1 Samuel 15

1 Samuel 15

Clarke - “But we read, 1Sa 19:22–24, that Saul went to see Samuel at Naioth, but this does not affect what is said here. From this time Samuel had no connection with Saul; he never more acknowledged him as king; he mourned and prayed for him.” For Samuel grieved (abal) over Saul - This is a tragic ending for this great man of God. The Septuagint translates grieved with the verb pentheo (from pénthos = mourning) means to mourn for, lament. Pentheo denotes loud mourning such as the lament for the dead or for a severe, painful loss. It is grief and sorrow caused by profound loss, especially death. Grieving over a personal hope (relationship) that dies. One cannot study the interactions of Saul and Samuel without feeling a deep sense of pain and sorrow -- O, what could have been had Saul had a heart for the LORD! Will we see him in heaven? Is that why Samuel is grieving? John Trapp on Samuel grieved - “For the hardness of his heart, and the hazard of his soul. And the LORD regretted (nacham; Lxx - metamellomai) that He had made Saul king over Israel - And while Samuel did have regret, we know that even then, he did not cease to pray for Saul (1Sa 12:23+). Regretted is translated in the Lxx with metamellomai which means feel remorse or have regrets about something, in this case that He had chosen Saul as king! One other effect we see here of sin is that sin causes sadness! Saul and Yahweh! Bob Roe It is intriguing that both God and Samuel have deep emotional hurt over this situation. What does Saul have? Nothing. He just goes on being king. Grieved (056) abal means to mourn, lament. It was used of mourning rites for the dead (interesting thought considering Samuel was mourning for Saul!). Regretted (was sorry,) (05162) naham/nacham is a verb which means to be sorry, to pity, to console oneself, repent, regret, comfort, be comforted, to get revenge for oneself (Ge 27:42, Ezek 5:13). According to the TWOT nacham reflects the idea of "breathing deeply" and hence refers to the physical display of one's feelings, such as sorrow, or in this case compassion or comfort. QUESTION - Was King Saul saved? ANSWER - People have long puzzled over the question of whether or not King Saul was saved; that is, whether or not Saul was forgiven and justified by God and is in heaven today. It’s not possible to give a definitive answer because, of course, Saul’s salvation rests with God, not with us. We have no certain knowledge of the condition of Saul’s heart. As Scripture says, only God sees the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). The Bible does indicate that a person’s spiritual transformation will be evidenced by his or her “fruit” (Matthew 7:16–20). If a person continually produces “bad fruit,” then it is unlikely that he is a true believer. Arguing against Saul’s salvation is his record of jealousy, hatred, and murder. Saul’s rule as king was characterized by failure and rebellion. He directly disobeyed God (1 Samuel 15:1–35) and broke God’s law by offering a sacrifice that only priests were to offer (1 Samuel 13:1–14). Saul was visited by evil spirits on several occasions (1 Samuel 16:14; 18:10; 19:9). Saul spent much time and energy trying to murder David (1 Samuel 18:10; 19:10; 23:14); he even tried to murder his son Jonathan once (1 Samuel 20:33). Incredibly, King Saul ordered the slaughter of eighty-five innocent priests and their families (1 Samuel 22:18–19). He consulted a witch and asked her to conjure Samuel up from the dead—another direct violation of God’s Law (1 Samuel 28:1–20). Saul ended his life by committing suicide (1 Samuel 31:4). There is the tendency to look at the above facts and say, “Saul didn’t obey the Lord much at all, so that means he wasn’t saved.” But that is not quite fair, for there is more to the story. Saul was God’s choice to lead Israel (1 Samuel 9:15–16). Before Saul was made king, Samuel told him to visit some prophets (1 Samuel 10:5). At that time, Saul was told, “The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person. . . . God is with you” (verses 6–7). The promise that Saul would be “changed into a different person” sounds very much like the born-again statements in the New Testament (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). This description, plus the statement in verse 9 that “God changed Saul’s heart,” leads some to believe that Saul was saved. Just as Samuel had said, Saul was filled with the Spirit and prophesied with the other prophets (1 Samuel 10:10–13). The question remains how exactly Saul was changed. Was his new heart evidence that the Lord had forgiven his sin and saved him for eternity, or was the Lord simply overcoming Saul’s reluctance to be king (see 1 Samuel 9:21)? The Bible does not say. Those who believe that Saul was not saved point to the litany of abuses, missteps, and outrages that Saul committed, reasoning that no true follower of God could behave in such a way. Those who believe that Saul was saved point to the fact that he was chosen by God and then used by God to prophesy and to defeat the Philistines. Saul made mistakes in his struggle against the flesh, but so do we all (Romans 7:21–23). Saul walked in the flesh for most of his life and therefore disobeyed the Lord. It doesn`t make him unsaved. It just makes him a disobedient believer, some say, and the Lord disciplined His child in the way He saw fit. In 1 Samuel 28:19, the spirit of Samuel tells