Therefore they asked of Yahweh further, Is there yet a man to come here? Yahweh answered, Behold, he has hid himself among the baggage.
 This too was expressly a sign to Saul. The first sign was personal, connected as it was with Rachel's sepulchre, a place of death to the mother, but where Benjamin was born, the head of Saul's own tribe, and the type of Messiah in His mighty victories for His people on the earth. He was not that son of Jacob who was separate from his brethren and exalted in another sphere, but the son of his father's right hand, who represents the Lord Jesus when He rises up to put down all adversaries in His kingdom by and by; for such is the particular blessing that was vouchsafed when the Spirit of God by Jacob pronounced the blessing of Benjamin. The second sign should have intimated the reality to faith of a more than sufficient witness that as surely as three men were going up to Bethel, God could not fail, be the state of Israel what it might. Then followed the sign of that present state. The promises attached to Bethel were far from being as yet fulfilled. If he hears of "the hill of God," there "is the garrison of the Philistines." Undoubtedly, then, the actual condition of Israel and their land when man desired a king was as low as could well be. Had there only been faith to enter into these signs, taking them from God, there would surely have been the more blessed an opportunity for the working and triumph of God, who never fails to answer to living faith; but this was exactly what Saul had not. There was no lack of a fair show in the flesh. Saul looked at first most amiable to father, to servants, to everybody in short, as we find. In all this there was the brightest natural promise for man's king; but was this all? There was another and higher privilege too, one may notice in passing: God was even pleased to invest him with the power of the Spirit of God externally, of course. "And the Spirit of Jehovah will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man." Does it not all show us that God was giving every possible succour and every conceivable advantage to man's king entering on this new phase in the history of His people? This I conceive to be the unquestionable lesson of these two chapters: a wiser and more needed one under the circumstances who could devise?
