'Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, 11. 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. 12. 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, and is gone about,
and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal. 13. And Samuel came to Saul:
and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed
the commandment of the Lord. 14. And Samuel said, What meaneth then
this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen
which I hear? 15. And Saul said, They have brought them from the
Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the
oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lore thy God; and the rest we have utterly
destroyed. 16. Then 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.
17. 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? 18. 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. 19. 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? 20. And Saul said unto 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. 21. 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. 22. 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. 23. For rebellion is as
the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected
thee from being king.'--1 SAMUEL xv. 10-23.
Again the narrative takes us to Gilgal,--a fateful place for Saul,
There they 'made Saul king before the Lord'; there he had taken the
first step on his dark way of gloomy, proud self-will, down which he
was destined to plunge so far and fatally. There he had, in
consequence, received the message of the transference of the kingdom
from his house, though not from himself. Now, flushed with his victory
over Amalek, he has come there with his troops, laden with spoil. They
had made a swift march from the south where Amalek dwelt, passing by
Nabal's Carmel, where they had put up some sort of monument of their
exploit in a temper of vain-glory, very unlike the spirit which reared
the stone of help at Eben-ezer; and apparently they purpose sacrifices
and a feast. But Samuel comes into camp with no look of congratulation.
Probably the vigorous old man had walked that day from his home, some
fifteen miles off, and on the way seems to have picked up tidings of
Saul's victory and position, which ought to have reached him from the
king himself, and would have done so if Saul's conscience had been
clear. The omission to tell him was studied neglect, which revealed
much.
Samuel had 'cried unto the Lord all night,' if perchance the terrible
sentence might be reversed; and his cries had not been in vain, for
they had brought him into complete submission, and had nerved him to do
his work calmly, without a quiver or a pang of personal feeling, as
becomes God's prophet.
I. We must go back a step beyond this passage to understand it. Note,
first, the command which was disobeyed. The campaign against Amalek was
undertaken by express divine direction through Samuel's lips. It was
the delayed fulfilment of a sentence passed in the times of the
Conquest, but not executed then. The terrible old usages of that period
are brought into play again, and the whole nation with its possessions
is 'devoted'. The word explains the dreadful usage. There are two kinds
of devotion to God: that of willing, and that of unwilling, men; the
one brings life, the other, death. The massacre of the foul nations of
Canaan was thereby made a direct divine judgment, and removed wholly
from the region of ferocious warfare. No doubt, the whole plane of
morals in the earlier revelation is lower than that of the New
Testament. If Jesus has not taught a higher law than was given to 'them
of old time,' one large part of His gift to men disappears. The
wholesale destruction of 'babe and suckling' with the guilty makes us
shudder; and we are meant to feel the difference between the atmosphere
of that time and ours. But we are not meant to question the reality of
the divine command, nor His right to give it. He slays, and makes
alive. His judgments strike the innocent with the guilty. In many a
case, and often, the sin is one generation's, and the bitter fruit
another's. The destruction of Canaanites and Amalekites does not change
its nature because God used men to do it; and the question is not
whether the Israelites were fiercely barbarous in their warfare, but
whether God has the right of life and death. We grant all the
dreadfulness, and joyfully admit the distance between such acts and
Jesus Christ; but we recognise them as not incongruous with the whole
revealed character of the God who is justice as well as love, as
parallel in substance, though different in instrument, with many of His
dealings with men,--as the execution of righteous sentence on rank
corruption, and as sweetening the world by its removal. Most of the
difficulty and repugnance has been caused by forgetting that Israel was
but the sword, while the hand was God's.
II. Note the disobedience. Partial obedience is complete disobedience.
Saul and his men obeyed as far as suited them; that is to say, they did
not obey God at all, but their own inclinations, both in sparing the
good and in destroying the worthless. What was not worth carrying off
they destroyed,--not because of the command, but to save trouble. This
one fault seems but a small thing to entail the loss of a kingdom. But
is it so? It was obviously not an isolated act on Saul's part, but
indicated his growing impatience of the divine control, exercised on
him through Samuel. He was in a difficult position. He owed his kingdom
to the prophet; and the very condition on which he held it was that of
submission to Samuel's authority. No wonder that his elevation
quickened the growth of his masterfulness and gloomy, impetuous
self-will,--traits in his character which showed themselves very early
in his reign! No wonder either that such a king, held in
leading-strings by a prophet, should chafe! The more insignificant the
act in itself, the more significant it may be as a flag of revolt.
