(1 Sam. 13-15.)
Just how long after Saul's installation into power the events recorded in the 13th chapter occurred is uncertain. The wording of the first verse is obscure. One valued commentator says, in reference to it: " One number is wanting here, and cannot be supplied from any known source; the other is questionable. The Septuagint omits the verse altogether, which on more accounts than this, commends itself to me. But I have bracketed and left it. It seems an interruption in the course of the history, the second verse naturally connecting with the end of the last chapter. "
Verse 2 probably continues the narrative without interruption from the end of the previous chapter, and records events that immediately follow Saul's coronation and the accompanying address of farewell from Samuel. If this be so (and we can hardly doubt it), what a comment it presents on the character of Saul. How quickly he fell; and it is not only Saul that God would have us look to in this sudden collapse in accountability before God, but ourselves, and all mankind. It is the old, humiliating story of human frailty; or to put it in truer words, of man's utter inability to stand before God for even the shortest time on the ground of his responsibility.
This is seen at the very dawn of human history — at the first beginning of the race. Adam fell almost immediately, it would seem, on his settlement in Eden, and dragged creation down with him. Noah, in the renovated earth, in the next recorded act after his building an altar and sacrificing thereon burnt offerings, " planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; " and the result was a bitter curse upon a portion of his posterity. It is the same with Israel; the triumphant song of victory at the Red Sea is followed by the wicked murmurings for bread in the wilderness of Sin a short month later (Ex. 16:11And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 16:1)). The confident promises made by all the people before Moses, "All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient" (Ex. 24:77And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. (Exodus 24:7)), are very soon followed by, "Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him " (Ex. 32:11And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. (Exodus 32:1)). God's comment on their conduct is just what might be said of Saul's in this chapter: " They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them."
Such is man. Such are you and I, dear reader, and beloved fellow-believer. Well spake the prophet Isaiah, when he said, " Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of? " (Isa. 2:2222Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of? (Isaiah 2:22)). This is the needful though humbling lesson to be learned from this initial failure, and all the succeeding ones of this, according to the flesh, fairest of the kings of Israel.
But our object in this little volume is, not so much to trace the perverse workings of the flesh in Saul and Israel, but the happier employ of following the gracious activities of the Holy Spirit in Samuel.
Jonathan smites a garrison of the Philistines, and as a consequence, Saul finds himself in straits.
"And all Israel heard say that Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines, and that Israel also was had in abomination with the Philistines. And the people were called together after Saul to Gilgal.
"And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea shore in multitude...
"And when the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait (for the people were distressed), then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits. And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling " (chap. 13:3-7).
But Saul finds himself well-nigh deserted of his followers. After the great and easy victory over the army of the Ammonites, Saul dismissed the bulk of his forces, and retained but 3000 men, 2000 of whom he retained with himself, and the remaining 1000 were placed under the command of Jonathan. This, as has been pointed out, was an error, whichever way we look at it. "If he intended these only for a guard of his person and honorary attendants, it was impolitic to have so many; if, for a standing army, in apprehension of danger from the Philistines, it was no less impolitic to have so few." There was probably a truce, or perhaps a treaty of peace, between Israel and the Philistines at this time. (See chap. 7:13) This, under God, was due to Samuel. This smiting of the Philistine garrison by Jonathan, probably by order of Saul, was violating the truce (see ver. 4), as the words, "Israel also was had in abomination with the Philistines," imply.
"And he tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed: but Samuel came not to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him. And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering " (verses 8, 9).
This is the time, we cannot doubt, to which Samuel referred when he said to Saul at his anointing, "And thou shalt go down before me to Gilgal; and, behold, I will come down unto thee... and show thee what thou shalt do " (chap. 10:8). This could not have been on the occasion of his induction into office as king, at Gilgal, for there is no mention whatever of burnt offerings — only peace offerings were sacrificed. "Behold, I will come down unto thee, to offer burnt offerings," etc., he says. As a prophet of Jehovah, he could foresee this time of straitness with Saul, and had promised to come to his relief. Saul so understood it, too; but he thinks he cannot wait, and so proceeds without the prophet. " He is now in the position of which Samuel had forewarned him before, at his anointing, and in obedience to his injunction he waits till near the close of the seventh day — till it has advanced so far, indeed, that it seemed as if there was now no hope of Samuel's coming... In open disobedience he offers (or causes to be offered) the burnt offering; and he has hardly done this before Samuel comes."
