Theopedia

1 Samuel

To obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

— 1 Samuel 15:22

Overview

1 Samuel opens the account of Israel’s transition from the era of the judges to kingly government under the LORD’s own direction, narrating Samuel’s own judgeship, Saul’s rise and fall as Israel’s first king, and the rise of David toward the throne that would replace Saul’s.1 1 and 2 Samuel originally formed a single, continuous work, named for Samuel because he is the central figure of its opening chapters and because it was through him, as the LORD’s prophet, that both Saul and David were anointed to the kingly office.1 Later Greek translators divided the scroll in two, closing the first book at Saul’s death; the Septuagint titles the pair First and Second of the Kingdoms, and the Vulgate First and Second of Kings, both reflecting the same subject.1

Timeline

  • Samuel’s birth and dedication: Hannah, who has no children, promises a son to the LORD’s service. Samuel is born, then weaned, and given to Eli the priest at Shiloh to serve God (1 Sam. 1-2).
  • Eli’s corrupt sons and Samuel’s call: While Eli’s sons disgrace the priesthood, the LORD calls young Samuel by name at night. Israel comes to know Samuel is a true prophet (1 Sam. 2-3).
  • The ark captured and returned: Israel loses the ark to the Philistines in battle. It brings plague on their cities until they send it back to Israel on a new cart (1 Sam. 4-6).
  • Israel demands a king: Israel rejects Samuel’s sons as judges and demands a king “like all the nations.” The LORD grants the request, though it rejects his own kingship (1 Sam. 8).
  • Saul anointed king: Samuel anoints Saul, a man from Benjamin chosen by lot. Saul rescues Jabesh-gilead from the Ammonites and is confirmed king before all Israel at Gilgal (1 Sam. 9-11).
  • Saul’s disobedience and rejection: Saul offers a sacrifice he has no right to make, then spares King Agag against God’s command. Samuel tells him the kingdom will be taken from him (1 Sam. 13; 15).
  • David anointed by Samuel: The LORD sends Samuel to Bethlehem, where he anoints David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons. Saul still appears to be king (1 Sam. 16).
  • David defeats Goliath: While Saul’s army hides in fear of the giant Philistine Goliath, the shepherd boy David kills him with a sling and a stone, then serves in Saul’s court (1 Sam. 17).
  • Saul’s jealousy and pursuit of David: Jealous of David’s popularity, Saul tries again and again to kill him. David flees and becomes an outlaw, hunted through the wilderness of Judah (1 Sam. 18-26).
  • David twice spares Saul’s life: David gets two chances to kill Saul, once in a cave and once in his camp. Both times he refuses to harm “the LORD’s anointed” (1 Sam. 24; 26).
  • Saul consults the medium at Endor: The night before battle, Saul feels abandoned by God, and Samuel is now dead. He disguises himself to visit a medium, who calls up Samuel’s rebuke (1 Sam. 28).
  • Saul and his sons die at Gilboa: The Philistines crush Israel’s army at Gilboa. Saul’s sons are killed, and Saul, badly wounded, takes his own life (1 Sam. 31).

Author and Date

1 Samuel does not name its own author, and no settled tradition in the church identifies one.2 1 Chronicles 29:29 refers to records of David’s reign kept by three prophetic figures, “the book of Samuel the seer,” “the book of Nathan the prophet,” and “the book of Gad the seer” (1 Chron. 29:29), and some have taken this notice to point toward the book’s own underlying sources.2 The narrative’s precision and vividness in its portraits of Saul, Samuel, and David point to writers who were either eyewitnesses or drew directly on eyewitness accounts, compiled by a later hand, likely a prophet, into the book’s present form.3

In describing an event from Saul’s reign, the narrator adds that Ziklag “pertains to the kings of Judah to this day” (1 Sam. 27:6), naming the kings of Judah as a line distinct from Israel’s kings, a formula that would only be needed after the kingdom’s later division; passages set before the split refer to “Judah and Israel” together without that distinction.2 Beyond this, the text does not permit a more exact date or a named final author.

Historical and Literary Context

1 Samuel opens in the unsettled final years of the judges, under the corrupt priesthood of Eli.4 Samuel established a company of prophets, and from his time onward the prophetic office took on a permanence in Israel’s national life that it had not had before, while the kingly office itself began under the LORD’s own direction rather than as a purely human innovation.4 Israel’s demand for a king arose from motives that were “grounded in worldliness and unbelief,” yet the LORD granted the request for the accomplishment of his own purposes, using even the people’s sin to establish the kingly office he had always intended for Israel, and, in time, for the Messiah himself.4

Structure

1 Samuel divides into three main parts, the last of which continues into 2 Samuel:5

  • Samuel and the end of the judges (chs. 1-7): the birth and rise of Samuel, the corruption of Eli’s household, the Philistines’ capture and return of the ark, and Samuel’s deliverance of Israel from Philistine oppression.
  • The rise and fall of Saul (chs. 8-15): Israel’s demand for a king, Saul’s anointing and early victories, his disobedience at Gilgal and against the Amalekites, and his rejection as king.
  • The rise of David (chs. 16-31): David’s anointing, his victory over Goliath, Saul’s jealousy and pursuit of David through the wilderness, and Saul’s death in battle against the Philistines.

Major Themes

The LORD’s sovereignty in raising up and rejecting leaders

Saul’s rise and fall display the LORD’s rule over Israel’s kingship as much as its outward history does. After Saul spares King Agag and the best of the Amalekite plunder against the LORD’s command, Samuel tells him plainly, “the LORD has rejected you from being king” (1 Sam. 15:23), and that “the LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you” (1 Sam. 15:28). Samuel adds that “the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret” (1 Sam. 15:29), which rules out reading the LORD’s earlier statement that he “regretted” making Saul king (1 Sam. 15:11) as a real change of mind: the text itself supplies its own answer to that misreading, since a God who makes and revises mistakes could not be the changeless, trustworthy God the passage everywhere assumes.6 David’s anointing follows immediately (1 Sam. 16:1-13), so that Saul’s rejection and David’s selection stand as two sides of a single divine act rather than two separate stories.

Obedience over sacrifice

When Saul defends his partial obedience by pointing to the animals spared for sacrifice, Samuel answers: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. 15:22-23). Calvin called this “the most noted” of the passages showing that the LORD takes no delight in outward ceremony offered in place of obedience to what he has actually commanded, and argued from it that human traditions defended by mere ecclesiastical authority “cannot be vindicated from the charge of impiety.”7

The shift from theocracy to monarchy

The change from judges to kingly government marked a new era in Israel’s national life.4 All the events recorded before Saul’s inauguration were preparatory to it, and once David’s family was established on the throne in Saul’s place, the kingdom was for the first time fully established.4 David and his successors were true civil and military rulers in an earthly sense, but their headship over the LORD’s people also foreshadowed the higher headship of the Messiah who was promised, so that the kingly office established in these events served the LORD’s redemptive purposes for Israel from the start rather than standing apart from them.4

Canonicity

1 and 2 Samuel were originally a single book in the Hebrew canon. The division into two books was introduced by the Greek Septuagint translators as a matter of convenience, closing the first book with Saul’s death and opening the second with David’s accession, was carried into the Latin Vulgate, and was later adopted into printed Hebrew Bibles.1

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 249. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Barrows, 251-52. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Barrows, 186. ↩

  4. Barrows, 249-50. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  5. Barrows, 250-51. ↩

  6. Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 6, “Does God Change? Immutability.” ↩

  7. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-46), 4.10.17, 427. ↩