Disobedience which will not do a little thing is great disobedience.
Nor was this the first time that Saul had 'kicked,' like another Saul,
'against the pricks,' Gilgal had seen a previous instance of his
impetuous self-assertion, masked by apparent deference; and the
inference is fair that the interval between the two pieces of rebellion
had been of a piece with them. Trivial acts, especially when repeated,
show deep-seated evil. There may be only a coil of the snake visible,
but that betrays the presence of the slimy folds, though they are
covered from sight among the leaves. The tiny shoot of a plant, peeping
above the ground, does not augur that the roots are short; they may run
for yards. Nor can any act be called small, of which the motive is
disregard of God's plain command: 'He that is unjust in the least is
unjust also in much.' Saul had never much religion. He had never heard
of Samuel till that day when he came to consult him about the asses. It
was a wonder to his acquaintances to find him 'among the prophets'; and
all his acts of worship have about them a smack of self, and an
exclusive regard to the mere externals of sacrifice, which imply a
shallow notion of religion and a spirit unsubdued by its deeper
influences.
Such a man habitually acts in disregard of God's will; and that is
great sin, though it be manifested in small acts. It is to be
remembered, too, that the excepting of the best of the spoil from the
general destruction, changed the whole character of the transaction,
and brought it down from the level of a solemn act of divine justice,
of which Saul and his army were the executors by divine mandate, to
that of a mere cattle-lifting foray, in which they were but thieves for
their own gain. The mingling of personal advantage with any sort of
service of God, ruins the whole, and turns it into mere selfishness.
Samuel, in verse 19, puts the two sides of this 'evil in the sight of
the Lord' as being disobedience and swooping down on the booty, like
some bird of prey,
III. Note Saul's excuses. Throughout the whole interview he plays a
sorry part, and is evidently cowed by the hated authority and
personality of the old man; while Samuel, on his side, is curt, stern,
and takes the upper hand, as becomes God's messenger. The relative
positions of the two men are the normal ones of their offices, and
explain both Saul's revolt and the chronic impatience of kings at the
interference of prophets. Here we have Saul coming to meet Samuel with
affected heartiness and welcome, and with the bold lie, 'I have
performed the commandment of the Lord.' That is more than true
obedience is quick to say. If Saul had done it, he would have been
slower to boast of it. 'Those vessels yield the most sound that have
the least liquor.' He 'doth protest too much'; and the protestation
comes from an uneasy conscience. Or did he, like a great many other men
who have no deep sense of the sanctity of every jot and tittle of a
divine law, please himself with the notion that it was enough to keep
it approximately, in the 'spirit' of the precept, without slavish
obedience to the 'letter'? In a later part of the interview (v. 20) he
insists that he has obeyed, and tries to prove it by dwelling on the
points in which he did so, and gliding lightly over the others.
'Samuel had reason to believe the sheep and oxen above Saul'; and there
is a tone of almost contempt for the shuffling liar in his quiet
question: 'What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears,
and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' There was no answering that;
so Saul shifts his ground without a blush or a moment's hesitation.
'The people spared.' It is a new character for him to appear in,--that
of a weak ruler who cannot keep his unruly men in order! Had he tried
to restrain them? If he had, and had failed, he was not fit to be a
king. If he had not, he was a coward to shift the blame on to them. How
ready men are to vilify themselves in some other direction, in order to
escape the consciousness of sin, which God is seeking to force home on
them! No doubt the people were very willing to have a finger in the
affair; but so was he. And if the cattle was their share, Agag, who
could be held to ransom, was his; and the arrangement suited all round.
As to the purpose of sacrificing at Gilgal, perhaps that was true; but
if it were, no doubt the same process of selection, which had destroyed
the worthless and kept the best, would have been repeated; and the net
result would have been a sacrifice of the least valuable, and 'the
survival of the fittest' in many a pasture and stall.