The deed is done, the transgression accomplished, and there remains for the prophet but to appear and pronounce the discontinuance of his kingdom. He could say to Saul, as another prophet centuries later declared to the Gentile king, Belshazzar, " MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it " (Dan. 5:2626This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. (Daniel 5:26)).
"And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute him. And Samuel said, What halt thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou tamest not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash" (verses 10, 11).
" What hast thou done? " demands Samuel of the impatient, unbelieving, disobedient king. That is the startling, conscience-searching question. It was put to the woman, fallen, in the Garden; " What is this that thou hast done? " the Lord God asks her. It was put to her son Cain the fratricide, " What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground." Well it would have been if they had answered, " I have played the fool, I have transgressed the commandment, I have sinned before heaven, and in thy sight, O God of righteousness, of holiness and truth." This indeed should be the answer of every one, " for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." This same question Pilate asked of Christ; and what answers He could have given to the interrogation of His unjust judge! He had kept the commandment of His Father irreproachable and without spot; He had " magnified the law and made it honorable; " He ever did the things that pleased the Father; and having done this, He could do another thing, He could suffer for the sins of others, " the Just for the unjust," and so make atonement for their transgressions. He has thus opened the way by which a holy God can righteously pardon the sinner-can be " just and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Glory and praise be to Him forever and forever! Amen.
Saul offers, as man has ever done, a vain excuse " The people were scattered from me," he says; and then he wickedly attempts to saddle the blame of his transgression onto Samuel: "Thou camest not within the days appointed." This was false; all the worse for being uttered under the guise of truth. Samuel did appear before the seventh day had closed. Saul, in his unfaithfulness would not wait for this, but in the course of the day, perhaps towards its close, took his case out of the hands of God, and undertook for himself. Hypocritically, he tries to inject an appearance of piety into his daring act of disobedience, saying, he feared the Philistines would come down upon him before he had " made supplication unto the Lord." Under this cover he says, " I forced myself." But faith never has to " force " itself; it can always trust God's word, depend upon His promise, and await patiently its sure performance. But to this Saul is an utter stranger, and has to hear, from the very lips that had made the promise and given the command, the consequences of his disobedience.
"And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God which He commanded thee: for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought Him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee " (verses 13, 14).
Then we read the ominous words: " And Samuel arose, and gat him up from Gilgal unto Gibeah of Benjamin." He leaves Saul, condemned in the very place of his coronation but a short time before. God had another man in view, "a man after His own heart," who should perform all His will, and under whose reign and by whose faithfulness the kingdom should be established to his seed forever.
It is like the scene in Eden enacted over again, only in a different setting. There, no sooner had the first man failed and his judgment been pronounced, than God has his successor named, "the woman's Seed," who should do all His will, victoriously overcome the evil one, and " bring in everlasting righteousness," with blessing for the race under Adam fallen.
We shall shortly meet Samuel and Saul together again, and in this very Gilgal too.
In chapter 14, Jonathan with his armor bearer, by his faith and daring, " put to flight the armies of the aliens." God honored his faith, and caused the earth to quake " with a very great trembling " — first fright and confusion, then panic pervaded the camp of the Philistines, and God turned "every man's sword against his fellow, and there was a very great discomfiture," while Israel pursued, and " the people returned only to spoil." (See also Judg. 7:2222And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the Lord set every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and the host fled to Beth-shittah in Zererath, and to the border of Abel-meholah, unto Tabbath. (Judges 7:22) and 2 Chron. 20:2323For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy them: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another. (2 Chronicles 20:23).)
"So the Lord saved Israel that day: and the battle passed over unto Beth-aven." The rout was complete, but the nation was robbed in large measure of the fruits of God's miraculous intervention in their behalf by the unreasonable and foolish prohibition of Saul.
"And the men of Israel were distressed that day: for Saul had adjured the people, saying, Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening, that I may be avenged on mine enemies. So none of the people tasted any food " (chap. 14: 24).
