ing of Mizpeh, that they might repent of their iniquity and live.
But He would not speak to them beyond what He had spoken through me,
and I returned and sent the assembly away, every man to his own city.

I called the people together in Mizpeh again, the place where they had
seen the Lord save them Himself, and yet even there they would not
yield. Then I prophesied against them, because they had cast aside Him
who had delivered them out of all their adversities and tribulations;
and I caused all their tribes to assemble before me. Saul the son of
Kish was taken, and the fools shouted God save the king. I did my best
for them. I wrote laws for them to protect them against him, and I put
them in a book and laid them up in the sanctuary.

Henceforth I was in a measure more solitary than before. Saul was a
brave man, and led the people to war, and they were pleased with his
success, but he was not single in his service of the Lord, and he had
for a wife a Horite, one Rizpah, who worshipped false gods. He
believed he could make Israel a nation by battles, and he saw not what
I saw--that the one thing necessary for our salvation was to keep
ourselves pure and separate. The people complained that the Law was a
burden, but it was their safeguard: it was the Law which marked them
off from the heathen, who were doomed to fall by their sins. I toiled
daily to preserve the Law, and to insist upon the observance of its
ceremonies, knowing full well that if the people let them go, they
would let go the commandments from Sinai; would let go the sobriety and
the chastity of their bodies; would mix in the worship of Baal, and be
lost. Saul was no observer of ceremonies, and considered them naught,
the idiot, who forgot that they were ordained of God, with whom there
is no small nor great, and that through them the people are taught.
More solitary than ever I was, I say; but I sought the Lord more than
ever, and kept closer to me the memory of the Voice which first called
me. If Israel is to live, it will not be because Saul overcame the
Amalekites and Philistines, but because the Lamp of God in my hands has
not been extinguished. When the Philistines came against us at
Michmash, Saul was in Gilgal, and I went to meet him there. Because I
came not at the time appointed, he, the impious one, took upon himself
to offer the sacrifice, pleading that the people were leaving him, and
that the Philistines were encamped against him.