lest the Philistines should gain ground of them in their flight.

But the event showed it was a false policy; for the people were so faint and weak for want of food, that they were less able to follow and slay the Philistines than if they had stopped to take a moderate refreshment".

When a week passed with no word of Samuel, and with the Israelites growing restless, Saul prepares for battle by offering sacrifices.

Saul sends assassins in the night, but Michal helps him escape, tricking them by placing a household idol in his bed.

Saul is later informed by his head shepherd, Doeg the Edomite, that high priest Ahimelech assisted David, giving him the sword of Goliath, which had been kept at the temple at Nob.

The medium, unaware of his identity, reminds him that the king has made witchcraft a capital offence, but he assures her that Saul will not harm her.

She conjures a spirit which appears to be the prophet Samuel,[49] and tells him that God has fully rejected him, will no longer hear his prayers, has given the kingdom to David and that the next day he will lose both the battle and his life.

But the Amalekite tells David he found Saul leaning on his spear after the battle and delivered the coup de grâce.

The victorious Philistines recover Saul's body as well as those of his three sons who also died in the battle, decapitate them and display them on the wall of Beth-shan.

It describes how Samuel's mother Hannah requests a son from Yahweh, and dedicates the child to God at the shrine of Shiloh.

The passage makes extensive play with the root-elements of Saul's name, and ends with the phrase hu sa'ul le-Yahweh 'he is dedicated to Yahweh'.

Before, Saul is presented in positive terms, but afterward his mode of ecstatic prophecy is suddenly described as fits of madness, his errors and disobedience to Samuel's instructions are stressed and he becomes a paranoiac.

[65] According to this view, Saul is only a weak branch,[66] owing his kingship not to his own merits, but rather to his grandfather, who had been accustomed to light the streets for those who went to the beit midrash, and had received as his reward the promise that one of his grandsons should sit upon the throne.

[77] According to the Rabbis, Saul followed the rules of ritual impurity prescribed for the sacrifice,[78] and taught the people how they should slaughter cattle.

[85] The fact that he made his daughter remarry[86] finds its explanation in his (Saul's) view that her betrothal to David had been gained by false pretenses, and was therefore invalid.

According to Muslim exegetes, the name means 'tall' (from the Arabic tūl) and refers to the extraordinary stature of Saul, which would be consistent with the Biblical account.

Saul was distinguished by the greatness of his knowledge and of his physique; it was a sign of his role as King that God brought back the Ark of the Covenant for Israel.

(2020) William G. Dever has defended the historicity of the United Monarchy, maintaining that the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon are "reasonably well attested".

[103] Liubov Ben-Noun of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, believes that passages referring to King Saul's disturbed behavior indicate he was afflicted by a mental disorder, and lists a number of possible conditions.

[104] However, Christopher C. H. Cook of the Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, UK recommends caution in offering any diagnoses in relation to people who lived millennia ago.