What ought to have been a day of rejoicing and gladness to the people, was turned by this " troubler of Israel " into a day of distress and disappointment. He had had no part whatever in the starting of the victorious " drive," but " tarried in the uttermost part of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree which is in Migron " — hiding from the foe, some think. But when the Philistines are already defeated and in full flight he intrudes himself upon the scene, to pettishly interfere with the pursuit with his senseless and illegally penalized inhibition. It was, as Jonathan says, " My father hath troubled the land... How much more if haply the people had eaten freely to-day of the spoil of their enemies which they found, for had there not been now a much greater slaughter among the Philistines? " Like his "exceedingly mad " namesake, Saul of Tarsus, at a later date, this Saul says, " That I may be avenged of mine enemies." He does not say " Israel's enemies," or " the enemies of the Lord; " it is "I," and " mine," as if he were everything — the State and all — and Jehovah and His people nothing. His egotism is extreme, and it is little wonder that his browbeaten subjects appear to have lost all respect for him.
To this he adds the sin of envy, and in his mad jealousy would, but for the people's firm interference, have sacrificed the noble Jonathan to his malicious rage. This outrageous scene halts the pursuit, and the fleeing enemy is allowed to escape: "Then Saul went up from following the Philistines, and the Philistines went to their own place."
After this he gives himself to the ignoble and comparatively easy task of "vexing " his enemies roundabout (chap. 14: 47). It seems to have been a defensive rather than an aggressive warfare; there was no invasion of enemy territory or offensive campaigning against the foe, as under David later on, for which that true warrior distinguished himself. (See 2 Sam. 10.)
"There was sore war against the Philistines all the days of Saul: and when Saul saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took him unto him."
Yes, that was all that it amounted to — " sore war; "and, doubtless, sorer often for poor Israel than for the Philistines.
Saul, having given further evidence of his unfitness to guide God's people or lead them on to victory against their enemies, is now to be given a final and decisive test — a more public one than that of waiting seven days for Samuel.
"Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" (chap. 15: 1, 2).
We are told here of Amalek's unprovoked attack on Israel, just as they had escaped from the power of Pharaoh. Through Samuel here we learn what Moses did not tell us in Ex. 17, that "he laid wait for him," like a lurking serpent in the way. For this cowardly attempt at His people's destruction, Jehovah swore that He would have war with Amalek "from generation to generation." And, not subdued nor disheartened from his malicious designs on Israel by the chastisement received at the hands of Joshua, Amalek aggravated his guilt by basely attacking Israel's rear, and smiting " the hindmost " of the redeemed host, " even all that were feeble," when they were " faint and weary; and he feared not God." For this perfidious wickedness, a solemn charge was laid upon Israel to forget it not, but to blot out their name from under heaven. (See Deut. 25:17-1917Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; 18How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. 19Therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it. (Deuteronomy 25:17‑19).) Balaam, in his prophecy, calls them, "The first of the nations " (which probably means that they were the first of the desert tribes to attack the people of
God as they pursued their journey to the land of promise), "but his latter end shall be that he perish forever " (Num. 24:2020And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and said, Amalek was the first of the nations; but his latter end shall be that he perish for ever. (Numbers 24:20)). Now the time has come for their threatened extermination, and Saul is the man appointed for the work.
He seems to respond readily enough to the command. He was an apt and willing man for this. He gathers his forces, "and laid wait in the valley." Thus does God do to Amalek as he had done to Israel. The Kenites are recompensed for their kindness shown to Israel in the way, and are warned to remove themselves from the midst of the ancient enemies of God and His people, now devoted to complete destruction.
"And Saul smote the Amalekites... And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly" (verses 7-9).
"Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully (negligently, marg.), and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood," God said to Israel, centuries later, when commanding the destruction of the Moabites (Jer. 48:1010Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood. (Jeremiah 48:10)). And here He has a serious controversy with Saul for his delinquency in sparing the king, along with the best of the flocks and of the herds. He had been a herdsman himself, once, and had an eye for the stock that was choice or above the common. Why he spared Agag is not clear. He may have intended to bring him in chains in the triumphal procession he appears to have made through the land on his return from the expedition, for the display of his prowess and success in the undertaking (see ver. 12). So God says to Samuel, " It repenteth Me that I have set up Saul to be king, for he is turned back from following Me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night." True again to his character, Samuel cried the whole night through in intercessory prayer for the now-rejected monarch. He does not triumph in the downfall of the man preferred before him by the Israel that he loved. No; his whole life was spent for the good of, and intercession for, others; and here we see him still unchanged, even after his "resignation by request" from the highest post in the land. Instead of entertaining even a secret satisfaction in the fall of his successor, he cries all night to God in his grief at the occurrence.
