1 Samuel 10:20–24

By the casting of sacred lots, God publicly identifies Saul of Benjamin as Israel's first king — yet Saul is found hiding among the baggage train, not standing triumphant before the crowd. Samuel's rhetorical question to the assembly — "Do you see him whom Yahweh has chosen?" — underscores the paradox at the heart of this moment: God's sovereign election of a man who is physically towering yet spiritually unready, outwardly impressive yet inwardly absent. These verses inaugurate Israel's monarchy while quietly foreshadowing its fragility.

Verse 20 — The Narrowing by Lot: Samuel organizes the procedure by cascading divisions: all twelve tribes are first presented, and Benjamin is designated. The Hebrew verb lākad ("was taken" or "was chosen") is the same verb used in Joshua 7:14–18, where Achan is identified by lot as guilty of sacrilege. The verbal echo is not accidental — the sacred lot (gôrāl) is a juridical and liturgical instrument through which God's judgment or selection is declared. Israel understood this as a form of divine speech; Proverbs 16:33 states that "the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from Yahweh." The choice of Benjamin is humanly unexpected: Benjamin is the smallest of the tribes (cf. 1 Samuel 9:21; Judges 20–21 records its near-annihilation), yet God consistently works through the least expected vessel.

Verse 21 — Saul Designated, Saul Absent: The lot narrows further: from tribe to clan (Matrites, otherwise obscure in Scripture), and then to one man, Saul son of Kish. The double precision of the selection — by tribe, then clan, then individual — communicates unmistakable divine intentionality. There is no ambiguity about which Saul is meant. But the scene takes an immediately jarring turn: he could not be found. The Hebrew is stark — "and he was not found" (wᵉlōʾ nims̱āʾ). The man just designated king of Israel is not present to receive his crown. Ancient Jewish interpretation (cf. the Talmud, b. Ber. 55a) suggested Saul hid out of genuine humility; other readings detect early signs of a temperament prone to evasion of responsibility. Both are theologically generative: the moment of divine summons is met with absence.

Verse 22 — Israel Inquires Again of Yahweh: The assembly must ask God a second question — not about the identity of the chosen man (that has been settled), but about his location. The verb used (šāʾal, "to ask" or "to inquire") is the same root from which the name Saul (Šāʾûl, "the asked-for one" or "the one asked of God") is derived. There is profound irony here: Israel once asked (šāʾal) God for a king, and that king is now himself being asked about (šāʾal) by the people. He is literally the "asked-for" one, being sought. God's answer directs them to the baggage train (kᵉlîm, "the vessels" or "the supplies") — a deliberately undignified hiding place for a king.

Verse 23 — The Stature of the Chosen: Saul is brought out, and the narrator reintroduces his remarkable physical height: "he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders upward." This detail was first noted in 1 Samuel 9:2, and here it serves a literary bracket — the outward qualification that impressed Israel before the lot is confirmed again after it. Physically, Saul is everything the ancient Near Eastern world expected of a king: warriors of royal stature dominate the iconography of Egyptian and Assyrian kings alike. Yet the Catholic reader, schooled by Samuel's own oracle in 16:7 ("man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart"), is meant to read this height as an ambiguous sign — impressive to human eyes, but not the criterion God ultimately prizes.

Catholic tradition reads this passage at multiple levels simultaneously — a principle enshrined in the four senses of Scripture articulated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§115–119).

Typologically, Saul's public designation anticipates and inversely illuminates Christ's own anointing and public revelation. Saul is chosen by lot; Christ is designated by the Father's own voice at his Baptism ("This is my beloved Son," Matthew 3:17). Saul hides; Christ goes forward into the wilderness to confront temptation. Saul must be fetched from the baggage; Christ comes forward of his own will. The contrast is instructive: Saul's concealment prefigures the inadequacy of every merely human kingship, which Catholic doctrine holds to be real but derivative authority, always subordinate to Christ, Rex Regum (King of Kings). St. Augustine in The City of God (Book XVII) treats the establishment of Israel's monarchy as a providential shadow of the coming Kingdom of God, imperfect and destined to be surpassed.

The role of the sacred lot bears specific ecclesial resonance. The Church's own tradition of discernment — including the selection of Matthias in Acts 1:26 by lot — drew on this Israelite practice as a means of acknowledging God's sovereignty over human choices. The Catechism teaches that "God guides his Church" through legitimate structures (§857), and this passage illustrates the prototype: human gathering, structured process, and divine declaration working together.

Saul's hiddenness is read by St. John Chrysostom as a figure of holy humility, the virtue that makes a leader fit for service. Yet the Church Fathers also note its ambiguity — Gregory the Great, in his Pastoral Rule (I.6), warns that flight from office motivated by self-protection rather than genuine humility is a spiritual evasion, not a virtue. The pastor or leader who hides from responsibility, Gregory argues, sins against the community entrusted to his care. This dual reading — admirable reticence versus culpable avoidance — characterizes the entire arc of Saul's tragic reign.

This passage confronts the contemporary Catholic with a searching question about the gap between being chosen and being present. Saul is publicly designated by God — through a valid, communally witnessed sacred process — and his first response is to hide. Many Catholics today experience something analogous: they receive a clear call through prayer, community discernment, or the promptings of conscience, and their first instinct is to be unavailable. The baggage train is wherever we disappear when God's summons becomes uncomfortably specific.

Samuel's question — "Do you see him whom Yahweh has chosen?" — also speaks directly to how Catholics understand human authority and leadership, whether in parishes, families, or civil life. Authority is not self-generated; it is received. The acclamation yᵉḥî hammelek reminds us that legitimate authority requires both divine designation and communal recognition. In a culture that is simultaneously suspicious of all authority and hungry for charismatic leaders, this passage calls Catholics back to a covenantal understanding: leaders are chosen for the sake of the people, and the people bear responsibility for welcoming and holding accountable those God raises up. Pray, therefore, for those in leadership — and examine where your own calling is going unanswered in the baggage.