1 Sam. 1-15
Introduction
This lesson begins the study of the books of Samuel. The first book focuses on the prophet Samuel and the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David. We will cover from Samuel’s birth to Saul’s downfall. Please refer to these resources as well: this commentary, the NETS Bible, and this LXX Interlinear.
1 Sam. 1
The account of the prophet Samuel begins with Elkanah and his two wives. Not surprisingly, the two wives don’t get along, especially because one is fertile and the other is barren. We can assume there was always competition among wives in polygamy, which is why it’s such a bad idea for anyone to have more than one spouse. But as always, God works through and around people’s poor judgment and character flaws.
Every year Elkanah would take his family to Shiloh to worship God, which is where we’re introduced to the two sons of Eli the priest: Hophni and Phineas. Remember those names, because they’ll come up again later. But though Elkanah tries to pacify the barren wife Hannah with double portions of food since he loves her the most (and we all know how that sort of thing has worked out in Israel’s history), she’s still miserable because the fertile wife keeps mocking her for being childless.
The husband just doesn’t get it. But on one such trip to Shiloh, Hannah weeps bitterly to God about this, and she vows to God that if he gives her a child, she’ll dedicate him to God in a similar way to Samson, who never drank wine or cut his hair. But she’s praying in her heart and only moving her lips, so Eli presumes she’s drunk. So she explains that she’s crying out to God in anguish, and he hopes that God grants her request.
She and the rest of the family return home, after which God grants her prayer, and then in time she gives birth to Samuel. But when the time comes to return to Shiloh, Hannah remains behind to wean Samuel, and then she will take him there to stay permanently in God’s service.
1 Sam. 2
This begins what is pretty much a taunt against Hannah’s rival wife, seeing that it’s all about humiliating the proud and elevating the humiliated. This is how God works, the opposite of society’s norms. In verse 12 the narrative turns briefly to Eli’s two wicked sons, who had been abusing their positions as priests.
Then it turns back to Samuel, whose mother would bring him new clothes each year when they all came to sacrifice. Eli pronounces a blessing on Hannah for God to give her more children because she honored her vow and gave up her firstborn, and he does. Then in verse 22 it’s back to Eli’s wicked sons, who not only had been robbing people’s sacrifices but also (at least in the Hebrew text) sexually assaulting the women who served at the temple. Eli was old and didn’t even know what his sons were doing until other people told him.
God at this point has already decided that the sons will die for their wickedness. So he sends someone to confront Eli about his failure to discipline his sons, which meant he was valuing them more than God. Eli is then cursed with premature death on all his descendants, beginning with the deaths of both his sons on the same day. Moreover, his descendants will beg for crumbs from the family of the one God raises up to replace him.
1 Sam. 3
Meanwhile, Samuel grows up and has a reputation of being godly, though messages from God had become rare by then. One night Samuel hears a voice calling to him, so he goes to Eli thinking that’s who it was. But Eli just tells him to go back to sleep, and then it happens again. By the third time, Eli finally realizes that Samuel is being called by God, so he tells him how to respond the next time.
When he does, God gives him a message repeating the curse on Eli and his family line. But Samuel is afraid to tell him, so he waits till morning, but Eli demands to know what he was told. And though the curse did not take place that very day, Samuel was becoming known throughout Israel as a prophet of God.
1 Sam. 4
The curse is to begin with the Philistines, a familiar name from the study of Samson. They go to battle with the Israelites and begin to defeat them, so the Israelites decide to bring the Ark of the Covenant to the battlefield, which meant that Eli’s sons would go with it. But it does Israel no good, as if the Ark could be used like a talisman. It’s captured by the Philistines, and Eli’s sons are killed in battle. Stage one of the curse is complete.
Meanwhile, Eli is sitting in a chair by the road, waiting to find out the fate of the Ark (but apparently not his sons), when a runner comes with news of the battle. After telling him about his sons and the Ark, Eli falls backward off his chair and breaks his neck, and so he dies the same day as his sons. When one of his daughters-in-law hears of all this, she goes into labor, gives birth to a son, and then dies.
1 Sam. 5-7
Meanwhile, the Philistines had taken the Ark to the temple of their god Dagon. But the next morning, the idol was face down on the ground before the Ark. They stood it up again, but the day after that, not only was the idol on the ground again, but its head and hands were chopped off as well.