We fain would linger over a man thus praying for one whom he had good reason to regard as an enemy, not only of himself, but of the public welfare, and an oppressor of the people, to say nothing of God's glory in the matter.
But let us pass on to the denouement:
"And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place (monument), and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal."
This seems to confirm what we have said about the probable triumphal march that Saul in his egotistical pride made about the country for the glorification of himself as a warrior. In this the people had in very deed "a king like unto the nations " about them, who gloried thus in their victories and made them the occasion for their own self-exaltation.
"And Samuel came to Saul; and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord." He is forward to speak, instead of waiting humbly as became him before the man of God to hear what he might have to say, or to learn his pleasure. He hastens to vindicate himself, and says, without waiting to be asked, " I have performed the commandment of the Lord." His very eagerness to proclaim his obedience sounds suspicious, and betrays the uneasiness of the conscience of the unhappy man. But Samuel very soon informs him that he is not to be so easily deceived — the very bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the cattle were so many voices in testimony of the untruthfulness of his boast. " Blessed be thou of the Lord," he says. What cant! How hateful his hypocrisy! How hardened in sin he has become thus to approach the holy prophet of God with a blessing in his mouth, while the lie was on his lips. And when Samuel sternly demands of him the meaning of the sounds coming to his ears from the flocks and herds about him, he falsely says, " They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed." Note the dissembling: when the act is to be condemned he says, " they,' and "the people; "but when it is the part that God had commanded should be done, he says, " we." How contemptible! Hard it is to understand how Samuel could find it in his heart to spend a whole night in prayer for such an one. But the man who had prayed for his unworthy prince so fervently, now that the occasion demands, and God requires, does not hesitate to tell him the guilt of his conduct, and the punishment he has brought upon himself by it.
"And Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on. And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel? And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord? " (verses 16-19).
Then Saul attempts the justification of his sin:
"And Saul said to Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal " (verses 20, 21).
" To sacrifice unto the Lord thy God," he says. He extenuates his sin by saying it was to sacrifice that they spared the animals. Giving the act a religious motive he thought to evade the guiltiness of his conduct, and to escape its penalty. He says to Samuel, " The Lord thy God." But the man of God cannot be patronized thus. Again Saul tries to shift the responsibility of his act to the shoulders of the people: " The people took of the spoil," he says. How different from David, when he saw the sword of the destroying angel lifted up over the people: " And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people, and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray Thee, be against me, and against my father's house" (2 Sam. 24:1717And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people, and said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house. (2 Samuel 24:17)). How David's conduct here stands out in marked and beautiful contrast to his unlovely predecessor! A man after God's own heart, indeed, was David. A man too of candor, generosity, self-abnegation, and willingness to suffer, especially when those to be spared were the beloved people of God. Moses, too, was of a like spirit when he made intercession for guilty Israel, saying, " Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin-; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of thy book which Thou hast written " ( Ex. 32:3232Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. (Exodus 32:32)). We see this trait in perfection in Him who said to His enemies in Gethsemane's garden, " If ye seek Me, let these (His beloved disciples) go their way." Here is self-abnegation in its highest form: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Precious Savior, we would indeed
"All our joy and blessing find
In learning, Lord, of Thee!"
Saul is then made to hear the soul-searching words of the prophet, words of the prophet, in answer to his plea that it was for sacrifice he had spared the best of the sheep and oxen:
" And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry " (verses 22, 28).
Memorable words I May they be laid to heart and treasured in the minds of all that call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Obedience is the test of loyalty and all true worship, without which all that is represented by sacrifice and fat of rams is worse than naught. " To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word," said Jehovah when they were busily engaged in " building a house to Him," a service which He had not required at their hands, whilst in rebellion against His authority and disobedient to His plain commands ( Isa. 66). There is much of this spirit of Saul in evidence in the professing church to-day, and the Christian reader needs to be warned and kept on his guard against it.
