Chapter 10 tells in the language of the last chapter of 1St Samuel of the ruin of Saul's house. It is in a scene of ruin that God acts in grace. When our first parents sinned, God appeared, both to announce the fruit and penalty of sin, and to speak of a Deliverer (Genesis 3:15-19), and when all the race was in irretrievable ruin,—the guilt of the murder of the Son of God resting upon that people which, almost alone as a nation, had any knowledge of the true God, then it was that God announced justification by His grace, redemption in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:10-26).
The day had been not long past, when Saul was the people's pride. A choice young man and a goodly; there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he; from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people (1 Samuel 9:2), and the people had shouted when he was presented as their king. But now the Philistines, old time enemies within Israel's border, whom Saul should have destroyed, had become strong enough to defeat the men of Israel in battle; Saul was dead and all his sons, and the army he had gathered had fled. The disaster was most serious; the enemies of God and of His people were left in undisputed possession of the battle field, and they made much of their triumph for the honor of their gods and their nation.
We may be tempted to say that God was not in all this; but He was; it was a sorrowful scene, humbling in the extreme from whatever angle we may consider it, but the closing verses tell us that the unseen, but by no means indifferent. God, had brought this defeat and ruin upon Israel, and in particular, upon Israel's king. Saul died for his transgression (verse 13).
As early as 1 Samuel 13:13, 14, when Saul had been king but two years, he was told that his kingdom would not be continued because of his disobedience to God's Word. In the fifteenth chapter again (verse 23) he was told that because lie had rejected the word of the Lord, He had rejected him from being king. Nevertheless Saul was allowed to continue as the ruler over Israel until he had reigned forty years.
Forty is a number in Scripture often connected with testing or trial, whether forty days, or forty years, and Saul's forty years only brought out more and more the wretchedness of the unregenerate heart; from hatred of David and seeking to accomplish his murder, he turned to Satan as his last resource (verse 13, and 1 Samuel 28:7-19). He was removed from the scene in which he had so utterly failed, and David, until now without a possession, a wanderer, while the people's choice occupied the throne, was to take the dominion as the man of God's purpose.