Royal Kingdom I- 1 samuel 1-31

Notes
  • Making a monarchy
But in his old age, the people demand that he appoint them a king "as the other nations have" (see 1 Samuel 8:5).
Israel’s request is sinful, blasphemous. It shows that they still have not embraced their special character as God’s chosen people, His first-born son.
"It is not you they reject," God tells Samuel. "They are rejecting Me as their king" (see 1 Samuel 8:7; 12:12,17,19-20).
Moses had predicted that the people would want a king. He even made provisions so that any Israelite king might truly serve God’s purposes - requiring especially that the king copy the entire Law of God and read it every day for the rest of His life (see Deuteronomy 17:14-20).
The Israelites, however, aren’t looking for a godly king. They tell Samuel they want one "to lead us in warfare and fight our battles" (see 1 Samuel 8:19-20). They don’t mention God or worship and they seem to have utterly forgotten Israel’s original charter to be a holy, priestly people (see Exodus 19:5-6).
In Saul, they get the kind of king they want, a man after their own heart - a warrior-king skilled in battle but with no concern for right worship or the commandments of God. Symbolically, during his first campaign Saul ignores Samuel’s instructions and offers priestly sacrifices himself - something that God presumably didn’t want His kings doing (see1 Samuel 13:8-13).


  • The Lord's anointed
The Lord rejects Saul as king, although He allows his reign to play out to its bitter end. In the meantime, he dispatches Samuel to quietly anoint a successor, "a man after [the Lord’s] own heart" (see 1 Samuel 13:14) - David, son of Jesse, grandson of Ruth’s son Obed, an anonymous shepherd boy living in Bethlehem.
The Spirit of the Lord rushes upon David at his anointing (see 1 Samuel 16:13) and through a series of seeming coincidences, he winds up in Saul’s court. David is brave, but also God-fearing, as we see in the famous episode with Goliath. He knows that, as he says, "the battle is the Lord’s" and that "it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves" (see 1 Samuel 17:32-51)
As First Samuel continues, David’s humility and meekness, his faithfulness to God, stands in sharp contrast with Saul’s growing paranoia and jealousy, which causes him to hatch murderous plots against David (see 1 Samuel 18:11; 19:9-17).
Given two chances to kill his sworn enemy Saul, David refuses. Why? Because, he says, no matter what a scoundrel Saul is, Saul remains "the Lord’s anointed" king (see 1 Samuel 24, 26).

Summary



  • Making a monarchy
  • The Lord's anointed


Questions


  1. What did God tell Samuel would happen with the rule of a king?
  2. What were the reasons for the anointings in 1 Samuel?
  3. How could David be so sure that God would keep him safe?
  4. List the accomplishments of Samuel.


Bibliography
Israel after the Judges

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