Daily Thought

Samuel was grieved (lit. ‘angry’) with Saul, of whom the Lord had said, ‘he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments’, v. 11.

Samuel had passed on the Lord’s message that, because of the Amalekites’ history, Exod. 17. 8, Saul and the Israelites were to ‘go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not’, v. 3; cp. Deut. 25. 17-19. However, after a swift and successful battle, Saul and the people of Israel spared Agag the king of the Amalekites, and ‘the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly’, v. 9.

When Samuel confronts Saul, he at first claims to have obeyed the Lord. However, his obvious lies are eventually exposed and Samuel tells him, ‘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?’, v. 19.

Saul then says that ‘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’, v. 21. Samuel replies, ‘Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king’, vv. 22, 23.

At this, Saul fully admits his sin, and acknowledges that he had ‘transgressed the commandment of the Lord because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice’, v. 24. Samuel tells him the sad truth that the ‘Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel’, v. 26, and that He had now given the kingdom to someone else, who was better than him, and that the Lord would not change His mind.

Samuel had realized the consequences of the Lord’s decision, and had struggled with it all night, crying to the Lord. Later the Lord Jesus ‘continued all night in prayer to God’, Luke 6. 12, no doubt also praying for others.

A night’s sleep is often the price one has to pay for showing a real interest in the spiritual state of others.