How long was King Saul the king?
1 Samuel 10:1 - 27
NLT - 1 Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it over Saul’s head. He kissed Saul and said, “I am doing this because the Lord has appointed you to be the ruler over Israel, his special possession. 2 When you leave me today, you will see two men beside Rachel’s tomb at Zelzah, on the border of Benjamin. They will tell you that the donkeys have been found and that your father has stopped worrying about them and is now worried about you. He is asking, ‘Have you seen my son?’
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Tim Maas
Supporter
By my understanding, the Masoretic text of 1 Samuel 13:1 says only that Saul reigned "... and two" years. (The Masoretic text of the verse does not contain the full number.) However, a subsequent reference to Saul's reign found in Acts 13:21 during Paul's speech to the Jewish congregation of Pisidian Antioch (in modern-day Turkey) mentions Saul reigning forty years. I therefore take the full number mentioned in the original text of 1 Samuel 13:21 to have been "forty and two", and Paul's subsequent reference to it as "forty" to have been a rhetorical approximation. (A discussion of the Masoretic text can be found at https://www.gotquestions.org/Masoretic-Text.html)
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