When Saul can no longer deny his disobedience, he says, in a perfunctory kind of way: " I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words." But of what worth is such a confession when he, in the same breath, would palliate his sin by saying, "Because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice? " What a king was this to fear the people, and to obey their voice, rather than the voice of God! It is still " the people " that he would make the scapegoat of his transgression. But hear him further: " Now, therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord." How could Samuel do otherwise than say to him, " I will not return with thee: for thou Nast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel," and indignantly turn away from him, as one from whom no good could be expected.
As Samuel turns to leave him, the desperate king lays hold upon the skirt of his mantle to detain him; its rending gives the prophet occasion to tell him that so had God rent the kingdom from him and given it to a neighbor of his, or one better than he. This touches him in a tender spot — the loss of his kingdom, and again he tries the subterfuge of a heartless confession: " I have sinned! " He is on the rack, so to speak, and shows the unreality of his extorted confession, by the preposterous request, " Yet honor me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me; that I may worship the Lord thy God." He cares little for what Samuel, or even God, may think of him, so long as he may be honored before the elders and the people, and thus continue with a semblance of authority and approbation from their former judge and leader, the prophet, whom he seems to have feared above God himself. He still would be accounted before the multitude as a religious man, and reckoned among the worshipers of Jehovah.
Samuel, in grace and condescension, yields to the king's entreaty, but demands that the person of Agag be brought before him. "And Agag came unto him delicately. And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past." He came delicately, "in a stately manner to show that he was a king, and therefore to be treated with respect, or in a soft effeminate manner, as one never used to hardship... to move compassion," says old Matthew Henry; or, as the LXX reads, "he came trembling," as well he might before such a champion for the execution of God's word. If it was the former, he was like the Jezebel who painted her face, to bewitch, or to move to compassion Jehu, Jehovah's executioner of the house of Ahab. But both Agag the Amalekite, and Jezebel the Zidonian may, in their pride, have determined to die as kings and queens to proclaim their royal dignity. Thus do the ungodly, sometimes, even to the end, cling to their supposed distinction, and deceive themselves up to the very hour of going into the presence of Him who " is no respecter of persons." " Surely the bitterness of death is past," he says. Does he yet hope for mercy from the meek and gentle Samuel? Vain hope! for he who can turn in grace with poor Saul, can also smite in judgment the enemy of God and Israel.
"And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal" (ver. 33).
Samuel the prophet does what Saul the king had failed to do. To unbelief, and minds unsubject to the Word of God, Saul's leniency with Agag was to his credit rather than to his condemnation; and the action of Samuel, to such, seems harsh and unfeeling. But faith does not so judge, nor does the believer question the justice or fittingness of the execution of this murderer of others and representative of that race against which Jehovah had sworn that He would have war forever.
It was not for any tenderness of feeling surely, that Saul spared Agag; for the man that could for an unwitting trespass demand the death of the noble Jonathan, his son, and later have eighty-five innocent priests massacred by his command before his eyes (1 Sam. 22:1818And the king said to Doeg, Turn thou, and fall upon the priests. And Doeg the Edomite turned, and he fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod. (1 Samuel 22:18)), was not one in whose breast pity had much place. No, it was not for compassion that Saul spared the Amalekite king (little as this would have excused his disobedience), but pride, self-will, and rebellion against the express command of God. Here we leave the wretched man, disowned, rejected of God for his disobedience. We shall meet him again, after many years, and then on the eve of his death, and after the decease of Samuel.
"Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house to Gibeah of Saul. And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the Lord repented that He had made Saul king over Israel " (verses 34, 35).
Saul lost in Samuel not only a true and influential friend; but a valuable counselor as well. He came no more to see him, either to advise or to consult with him over the affairs of the kingdom of privileged Israel. But we see him genuinely mourn over the fall of this once so promising prince. In this he was like that gracious One of whom he was the passing shadow, Messiah, who, when He beheld the city that had refused Him, knowing not the day of her visitation, and that was soon to clamor for His death, wept over it, saying in the sorrow of His heart: " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! " Saul, who would not be admonished or persuaded, is now left to his doom; a doom fearful for any man, but especially so for this once privileged and favored king of Israel.
We shall now briefly look at the man of God's choice, David, "the beloved," faithful to the trust committed to him, and foreshadowing Him in whom God found His perfect and eternal delight — "the Man Christ Jesus."