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Battling the Amalekites - 1st Samuel 15

I’m kind of confused about how some wars are decided on versus others. For instance, with the Philistine war in the previous couple of chapters, Jonathan just seemingly went and instigated them himself, but God aided Israel in their victory and Jonathan was praised by both TB and the IM as being inspired. Now we see Samuel coming to Saul and telling him that God wants him to go fight the Amalekites. Samuel says specifically that this is revenge for how the Amalekites treated the Israelites when they were coming out of the land of Egypt because back in Exodus 17:8-16 the Amalekites attacked Israel in their rear column which would have been the weak, old and ill people of Israel which was a coward move. The war now commanded was retribution for that offense, even though Israel won back then too. I’m not sure about the logic there but I’m not in charge. God commanding this war makes is a holy war, meaning that the laws concerning the spoils were to be kept, and God reiterates that all men...
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To The Death - 1st Samuel 14:25-52

Saul has forced his battle weary troops to make an oath of fasting for the entire day, “that I may be avenged on mine enemies” and it really sucked for them but they were obedient and didn’t eat at all. While the regular troops were forced into that vow, Jonathan was not there, however, and didn’t know of nor make that vow. When the troops pursued the Philistines into a grove of trees full of beehives and honey, the troops didn’t eat anything, but Jonathan did. After Jonathan had eaten some of the honey, another soldier told him about the vow his father had made about not eating and Jonathan replied that his father was wrong to do that and that felt so much better and had more energy after having eaten the honey. In fact, maybe they could have had even more success against the Philistines if the troops hadn’t been forced to fast. The fast was in force until the evening, and the Israelites pursued the Philistines all day “and the people were faint.” Finally, night fall came and the so...
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Attacking the Philistines - 1st Samuel 14:1-24

The Philistines are creeping into Hebrew territory and Saul only has a contingent of 600 soldiers left. Apparently, the Israelites were on. One side of a valley and the Philistines were on the other side of the valley separated by about a mile. We met Jonathan last chapter when he killed the Philistine governor in the area in order to start a war between the two peoples. To me that seemed wreckless, starting wars, but both TB and the IM say that Jonathan was a man of firm faith in God and obedient in righteousness and who am I to argue with that? Since Jonathan killed the governor, the Philistines have been getting ready to make their move and Saul was waiting for Samuel, gathering his troops but Saul has just been kind of sitting there waiting, TB suggests that this is because Saul wasn’t really interested in a war that wouldn’t serve his purposes which was to unite all of Israel behind him and since all the other soldiers had left leaving only 600 men remaining, he knew that the peop...
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The Sacrifice - 1st Samuel 13:9-23

The troops were leaving to go home and Samuel had not shown up within the 7 days that he promised, so Saul takes matters into his own hands and tells his people to bring him two sacrifices, a burnt offering and a peace offering. Saul knows good and well that only priests were authorized to make the sacrifices and the burnt offering specifically was only authorized to be made by the high priest, Samuel specifically. TB notes that in Gilgal, surely there were priests around who could have made the peace offering, and even if Saul had done that one himself, it wasn’t the super serious burnt offering and at that point was still sometimes being done at home by the oldest sons like had happened before the Levitical priesthood was organized. So it still wouldn’t have been great, but it would have been more understandable. The fact that Saul had the option to chose the one that was less serious but instead chose the very serious sacrifice that was explicitly commanded only for the high priest,...
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Welcome Jonathan - 1 Samuel 13:1-8

Since Israel’s victory over the Ammonites and Samuel’s “farewell” address, Saul has risen in prominence but he still struggled with political support throughout the kingdom. Maybe it’s because the war with the Ammonites was so effective in uniting all the tribes behind him, but TB implies that Saul was seeking a war again to hopefully solidify his popularity and since he just brutally defeated the Ammonites, Saul seems to turn his attention to the Philistines. Saul doesn’t hear from God or Samuel about starting a war with the Philistines, that we know of anyway, but we know that God wants to severe the relationship with Israel has with the Philistines so it seems like Go dis in favor of a war between them and Israel and probably for the same purpose as Saul such as unifying Israel as a whole and getting Philistine influence out of the country, though Saul and God want this for different reasons. Chapter 13 starts by saying “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years ov...
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Samuel's Farewell - 1st Samuel 12

The people of Israel are still in Gilgal and have just coronated and accepted Saul as their king and because Samuel’s role as main judge in Israel is diminishing and Saul’s is rising, chapter 12 is known as Samuel’s farewell address, even though Samuel is not dying or leaving and will still be heavily featured in the future. Samuel stages this as a kind of courtroom type of scenario, and it’s quite legal from the ancient culture perspective. Samuel says that he has “walked before you from my childhood unto this day,” meaning that he’s served them and led them since he was a child. He says, basically, that there is the king in front of them all and if anyone has any accusations against Samuel of corruption, accepting bribes, defrauding or oppressing anyone, that this was their time to come forward and formally accuse him in front of the new king. No one came forward to accuse him and everyone agreed “thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou taken ought of any man’...
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Gouging Out Eyes - 1st Samuel 11

Chapter 11 seems pretty straight forward but there’s a lot of background information that makes it interesting. Samuel had just crowned Saul king and my assumption would be that Saul would now start doing kingly duties, but apparently not enough of the tribes supported him to make a unified country so Saul went home and started being a farmer again. The geography is important here because Saul is from Gibeah, and we’ve heard that name before, Gibeah is the town in Benjamin that 100 years ago, raped that concubine to death, and the husband cut up her body and sent it to the other tribes demanding that they come and avenge her death and they did and almost completely wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. So Saul is from Gibeah where this horrible event occurred. But we also need to remember that after they killed almost the entire tribe of Benjamin, the people felt bad so they went to the town Jabesh-Gilead because they refused to fight against Benjamin, and they killed everyone in that town ...
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