But note Saul's attitude towards Jehovah, betrayed by him in that one
word: 'the Lord _thy_ God,' No wonder that he had been content with a
partial and perfunctory obedience, if he had no closer sense of
connection with God than that! There is almost a sneer in it, too, as
if he had said, 'What needs all this fuss about saving the cattle? You
should be pleased; for this Jehovah, with whom you profess to have
special communication, will be honoured with sacrifice, and you will
share in the feast.' If the words do not mean abjuring Jehovah, they go
very near it, and, at all events, betray the shallowness of Saul's
religion. Samuel, in his answer, reminds him of his early modesty and
self-distrust, and of the source of his elevation. He then sweeps away
the flimsy cobwebs of excuses, by the curt repetition of the plain,
dreadful terms of Saul's commission, and then flashes out the piercing
question, like a sword, 'Wherefore then didst thou not?' The reminder
of past benefits, and the reiteration of the plain injunctions which
have been broken, are the way to cut through the poor palliations which
men wrap around their sins.
It speaks of a very obstinate and gloomy determination that, in answer,
Saul should reiterate his protestation of having done as he was bid. He
doggedly says over again all that he had said before, unmoved by the
prophet's solemn words. He is steeling his heart against reproof; and
there is only one end to that. Sin unacknowledged, after God has
disclosed it, is doubly sin. The heart that answers the touch of God's
rebukes by sullenly closing more tightly on its evil, is preparing
itself for the blow of the hammer which will crush it. 'He that being
often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and
that without remedy.' Let us beware of meeting God's prophet with
shuffling lies about our obedience, and of opposing to the words which
are loving though they pierce, the armour of impenetrable
self-righteousness and conceit.
IV. Note the punishment. To the vain talk about honouring God by
sacrifice, Samuel opposes the great principle which was the special
message committed to every prophet in Israel, and which was repeated
all through its history, side by side with the divinely appointed
sacrificial system. In the intensity of his spiritual emotion, Samuel
speaks in lyric strains, in the measured parallelism which was the
Hebrew dress of poetry, and gives forth in words 'which will live for
ever' the great truth that God delights in obedience more than in
sacrifice. Whilst, on the one hand, he lifts the surrender of the will,
and the consequent submission of the life, high above all mere ritual,
on the other hand, by the same process, he sinks the rebellion of the
will and the stubbornness of the nature, unsubdued either by kindness
or threats, as Saul was showing his to be, to the level of actual
idolatry.
'Rebellion is divination,
And stubbornness is idols and teraphim.'
Then comes the stern sentence of rejection. Why was Saul thus
irrevocably set aside? Was it not a harsh punishment for such a crime?
As we have already remarked, Saul's act is not to be judged as an
isolated deed, but as the outcome of a deep tendency in him, which
meant revolt from God. It was not because of the single act, but
because of that which it showed him to be, that he was set aside. The
sentence is pronounced, not because 'thou didst spare Amalek,' but
because 'thou didst reject the word of the Lord.' Further, it is to be
remembered that the punishment was but the carrying out of his act. His
own hand had cut the bond between him and God, and had disqualified
himself for the office which he filled. Saul had said, 'I will reign by
myself.' God said, 'Be it so! By thyself thou shalt reign.' For the
consequence of his deposition was not outward change in his royalty.
David indeed was anointed but in secret, so Samuel consented to honour
Saul before the people. All the external difference was that Samuel
never saw him again, and he was relieved from the incubus of the
prophet's 'interference'; that is to say, he ceased to be God's king,
and became a phantom, ruling only by his own will and power, as he had
wished to do. How profound may be the difference while all externals
remain unchanged! When we set up ourselves as our own lords, and shake
off God's rule, we cast away His sanction and help in all the deeds of
our self-will, however unaltered their outward appearance may remain.
But God left him to 'walk in his own ways, and be filled with the fruit
of his own devices,' by no irrevocable abandonment, however the decree
of rejection from the kingship was irrevocable. The gates of repentance
stood open for him; and the very sentence that came stern and laconic
from Samuel's lips, rightly accepted, might have drawn him in true
penitence to a forgiving God. His subsequent confession was rejected
because it expressed no real contrition; and the worship which he
proceeded to offer, without the sanction of the prophet's presence, was
as unreal as his protestation of obedience, and showed how little he
had learned the lesson of the great words, 'To obey is better than
sacrifice.'