Weird Juxtapositions

1 Samuel 11
            I don't quite know what to make of this, but there is a strange juxtaposition in 1 Samuel 9-11.  I commented on the choice of Saul that he was from Gibeah (1 Sam. 10:26).  Gibeah was the site of a horrible crime in Judges 19, a crime worse even than the crimes of Sodom.  So, one is led to wonder about Saul from the very beginning.
            Now, in 1 Samuel 11, Saul goes to rescue Jabesh Gilead, a city that also plays in the story from Judges.  Recall that all of Israel gathered to punish the tribe of Benjamin (Gibeah was in that tribe).  Having dealt Benjamin a terrible military defeat, the Israelites mourned the loss of their brother Benjamin and looked for a way to preserve them.  Since no one from Jabesh Gilead had made war against Benjamin (and so, presumably, hadn't taken the vow the rest of them had taken), the Israelites went there and seized 400 virgins to give to the Benjamites as wives.
            So, is this a story about the redemption of Gibeah?  Maybe.  They do return the gift of life that Jabesh Gilead had at one point unwillingly given.  Perhaps we're to see in this that Israel is moving past old animosities.  Given Saul's later history, it's also just possible that we're being set up for a further rebuke of Gibeah, namely, that finally they won't do the right thing.
            I suppose if I had to write a sermon on this chapter (it never comes up in our usual readings), I'd focus on the first idea, and my sermon would go something like this:  "Forgiveness is such an amazing gift that it can reverse the fortunes of an entire city, an entire tribe.  Forgiveness is such an amazing gift that it can reverse the fortunes of the entire human race."