Saul

Israel's first king, introduced in 1 Samuel 9:2 as tall and striking. Josephus opens his own account the same way Scripture does, through his father Kish's lost donkeys, the errand that puts Saul in Samuel's path in the first place.

Saul was Israel's first king, chosen almost by accident while searching for his father's lost donkeys and anointed privately by Samuel before Israel's assembled tribes confirmed him publicly. He started well, rallying Israel against the Ammonites and the Philistines, but lost God's favor through repeated disobedience, most decisively when he offered a sacrifice he had no right to offer and later spared an enemy king God had ordered destroyed. His last three decades were consumed by a jealous pursuit of David, the shepherd Samuel had already anointed to replace him, and he died by his own sword on Mount Gilboa after a defeat by the Philistines. An earlier king of Edom, generations before Israel had any king at all, carried the same name.