Israel asked for a king like the nations, and here is one who looks the part: choice, goodly, head and shoulders above the crowd. The narrator describes him entirely from the outside. When the LORD later chooses David He will say that man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart (16:7) — a line that reads, in hindsight, as a comment on this verse.

The name Saul is commonly connected with the Hebrew word for asked — the people had asked for a king — but the text itself makes nothing of it, and it should be held lightly. What the text does stress is Benjamin: the tribe nearly wiped out in Judges 20-21, the smallest of the tribes by Saul's own account (v. 21).

It is the unnamed servant, not the future king, who knows where the man of God is, what he is like, and has the money to visit him (v. 8). Saul is ready to go home; the servant keeps the errand alive. Great turnings in God's story frequently depend on a nobody who happened to know the right address.

All that he saith cometh surely to pass is the public reputation of the boy who answered Speak in the night: the LORD did let none of his words fall to the ground (3:19). Samuel is not named until verse 14; the reader who knows the earlier chapters hears who the servant means before Saul does.

The narrator steps out of the story to explain an old word to a later audience: what Saul's generation called a seer, the reader's generation calls a prophet. It is the text's own note, and an honest one — the books of Samuel were written down for people who no longer spoke quite like the people in them. The parenthesis reminds us that Scripture was composed with later readers in mind.

To enquire of God — people went to the seer not for fortune-telling but to ask the LORD. The servant's plan to use a prophet to locate livestock looks small; Samuel will make of it the finding of a king. God answers trivial enquiries with purposes larger than the enquirer.

The whole adventure of the lost asses has been I will send thee a man. Kish lost his donkeys because the LORD meant Samuel to meet his son. Providence works through animals that wander and servants who remember a quarter-shekel; Saul thinks he is searching, and he is being delivered.

After the sharp words of chapter 8 — they have rejected me — the LORD speaks of my people three times in one verse and says I have looked upon my people, because their cry is come unto me. It is the language of Exodus 3:7-9. Their request was wrong in spirit; their need was real, and God answers the need with compassion. Captain (many render it leader or prince) is a humbler title than king; the narrator keeps the king as the LORD's appointment rather than the people's prize.

Behold the man — the LORD points him out before Saul has said a word. The tall stranger in the gate asking for the seer's house (v. 18) is, unknown to himself, the subject of yesterday's revelation. Samuel sees Saul; God identifies him. Prophets see what everyone sees and are told what it means.

This same shall reign — the Hebrew verb here is usually taken to mean restrain or rule; some hear in it a hint that the king's job is to hold the people in check. The text itself does not press this. What the chapter plainly stresses is that the LORD, not Samuel, has done the choosing.

Samuel answers the question Saul came with before he can ask it — the asses are found — and then asks a question Saul never dreamed of: on whom is all the desire of Israel? The man who could not find his father's livestock is told the nation is looking for him. Set not thy mind on small lost things; something larger has found you.

Three days — the search had run out of bread (v. 7) and patience (v. 5). The LORD's timing brought Saul to the city on the one day of the sacrifice (v. 12), when Samuel had been told to expect him (v. 16). Nothing in the chapter is hurried and nothing is accidental.

Saul's first words about himself are modest: smallest tribe, least family. Gideon had said nearly the same (my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least, Judges 6:15). Whether this is humility, bewilderment, or the polite self-lowering of the time, the text does not judge; it lets the reader remember it when Saul later cannot bear to be small (15:17).

Benjamin was indeed small — reduced to six hundred men after the civil war of Judges 20. That the first king should come from the tribe that nearly ceased to exist fits the pattern of Hannah's song: he raiseth up the poor out of the dust... to set them among princes (2:8).

The honours of the previous evening were public — the chiefest seat, the portion set aside, the kept shoulder (vv. 22-24). The anointing will be private: the servant is sent ahead so that two men stand alone at the edge of town at daybreak. God's callings are often sealed where no one is watching.

Stand thou still a while — the same posture Samuel will ask of all Israel in 12:7 and 12:16: stand still... stand and see. Before Saul rules, he must stop and hear the word of God. The chapter ends mid-sentence, with the oil not yet poured; 10:1 picks up without a pause.