Saul, “Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me.” These words indicate Saul’s fate. Samuel definitely predicts the king’s death. The question then becomes, do Samuel’s words “with me” refer broadly to Sheol, the place of the dead, or do they refer more specifically to the abode of the righteous? A case could be made either way, but the fact that Saul’s son Jonathan was a righteous man argues for the idea that Saul joined Samuel in the abode of the righteous. Saul’s tragic choice to live according to the flesh caused him much sorrow. Saul started out so well, but his disobedience derailed what could have been a stellar kingship and the beginning of a dynasty. By his sin, King Saul lost everything: his relationship with his son, his leadership role in Israel, the love of his people, and finally his life. Again, it is not our place to judge another person’s salvation. Only God truly knows whether or not Saul was saved. Did Saul begin his career with a humble, God-fearing heart? Yes. Did he commit egregious sins later in life? Yes. The matter of his salvation is between God and Saul.GotQuestions.org The Public Enemy I Samuel 15 John Kitto There is hardly any nation which has not had some especial public enemy—generally a near neighbor, which it was held to be a peculiar duty of patriotism to hate and to destroy. We need not name instances. It were difficult to find exceptions; and the reading and observation of every one will supply examples. Such sentiments between nations have generally their origin in bitter wars and ancient wrongs. Israel had many ordinary enemies, but the one marked out in this distinctive manner as the public enemy, were the Amalekites. This people had some kinds of settlements in the Sinai peninsula, and in the country south of Palestine and west of Edom; and being a people of semi-nomad habits, they appear to have been in the habit of wandering with their flocks over the intervening countries. With this location they came much in contact with the Israelites, always hostilely, during the forty years’ wandering. They opposed the Israelites after they had crossed the Red Sea, on their march to Sinai. They opposed and repulsed them also when they advanced to enter the Promised Land on the south; and, besides these recorded instances, there was probably a long succession of aggravating petty contests between them during the long intervening period of wandering, respecting which we have no account. It is, therefore, not wonderful that, according to ancient usage, the people of Israel solemnly doomed the Amalekites to utter destruction, whenever they should be able to wreak upon them all the fierce wrath which fired their hearts. This was in fact the same doom upon a nation which we have formerly seen inflicted upon a town in the case of Jericho. This doom, incurred by the Amalekites in presence of the miracles, and the manifest tokens of the Divine presence which attended Israel’s march of mystery through the wilderness, had been not only unprovoked assaults upon Israel in the time of their weakness, but such acts of defiance of the Power by which they were seen to be protected, that the honor of his own great name, no less than his official guardianship of the chosen people, procured the Lord’s sanction of this devotement. It had not yet been executed. The Amalekites still kept up their ancient hostility to the Israelites; they had not by repentance sought to avert the execution of the sentence which hung over their heads, but rather derided the impotent hatred which had so long left unexecuted the threatened doom. They had thus kept their sentence alive—had not suffered it to sleep by lapse of time. The silence of the Scripture, which is, from great conciseness, confined in all that relates to foreigners to great demonstrative results, conveys an aspect of harshness to the seeming revival of an old and forgotten quarrel, and the punishment of ancient crimes upon new generations. It is more than probable, and more natural, that the Amalekites themselves had never suffered this hostility to sleep, or their doom to be forgotten. That they were forward, on every occasion that offered, to join in any aggressive warfare against Israel, we know. It is also easily understood that they allowed little peace to the southern Israelites settled on their borders, or to those who travelled, or were out with the flocks. Observation upon the occasional meetings and intercourse of adverse races in the East, will also suggest with all but the absolute certainty of written fact, that an Amalekite and Israelite seldom met without aggravating altercations. It seems to us as if we heard the Amalekite launching forth into such language as this: “Five hundred years ago, ye doomed us to utter destruction. Yet here we are. We are still alive—still we flourish under this terrible doom. Where is the great God of whom ye boast? His arm, it seems, is too short to reach unto us. We have not done aught to turn His fierce wrath aside. We have not bent the knee to you or to Him. We have done nothing to mollify you; rather we hate you, as much now as of old, and are as ready now as then to root you up. Think ye to appall by your curses the strong men your arms cannot subdue. We do defy you and your idle doom. Do it, do it.” The time of long-suffering—in this case very long-suffering—had at length passed, and the time of accomplished doom was come. It might have been executed by famine