Gregory the Great, on 1Sam 9:2

“And he had a son whose name was Saul, a choice and goodly man, and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he appeared above all the people.”

“All these words can also be understood as words of praise, by which, while the person of the king to be appointed is commended, the intention of those requesting a king is confounded. For they say: "A king shall be over us, and he shall judge us, and he shall fight our battles for us" (1 Sam. 8). He is called chosen and good, and that there was no one better than he among the sons of Israel, so that all good qualities might excel in the person of the requested king; but when he proves insufficient for what the people had proposed, human presumption is confounded, so that it wastes away in defeat. And indeed, as I said above, the king who is chosen to go before the people and fight their battles, when he is abandoned by divine help, perished overwhelmed in battle, and for the people whom he had led into those same battles, he became a cause not of salvation but of death. What, then, would the people attribute to God if he who had been chosen as king by God's judgment had not proven so suitable for carrying out what the people wanted? He can also be understood as chosen and good, as he is described, not as he was foreseen to be in the future. He is therefore called chosen and good, so that he is understood to have been chosen as such by the Lord—he who through disobedience was later rejected. For this reason, logic itself demands that what is said about him as chosen and good up to the time of his rejection, we should understand in a favorable sense.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.