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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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Meet Saul - 1st Samuel 9

Israel has decided that they want a king, and I think it’s because they want to become like the nations around them, the powerful ones. They don’t want to be the way that God wants them to be, they want to be like the other nations, powerful militarily, rich, financially prosperous. Ironically, if they had lived the way that God wanted them to live, they wouldn’t have had to devote resources to the military, and they would have been prosperous like they were promised in the law of Moses. But they didn’t want it that way, they wanted it their own way, they wanted to be seen and envied by other nations. I think that that was the main difference between the way God wanted them to do it and the way they wanted to do it. God’s way meant taking care of everyone, they wanted to be rich themselves and at best, didn’t care if it affected others, and at worst, they wanted a system in which they could become rich by exploiting the vulnerable of their community. God’s way would have had them be hu...
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King - 1st Samuel 8

Samuel has judged Israel as a whole for several decades and he’s getting old and he was hoping to pass on his position to his sons, I think like most fathers want. Unfortunately for Samuel, like Eli, his sons were not righteous, nor were the people. Specifically, his sons “walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgement.” TB says that the translation of the word “lucre” specifically indicates that they made money through illegitimate and ill-gotten methods. The elders of Israel met together and decided that they didn’t want Samuel’s sons to become their judges and that they wanted a king “like all the nations.” The IM says that the fact that Samuel’s sons were not righteous was just an excuse used by the elders to advocate for a king over the theocratic system that they were currently living under. I tried to think about why they would do this, why would they want a king instead of a righteous judge, and some of the thoughts that I had w...
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