or pestilence; but although the Israelites might have ascribed this form of judgment to the proper source, the neighboring nations would not, and therefore judgment of extermination was committed to the sword of Saul, who, as king, would at once be recognized as the authorized fulfiller of the ancient devotement. Some years had passed during which Saul had distinguished himself in the field by a series of always successful operations against the hostile nations around, whom he taught to respect the power of Israel, though he did not bring them under subjection. It would appear that in all these proceedings he acted much as an independent sovereign, without the required indications of his dependence upon the Divine King of Israel. One trial more was to be afforded him—one more test of his obedience, before the sentence of exclusion from his dynasty was finally pronounced. He was commanded, through Samuel, to march against the Amalekites, and execute to the letter the ancient doom of devotement—of utter extermination—against them and theirs. If he had power to execute it—and power was given to him—whatever was spared became, according to the tenor of the old vow, as much “an accursed thing,” as in the days of Jericho. Saul undertook the task: but he executed it entirely according to his own judgment of what was expedient and proper. He felt no objection as to any cruelty in the command, for he executed it fiercely upon all the people of the Amalekites who came within the scope of his expedition. He destroyed them utterly with the edge of the sword. But the king Agag, who fell into his hands, he spared—being the very person most obnoxious to destruction, as being, officially at least, the chief offender; and this assuredly not from any sentiment of pity, but for the vain-glory of possessing and displaying so illustrious a captive. So of the spoil: whatever was worthless or immovable was destroyed, but the best and choicest of everything, especially of the flocks and herds, was spared. In this conduct, however otherwise interpreted, Saul assumed to himself such large discretion in the execution of a positive commandment, and was so much in accordance with all his conduct—so manifested the fixed bias of his mind towards autocratic power, that his unfitness to become the founder of a line of theocratic kings could no longer be disputed, and his own doom was sealed. The vain-glorious character of Saul was further evinced in his homeward march, by his setting up a monument of his exploit at Carmel—thus appropriating to himself all the honor of the success, a thing most offensive under the peculiar principles of the Hebrew government, and such as no other king ever ventured to do. Compare the spirit which this evinces with the constant and heartfelt dependence upon God, and the formal ascription of all honor and glory to Him, evinced in the Psalms and the history of David—a far greater conqueror than Saul. Yet when Samuel came to join him at Gilgal, on his return, Saul had the confidence to meet him with the assurance that the task committed to him had been perfectly accomplished. “What meaneth then,” asked Samuel, “this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” Without awaiting the answer, the prophet, who saw through the whole transaction, and had received his commission before he set out, proceeded to denounce his conduct, reminding him that “when he was little in his own sight,” he had by the Lord’s free appointment been made heard over all the tribes, and anointed king over Israel. Yet he had become exalted in his own esteem, and in this and other instances had forgotten his fealty to Jehovah, and acted in disobedience to his express commands, But Saul persisted that he had obeyed, seeing that, as he now insinuated, the spoil had only been reserved for sacrifice to Jehovah, This we take to have been a gross attempt to bribe the Lord, under a most offensive misconception of his nature and character, to acquiesce in the exemption he had made. For, although stated as an original motive, it is palpably an afterthought suggested by the stringency of Samuel’s rebuke. This is proved out of Soul’s own mouth; when the prophet met this subterfuge by the indignant and noble rebuke: “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;” the king shifted his ground, and urged that the army would not consent to the destruction of the spoil—that is, would not forego the beneficial interest they had in the distribution of it, which is quite different from the reason previously given. But, had it been a truth, it would, on the view taken by Samuel, have been no extenuation of the offence. The prophet then pronounced the irrevocable sentence: “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.” This brought Saul down from his high tone. He confessed that he had sinned, and without remonstrating against the sentence passed upon him—the justice of which his conscience probably admitted for the moment—he implored Samuel not to suffer the fact of their disagreement to appear, but to turn and take part with him in a public act of solemn worship. Samuel refused, and when the king took hold of his mantle to detain him, and it rent in his hand, the prophet, with great readiness, turned the incident into an illustration of his doom: “The Lord hath rent the kingdom from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbor of thine that is better than thou.” Satisfied, however, that