You’d think they’d take the hint about false gods, but instead they just move the Ark to another place. Then sores break out on the people in the city where they take it, so they move it again, but the people there aren’t dumb enough to accept it.
After seven months of this, they consult their soothsayers to find out how to get Israel to take it back. Their advice includes familiarity with what God had done to Egypt, along with what they considered a proper guilt offering. They send the Ark and offerings on a cart and let two cows take it away on their own. The cows pull the cart to a certain field in Israel, but some of the locals are killed because they look inside of the Ark. So they send for others to come and take the Ark away, like a high-stakes game of hot potato.
It stays in the next place for twenty years, and then Samuel tells Israel that they have to get rid of all their idols and shrines so they can be delivered from the Philistines. But when the Philistines see them all gathered together, they decide to come to do battle. But God basically shouts “boo ” at them and causes them to panic, which allows Israel to defeat them. From then on, while Samuel lived, Israel was not bothered again by the Philistines.
1 Sam. 8
Now Samuel is old and he appoints his sons as judges over Israel. But as with Eli, Samuel’s sons turn out to be wicked, and it is this which prompts Israel to demand a king, which was never God’s intention. Samuel failed to learn from the poor example of his mentor, and this is the consequence.
But when Samuel tells God about this, God informs him that it isn’t Samuel the people are rejecting, it’s God Himself. He tells Samuel to give the people fair warning of what it means to have a human king over them: The sons will be conscripted into the army, the daughters will be pressed into service as cooks, the farmers will be ordered to grow the king’s food and tend his herds, the craftsmen will be ordered to make weapons, and the land owners will be taxed for the benefit of the king’s officials. Human government is inherently oppressive.
But even with the final warning that God will turn a deaf ear to them when they whine about being oppressed by their own king, they still demand it, because they want to be like all the other nations. This is just as foolish as when Christians today demand to be under the laws of Moses.
1 Sam. 9-10
So now the search is on for a king, and naturally they pick the son of a prominent man. Saul, who is described as being head-and-shoulders taller than the average man, was off chasing after some of his father’s escaped donkeys when he comes to a town where Samuel is planning to make a sacrifice.
Samuel had been told by God that this guy he’d encounter the next day would be the one to anoint as king. When he meets him, Saul, like Gideon, wonders why someone from a small tribe in Benjamin is to be given a message from God. But instead of telling him outright, Samuel has dinner with him and then tells him just before he sends him back to his father.
So he anoints Saul with oil and pronounces him king of Israel, which will be proved when he conquers the Philistines. But notice that Samuel tells Saul that the Spirit of God will come upon him at a certain place, causing him to prophesy and changing him into a different person. Here is a clear instance of the fact that the Holy Spirit came and went on individuals before the cross, in contrast to the permanent indwelling of the Spirit after the cross.
These things all come true as Samuel prophesied, and people who had known Saul begin to wonder what happened to him. Shouldn’t that be said of people who become Christians as adults?
Finally Samuel gathers everyone together to tell them that they finally had their precious king, instead of direct rule by the God who had rescued them from Egypt. It seems clear from this choice of Saul that God is going to teach them a lesson. But when it comes time to present Saul to them, he had hidden himself in fear! They had to drag him out, which should have been their first clue that this demand of theirs was a bad idea. But no, they all shout “Long live the king! ”, like prisoners cheering a new cowardly warden.
1 Sam. 11-13
Saul’s first battle as king was to wipe out the army of the Ammonites who were threatening them, and after the battle they celebrate by formally established Saul as king.
Nearing the end of his life, Samuel recounts the pathetic history of Israel’s cycle of rebellion, oppression, and restoration. So God will be with them if they follow him, in spite of demanding this king. But if not, and really when not, they will be punished once again.
It begins with this king they just coronated. Saul provokes the Philistines, as if he had a stick in his hand and couldn’t resist striking a hornet’s nest with it. So now he’s confronted by an army much larger than his own, and he does what he’s best at: Hide in a cave and call for help.
