It grieves me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments.
And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.
All Commentaries on 1 Samuel 15:11 Go To 1 Samuel 15
Tertullian of Carthage
AD 220
Furthermore, with respect to the repentance which occurs in his conduct you interpret it with similar perverseness just as if it were with fickleness and improvidence that he repented, or on the recollection of some wrongdoing; because he actually said, “I repent that I have set up Saul to be king,” very much as if he meant that his repentance savored of an acknowledgment of some evil work or error. Well, this is not always implied. For there occurs even in good works a confession of repentance, as a reproach and condemnation of the man who has proved himself unthankful for a benefit. For instance, in this one case of Saul, the Creator, who had made no mistake in selecting him for the kingdom and endowing him with his Holy Spirit, makes a statement respecting the goodness of his person, how that he had most fitly chosen him as being at that moment the choicest man, so that (as he says) there was not one like him among the children of Israel. Neither was he ignorant how he would afterwards turn out. For no one would bear you out in imputing lack of foresight to that God whom, since you do not deny him to be divine, you allow to be also foreseeing; for this proper attribute of divinity exists in him. However, he did, as I have said, burden the guilt of Saul with the confession of his own repentance; but as there is an absence of all error and wrong in his choice of Saul, it follows that this repentance is to be understood as upbraiding another rather than as self-incriminating.
