5 THE REIGN OF SAUL WHILE IT IS true that the whole of 1 Samuel 13–31 is concerned with events during the reign of Saul, it appears that the narrator or compiler responsible for the present contours of the narrative wished to suggest that the account of the reign is effectively confined to chs 13–15. The beginning is clearly marked with an accession formula (13:1)—ironically incomplete, as if to signal the outcome of Saul’s reign!—of the kind frequently used in the books of Kings (e.g. 2 Kgs 14:1f.;