Don't skip the footnotes in your Bible on 13:1. Some translations say that Saul was thirty and reigned for forty-two years. Others leave the numbers out. In the most reliable manuscripts, we aren't sure of the age at which Saul became king, and the only number we have for the year he reigned is "two." Stephen helps us out with the length of Saul's reign in Acts 13:21, where we read that Saul was king for 40 years. Another translation has been offered for the first verse, "Saul was [thirty] years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for two years over Israel." This reading of the first verse would tell us that the story we are about to read took place in the second year of his kingship. We know from the New Testament he was king for forty years. His age at the beginning does not reshape the text for us; neither is the timeline of this story so important to nail down that we are cheated if we can't discern where in his reign these two chapters took place...