He sends for Samuel, but gets impatient and makes an offering without him. When Samuel sees what he did, he tells him how stupid that was, because God requires someone loyal and faithful. So Saul will have the kingdom taken away and given to someoene not of his family line.
We’ve seen the name of Saul’s son Jonathan in this passage, and he will turn out to be best friends with Saul’s replacement. What could go wrong? And because of Saul’s foolishness, the Philistines had made sure Israel had no blacksmiths to make weapons, so only Saul and Jonathan had swords.
1 Sam. 14
But God is still working behind the scenes. Jonathan and his armor bearer sneak out and kill a Philistine garrison of twenty men, and God puts fear into the whole Philistine army because of it. By the time Saul and the rest realize what happened, the Philistines have scattered and begun killing each other. It’s only then that the army of Israel is “brave ” enough to attack them.
But genuinely-brave Jonathan, who didn’t know about his father’s foolish curse on anyone who ate any food before evening, comes across some honey and eats it. He is revived while the rest of the army is faint with hunger, so they all follow Jonathan’s lead and quickly devour the animals from the army they plundered.
When Saul finds out about this, he really doesn’t punish anyone right away. But when God refuses to answer him when he asks for a sign to go into battle, he asks God to identify the “sinner ” who caused the silence, and Jonathan is outed. But the army he had led to victory that day refuses to allow him to be executed, so Saul goes back home to consolidate his reign by dealing with all the other enemies, and then back to fighting the Philistines. Saul finally displays some bravery in this.
His other children are listed after this, including a daughter called Michal, another name to remember. But the Philistines, as mentioned in an earlier lesson, would continue to vex Israel during Saul’s reign, and he was in the habit of conscripting any particularly brave man he saw.
1 Sam. 15
God had said that the kingdom would be taken from Saul, and now we come to the events leading up to that. God tests Saul by ordering him to totally wipe out the Amalekites, but he spares the king and the best of the loot.
So God tells Samuel of his regret at choosing Saul, and Samuel confronts Saul over his failure to obey God. Saul makes excuses and denies his failure, but Samuel isn’t having it, and this is where we find the familiar passage about God valuing obedience more than sacrifice. Finally Saul admits his guilt, and his motive: fear of his own army; his bravery was short-lived. Then we see another characteristic of God: he is not a human being, which most translations render “man ”. This is important to remember whenever other religions try to make God in their image, or when Christians try to adopt heathen beliefs by making God gendered.
It would be Samuel, not Saul, who dispatches the Amalekite king, and Saul would never see Samuel again. But the repetition of the statement about God regretting his choice of Saul is a curious thing, since we all agree that God is all-knowing, and he had just said he doesn’t change his mind like people do. We also recall God’s regretting he made mankind at all and the subsequent Flood. You can read a fairly exhaustive list of God’s apparent regrets at this source, in the final post on that page.
A possible answer from one angle is that God is saying this for our benefit and in terms we can grasp. His purpose is to emphasize that his decision is final, and also for us to learn from other people’s mistakes. And the lesson here is not just for Israel; how often has Christianity chosen the most attractive, charismatic, eloquent leaders, instead of the most godly or studied in the Word? Look at the popular so-called ministries, on- or off-line, and see what they’re teaching.
Another angle is that the word typically rendered “regret ” is better understood as “grief ”. Yet why would God only be grieved after the passage of time, since it was his choice and he knew how it would turn out? Certainly the free will he granted humanity comes into play, but in these and numerous other passages, we’re given the impression that God is disppointed that people miss his expectations, which shouldn’t be the case since he knew what they’d do from the start.
The Greek word here in verse 35 is metemelethe, whereas in verse 29 it’s metanoesei. The primary difference is that rather than merely a change of mind or direction, the one in verse 35 includes the motivation for such change. Remember as well that the semantic range of any word is taken from context, not context from semantic range. So we can at least establish that God is not repenting of a sin or mistake.
So how do we reconcile verses 29 and 35? In my opinion, the solution is that while God never changes his plans, he often changes our instructions at various points in time. This is the outworking of the paradox between his sovereignty and our free will. For example, when God came down to see what the builders of the Tower of Babel were up to, or whether Abraham would obey God without question, we must see these visitations as from our perspective and ability to understand, not God’s limitations or imperfections. This is also the essence of Dispensationalism.