He took a yoke of oxen, and cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the borders of Israel by the hand of messengers, saying, Whoever doesn't come forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen. The dread of Yahweh fell on the people, and they came out as one man.
Now this is Saul at the beginning of his reign, and at the beginning of his reign he does show many marvelous characteristics. Among those, that of humility. In reality when Samuel first met Saul and said, "Behold the man upon whom is all the eyes upon or, the desire of Israel."Saul said, "Hey, you can't mean me. I'm from the tribe of Benjamin one of the little tribes. My dad's family is nothing. You surely can't mean me." There was a real humility manifested in this fellow Saul.When Samuel laid out the fact that he was to be the king and all, when he got home and his uncle said, "What took you so long?"He said, "Oh man we really got lost."He said, "We finally ended up with Samuel."And he said, "Oh, what did Samuel tell you?"He said, "He told us that the donkeys had come home."But he didn't bother, you know, he didn't say to his uncle, "He told me I was gonna be king" and this kind of stuff. I mean there was none of that. There seemed to be a true humility.It is tragic that as the story progresses of the life of Saul, one of the bad characteristics of his later life is the lack of humility. This spiritual pride, this more than, just plain pride that took over in his life. Starting out a very humble man, but as time progressed he became a very proud man. But in this particular case here, the men were ready to go out and wipe out these guys who had spoken against him. He said, "Oh no. God has wrought salvation in Israel and thus there'll be no recrimination." So here is still right at the beginning, signs of real good qualities of humility.