... A further text that may underlie it is the extended account of a campaign by Ben-hadad of Damascus against Samaria in the time of Ahab (1 Kings 20). The king of Israel is encouraged and advised by prophet (verses 13, 22) and man of God (verse 28). There is a great slaughter of Aramaean troops, but Ben-hadad is spared. One of the ‘sons of the prophets,’ himself encouraged by the grisly fate of a colleague who did not act on a command presented to him as a divine instruction, traps Ahab by an acted-out parable and then reports Yahweh’s announcement of his punishment for letting go free ‘my ḥerem man’ (verse 42). In this Ahab story it is only at the very end that the ‘prophetic party’ makes the divine purpose for Ben-hadad explicit. In 1 Samuel 15 it is explicit from the outset that (all) Amalek should be devoted as ḥērem. Two principal reasons encourage me to see Saul being compared with Ahab, rather than Ahab with Saul. One is that a relatively isolated phrase in the Ahab story, ‘my ḥerem man,’ has become a major theme in the story of Saul. ...