he had discharged the painful duty committed to him—for it was painful, as he had much personal feeling in favor of Saul—he did turn, and worshipped the Lord with him. Samuel then felt that he had another stern duty to perform. When the Lord’s sentence had passed, it was not for the future kings of Israel to think that they possessed a dispensing prerogative, and the neighboring princes had to learn that there was in Israel a Power higher than the throne, to which even the kings were accountable. This had been far from the thought of king Agag. Since the king had spared him, he thought there was nothing more to fear—the bitterness of death had passed with him. So he intimated, when he was brought before Samuel, who, as judge and commissioned prophet, took upon himself the stern and terrible duty of exacting the long-stored vengeance for Israel which the king had wilfully neglected. Samuel answered: “As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women.” He was then forthwith stricken down and slain by the sword. The text would intimate that this was done by Samuel’s own hand, and although it is rightly alleged that in Scripture men are often described as doing what they ordered to be done, it is not improbable—having due regard to the habits of the East and the notions of ancient times—that the common interpretation is the right one. Samuel might deem it an honor to execute with his own hand the full judgment which had been neglected by the man to whom the sword had been entrusted. If it be urged that this act is contrary to the idea of Samuel’s character which his previous history has conveyed, the answer is, that mild natures like his are often, when thoroughly roused into high excitement, capable of stronger deeds than men of habitually harsher temper. Samuel then repaired to his home, and he and Saul never met by agreement again. Saul was left alone from that time. His doom was FIXED; and he was left to work it out. Alas, for him! A Remarkable Colloquy 1 SAMUEL 15:12–35 F B Meyer Thy choice was earth! Thou didst attest Twas fitter spirit should subserve The flesh, than flesh refuse to nerve Beneath the spirit’s play! Thou art shut Out of the heaven of spirit! Glut Thy sense upon the world! ’tis thine For ever!—take it! —R. B. AN intimation of Saul’s lapsed obedience was made in the secret ear of Samuel in the dead of night, when God came near to him and said, “It repenteth Me that I have set up Saul to be king, for he hath turned back from following Me, and hath not performed my commandments.” God requires literal obedience, and when that fails the results are as though He had changed his purpose or repented, but this is in appearance only. As a matter of fact, God cannot repent or change his purpose. Man may frustrate the working out of his plan, but the Almighty Workman will achieve it by some other method. The wind may be blowing steadily in the same direction, and as long as we yield to it, it will waft us to the desired haven; but it is always possible for us to reverse our course and go against it, and then our life is so powerfully affected that it would seem as though God had changed his purpose—the change being due to ourselves, because, whereas formerly we moved with his purpose, now by disobedience or unbelief we are steadily resisting it. Does God ever come to you at night, or when the world is quiet, and tell you his secrets? Happy are they whom God can trust with his own profound sorrow over the failure of his chosen servants, honouring them with his confidence, and appealing to them to watch with Him. “Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do?” The faithful soul of Samuel was deeply moved. We are told he was “angry”—a righteous indignation that one who had been appointed with such solemn sanctions, and had bidden fair to achieve such glorious deliverances for his people, had so seriously missed his mark. Those who are true to God cannot but feel indignant when his purposes are frustrated, and his grace outraged, and the door of usefulness which He had set wide in front of a chosen servant is shut and barred by some act of careless or wilful disobedience. Samuel’s soul was not only deeply moved, but “he cried unto the Lord all night.” Ah! how much we owe to the Divine Friend, and to human friends, who when they see deterioration at work within us, take no rest, and give God no rest. This is the most priceless service that one soul can afford another. There is hope so long as lover and friend bear up our case before God, and plead that rather they should be accursed than that we should perish. How many a son now leading a reckless and profligate life, in his still hours, or when his evil courses have cast him on a bed of sickness, and debarred him from the active pursuits of life, comforts himself with the thought that, in some lone cottage, his mother does not cease to pray for him, and he secretly hopes that her prayers may avail against the vehemence of the fiery passions by which his soul is driven. Samuel travelled some fifteen miles to find Saul, following him from Carmel, where, as we have seen, he seems to have set up a monument which was either shaped in the form of a hand, or on which the figure of a hand was graved (R. V. margin) to Gilgal, the site of the ancient shrine, where, as one of the versions informs us, the King was engaged in offering sacrifices to Jehovah; and there this most remarkable colloquy took place. SAUL.