1 Samuel 22:7

Hear now, ye Benjamites. — We have here a fair specimen of Saul’s manner of ruling in his later years. It is no wonder that the heart of the people gradually was estranged from one of whom in earlier years they had been so proud. The suspicious and gloomy king had evidently — we have it here from his own mouth — gradually given all the posts of honour and dignity to men of his own tribe and family, or to strangers like Doeg. “Hear now, ye Benjamites” — so the “fidèles” were evidently men of his own favoured tribe; indeed, he refers to his own weak partiality as the reason why they of all men should be loyal. “Who but a Benjamite,” he says, “would only honour Benjamites?” Such a sovereign had surely forfeited his kingdom. The consequences of such a weak and shortsighted policy were plainly visible in the thin array he was able in his hour of bitter need to muster together on the fatal field of Mount Gilboa against his sleepless Philistine enemies. (See 1 Samuel 31)