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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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Publicly - 1st Samuel 10

Samuel told Saul to go home and that he would encounter 3 specific signs. It’s not said explicitly but it is implied that these signs were meant to confirm for Saul that Samuel was correct and that God had chosen him to be the new king of Israel. I saw an IG video a couple of weeks ago talking about confirmations and that God will always send confirmations to us because He’s not a God of confusion. And I think the example they used was a random stranger coming up to them and saying something about what God wanted them to do that was pretty specific, so I think the context that they were talking about was that other people will confirm for you what God is telling you to do. While I do think that that is possible, I don’t necessarily think that that’s true, but it was an interesting concept to think about. But maybe it is true, we just need to temper our expectations about what constitutes a confirmation. I think if we are looking for something specific or obvious or showy, then we’ll pr...
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Anointing - 1st Samuel 10:1-10

Now that Samuel had discovered Saul, by the hand of God, and had him at the special feast, and they have walked and talked about God’s word, “Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured in upon his head, and kissed him, and said is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?” Both the IM and TB note that anointing with oil was significant in that it was done to priests to set them apart and also represented the Spirit of God. The IM says, “Anointing with oil in priesthood service is as old as Adam. And, since the Lord set up the kingdom of Israel and revealed the laws that were to govern their kings, it was altogether fitting that these kings be anointed with oil.” The IM has a large paragraph about the significance of anointing with oil for the kings as well as the symbolism between the anointing of priests to their duties and the anointing of a king for his job. The IM also notes that the use of the word “captain” here is significant, saying, “But Samuel ...
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