Why the Rabbis Called Saul a Cushite to Praise Him

A Cushite is mentioned once in the heading of a psalm, and the rabbis spent centuries arguing about what it means. The word appears in the title of Psalm 7, attributed to David: a shiggayon of David which he sang to God concerning the words of Cush the Benjaminite. No one named Cush from the tribe of Benjamin appears anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. So who is this person, and why does a psalm about unjust persecution carry his name?

Midrash Tehillim, the collection of rabbinic interpretations on Psalms compiled in late antiquity and edited in medieval Palestine, does not accept the mystery as unanswerable. It proposes that Cush is not a proper name at all but a coded epithet, and the man it describes is none other than King Saul.

What Does It Mean to Call a King a Cushite?

The logic requires explanation. Cush was a region in northeastern Africa, associated in the ancient world with dark-skinned people of remarkable appearance. A Cushite was distinctive, unmistakable, someone whose physical presence set them apart from the crowd. The Midrash proposes a linguistic parallel: just as a Cushite is unique in his appearance, Saul was unique in his beauty. The term is not an ethnic designation but a superlative, the biblical equivalent of saying: this person stood out the way a Cushite stands out in Judea.

The description of Saul's appearance in (1 Samuel 9:2) supports this reading. When the prophet Samuel first sees the young Saul, the text describes him as standing head and shoulders above every man in Israel, with no one more handsome in all the land. Saul was visually extraordinary. The Midrash is saying that the psalm's reference to a Cushite Benjaminite is pointing precisely at this quality: the man from Benjamin who was as remarkable in appearance as a Cushite is remarkable in appearance.

Beauty as a Gift That Can Be Withdrawn

The 3,205 texts of the midrash-aggadah collection return repeatedly to the relationship between outward beauty and inner character in Israel's early kings. Saul was beautiful and Saul failed. David was beautiful too, and David, despite his failures, endured. The Midrash is not simply cataloguing appearances; it is working out what beauty means in the context of divine election.

Midrash Tehillim presses the analysis further. It asks: did Saul's beauty remain after his rejection by God? The question sounds cosmetic but carries theological weight. If Saul was called a Cushite because of his exceptional appearance, and if that appearance was a sign of divine favor, then the withdrawal of divine favor should register somehow in the physical. The Midrash's answer, implicit rather than stated directly, is that the beauty described in the psalm is retrospective, a memory of what Saul was before the spirit of God departed from him and the evil spirit descended (1 Samuel 16:14).

The Contrast With David

The Legends of the Jews preserves a tradition that when Samuel came to anoint one of Jesse's sons as Saul's replacement, God's instruction was explicit: do not look at appearance or height (1 Samuel 16:7). This was a correction of Samuel's own tendency, shaped by experience with Saul, to assume that the tallest and most physically striking man must be the chosen one. The spirit of God said: I do not see as humans see. Humans see the outward appearance; I see the heart.

David was also described as handsome in the text, ruddy and bright-eyed and good-looking (1 Samuel 16:12). But his beauty was never the primary claim made for him. His beauty was incidental to a different quality: his psalms, his loyalty to God even through catastrophic personal failure, his refusal to kill Saul when Saul hunted him through the wilderness. David's beauty accompanied his virtue rather than preceding it.

What the Rabbis Preserved by Coding Saul as a Cushite

Midrash Tehillim's identification of the Cushite Benjaminite as Saul is also an act of protection. David wrote a psalm about persecution and injustice, presumably referring to Saul's campaign to destroy him. But the Midrash is uncomfortable with a reading in which the great King David composed a direct denunciation of Saul. Saul was still Israel's anointed king when the persecution happened. Speaking badly about an anointed king, even an anointed king who had turned against you, was problematic.

By coding the accusation inside an epithet, the Midrash allows David to speak without overtly speaking ill of Saul. David composed a psalm about what a Cushite person did to him. The Midrash knows, and tells us, that the Cushite is Saul. But the mediation of the epithet softens the denunciation. David is not attacking Saul by name. He is describing a quality, and allowing those who know to make the connection.

A King Who Was Unique, Then Was Not

The elegiac quality of Midrash Tehillim's meditation on Saul is not accidental. Bamidbar Rabbah and other collections of the rabbinic literature preserve deep ambivalence about Saul. He was chosen. He was beautiful. He was humble, initially, hiding among the baggage when Samuel tried to anoint him (1 Samuel 10:22). He had every quality the moment required. And then he disobeyed, twice, in ways that cost him everything: sparing Agag when told to destroy him, and then turning to the medium of Ein Dor in desperation when God would no longer answer his prayers.

The Midrash's coding of Saul as a Cushite is, finally, a meditation on impermanence. What makes a person distinctive can be lost. The uniqueness that marks a person for greatness does not guarantee they will sustain it. Saul was unique in his beauty. He was also unique in the completeness of his fall. Both facts are contained in the epithet, and the rabbis who read the psalm in light of that history were reading something they found both beautiful and heartbreaking.