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I’m going to start with an assumption that everyone here has at least heard of William Shakespeare. That should be a pretty safe assumption, he’s only the best known playwright in the history of the English language, and frankly, easily among the most widely read and studied authors in any language. Shakespeare’s plays generally fall into one of three categories – histories, comedies, or tragedies. This of course is not a lecture about a playwright who lived four hundred years ago, this a sermon about people who lived three thousand years ago. But when I was in university, studying English literature, I looked at the account of Saul as we see in the book of 1 Samuel and found him to be highly reminiscent of the archetype of a tragic figure, such as you might find one of Shakespeare’s plays, a character like Hamlet, Othello, or Macbeth.

Saul is a fascinating character, and one that is well worth examining in detail. We can definitely learn from his successes and from his mistakes. But it’s not Saul that I’d like to focus on this morning. It’s his eldest son Jonathan.