—It was commenced by the King, who, seeing the Prophet coming towards him, advanced to meet him with an unctuous phrase upon his lips, “Blessed be thou of the Lord,” and, with great complacency in his demeanour, added, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” Whether Saul was blinded and did not really know how far he had deteriorated, for it is certain that disobedience puts out our eyes, as Hubert did young Arthur’s, blinding us to the enormity of our sin, or whether he desired to gloss over his failure, and to appear as a truly obedient son, so as to deceive the prophet, we cannot tell, but that “Blessed be thou of the Lord,” from his lips, and at such a moment, has an ugly sound. It reminds one of certain persons who interlard their business talk with references to religion, so that they may put the unwary off their guard, and enable their user to take a mean advantage, under the appearance of a high code of morals. It is the sin of Judas who betrayed his Master with a kiss. Better the open foe than the secret assassin. Better a dozen times the arrow that flieth by day than the pestilence that walketh in darkness. SAMUEL.—At that moment the sheep began to bleat, and the oxen to low. A breath of wind, laden with the unmistakable indication of the near presence of a great multitude of flocks and herds, was wafted to the Prophet’s ear. It is an unfortunate occurrence when, just as a man is becoming loud in his protestations of goodness, some such untoward incident suddenly takes place, so that the lowing of the oxen and the bleating of the sheep belie his words. I remember once a professor of religion who desired to impress me with his entire sanctification, and deliverance from every kind of idol, giving unmistakable evidence, by the taint of tobacco on his breath, whilst he spoke, that he had been smoking a rather rank kind of tobacco. I had not said a single word about smoking. I have never felt it my business to denounce indulgences concerning which God may not convict men universally. It is our business, on matters not clearly forbidden, and concerning which Christian people are not agreed, to lay down general principles, and to leave our hearers to apply them for themselves. But when this man went out of his way to assert his entire deliverance, I naturally was more on the alert, and in the taint on his breath I detected the presence of the choice oxen and sheep which had been reserved. With sad irony the prophet said, “What meaneth then this bleating of sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of oxen which I hear?” SAUL.—The King excused himself by laying emphasis on the word they—“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.” Notice the subtle effort to conciliate the prophet by the emphasis laid upon the word thy—“thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.” It was unroyal and contemptible to lay the blame upon the people, and it was an excuse which could not be allowed. SAMUEL.—The royal backslider would probably have gone on speaking, but Samuel interrupted him, saying, “Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night.” Then the faithful old prophet went back to the past. He reminded Saul how insignificant had been his origin, and how he had shrunk from undertaking the great responsibility of the station to which God had summoned him. He reminded him how he had been raised up to the throne, and how the Almighty King of Israel had delegated to him his authority, requiring that he should act as his designated vicegerent. He reminded him also that a distinct charge had been given him, and that the responsibility of determining his line of action had been transferred from himself, as the agent, to the Divine Being who had issued his mandate of destruction. In spite of all, Saul had allowed his greed to hurry him into an act of disobedience. He had flown upon the spoil as a hungry lion upon his prey, and had done evil in the sight of the Lord. SAUL.—The King reiterated his poor excuse: “Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way that 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 devoted things, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal.” It was as though he had said, “You have judged me wrongfully. If you would wait for a little while, you would see the issue of my act of apparent disobedience.” He may even have cajoled himself into thinking that he meant to sacrifice these spoils now that he had reached Gilgal; or he might have mentally resolved there and then that he would sacrifice them, and so relieve himself of the complicated position into which he found himself drifting. SAMUEL.—In answer to this last remark, God’s messenger uttered one of the greatest sentences in the earlier books of the Bible, a sentence which is the seed-germ of much to the same purpose in the Prophets, which in subsequent centuries was repeated in different forms, and to which our blessed Lord gave his assent—“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.” Whatever Saul might be leading him to infer, as to his intention to offer the sacrifice, there could be no doubt that up to that moment, at least, he had disobeyed God’s positive command; and, in point of fact, the whole attitude of his soul was towards disobedience and rebellion, which, in fact, were the assertion of his own will and way against God’s. Then, tearing the veil aside, the old man showed the enormity of the sin which had been committed, by saying: “Rebellion is equally vile as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and the teraphim.” These sins were universally reprobated and held up to the contempt of good men, but in God’s sight there was nothing to choose between them and the sin of which the King had been guilty. Then, facing the monarch, and looking at him with his searching eyes, the Prophet, in the majesty of his authority as God’s representative, pronounced the final sentence of deposition, saying, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being King.” SAUL.