He returns home to till his field, when the messengers from Jabesh were sent not to the king of Israel, but to the people of Israel, to ask for help. In Gibeah also they do not apply to the king; not till he sees the people weeping in Gibeah, does Saul learn the message. Yet he does not summon the people to follow him as king; he requests the following just as in earlier times individuals in extraordinary cases sought to rouse the people to take up arms. It is impossible that a king should be chosen by lot at a time when the bravest warrior was needed at the head, and simple boys, who hid themselves among the stuff, were not suited to lead the army at such a dangerous time. At the time of Saul's very first achievements his son Jonathan stands at his side as a warrior; at his death his youngest son Ishbosheth was 40 years of age (2 Sam. ii. 10). Saul must therefore have been between 40 and 50 years old when he became king. The request of the elders for a king, and Samuel's resistance, belong on the other hand to the prophetic narrator of the books of Samuel, in whose account it was followed by the assembly at Mizpeh and the casting of lots. The same narrator attempts to bring the achievement at Jabesh, and the recognition of Saul as ruler and king which followed it, into harmony with his narrative by the addition of the restoration of the kingdom and some other interpolations. The Philistines would hardly have permitted minute preparations and prescribed assemblies for the election of king. The simple elevation and recognition of Saul as king after his first successful exploit in war corresponds to the situation of affairs (cf. I xii. 12). And I am the more decided in holding this account to be historically correct, because it does not presuppose the other accounts, and because the men of Jabesh, according to the older account, fetched the bodies of Saul and his sons to Jabesh from Beth-shan and burned them there, 1 Sam. xxxi. 12, 13. The older account in the books of Samuel knows nothing of the request of the elders for a king. After the defeat which caused Eli's death, it narrates the carrying back of the ark by the Philistines, and the setting up of it at Beth-shemesh and Kirjath-jearim. Then follows Saul's anointing by Samuel (ix. 1-10, 16); then the lost statement about the age of Saul when he became king, and the length of the reign; then the great exploits of Saul against the Philistines (xiii. 1-14, 46); xiii. 8-13 stands in precise relation to x. 8. That the achievement of Jabesh cannot have been wanting in the older account follows from the express reference to it at the death of Saul. [215] 1 Sam. xiii. 3-7; xiv. 22. [216] 1 Sam. xiii. 16-18. [217] 1 Sam. xiv. 1-23. [218] So the older account, 1 Sam. xiv. 24-45. [219] Numbers ii. 18-24; Joshua xviii. 12-20; Judges v. 14. That Ephraim remained true to Saul follows from the recognition of Ishbosheth after Saul's death, 2 Sam. ii. 9, 10. [220] 1 Sam. xiv. 52.