—In a moment the King realised the brink of the precipice on which he stood; and with the cry not of a penitent, but of a fugitive from justice; not hating his sin, but dreading its result; eager at any cost to keep the crown on his brow and the empire in his hand; afraid of the consequences which might ensue if his leading men detected any break or coolness between himself and the Prophet—he cringed before Samuel, saying, “I have sinned; for I have transgressed the commandment of Jehovah, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord.” There is a great difference in the accent with which men utter those words, “I have sinned.” The prodigal said them with a faltering voice, not because he feared the consequences of sin, but that he saw its heinousness in the expression of his father’s face, and the tears that stood in the beloved eyes. Saul, however, feared the consequences rather than the sin, and that he might avert the sentence he said, as though Samuel had the power of the keys to open and unloose, to pardon or to refuse forgiveness, “Pardon my sin.” SAMUEL.—The Prophet saw through the subterfuge. He knew that his penitence was not genuine, but that the King was deceiving him with his words, and he turned about to go away. Then Saul, in the extremity of his anguish, in fear that in losing him he might lose at once his best friend and the respect of the nation, seems to have sprung forward and seized the collar of Samuel’s cloak, and as he did so with a strong, masterful grasp, as if to restrain and draw back to himself the retreating figure of the Prophet, it rent. When Samuel felt and heard the tear, he said, “The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.” And then, referring to Saul’s effort to turn him back, as though he would reverse the sentence which he had pronounced, he said, “Remember that the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; his sentence is irrevocable. The word is gone out of his lips and cannot be called back. There is no opportunity of changing his mind though thou shalt seek it bitterly and with tears.” Even at that moment, had Saul thrown himself at God’s feet and asked for pardon, he would have been accepted and forgiven. Even though as a monarch his kingdom might have passed from him, as a man he would have received pardon. But there are moments in our lives, irrevocable moments, when we take steps that cannot be retraced, when we assume positions from which we cannot retreat, when results are settled never to be reversed. SAUL.—Again the King repeated the sentence, “I have sinned,” but his real meaning was disclosed in the following words: “Yet honour me now before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship Jehovah thy God.” His inner thought was still to stand well with the people, and he was prepared to make any confession of wrong-doing as a price of Samuel’s apparent friendship. Finally, Samuel stayed with him, that the elders might not become disaffected, and that the people generally might have no idea of the deposition of the King, lest the kingdom itself might totter to its fall before his successor was prepared to take his place. He stayed therefore. The two knelt side by side before God, but what a contrast! Here was darkest night; there, the brightness of the day. Here was the rejected; there, the chosen faithful servant. Here was one whose course from that moment was to be enwrapped in the dark clouds of moody tyranny and jealousy, until he died upon the field of Gilboa; there was one, the unsullied beauty of whose character was to remain untarnished until his removal to that world where he would shine as the sun, in his heavenly Father’s kingdom. Lastly, the old man summoned Agag, the King of the Amalekites, to his presence, and Agag came to him “cheerfully,” hoping without doubt that he would be spared; and saying, as he advanced, “Surely the bitterness of death is past—there is no reason for me to fear it.” Then Samuel, strengthened with some paroxysm of righteous indignation, seized a sword that lay within his reach, and hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord—emblem, this, of the holy zeal that will give no quarter to the flesh; and we are reminded of the words of the Apostle, “Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” To Amalek we must give no quarter. May God help us to read deeply into this tragic story. Whensoever God our Father puts a supreme test into our lives, let us at any cost obey Him. Everything hinges upon absolute obedience. If you cannot obey, you cannot command. If you do not obey, you are not fit to be an instrument in God’s hand. If the chisel is not true, the sculptor dare not hold it still in hand. Let us walk circumspectly and wisely, redeeming each opportunity, that God may make the most possible of us, and that, above all, we may not become castaways.