Naturally endowed with a kingly form and a humble disposition, the Lord put everything in place to make Saul’s reign honourable and prosperous. As part of this, Israel’s first king was not left to make hard decisions on his own. To spare the newly appointed monarch from making costly and embarrassing mistakes, the prophet Samuel stood by the king’s side.
As Israel’s king, it was Saul’s responsibility to lead the nation to battle, and administer justice in the land. But the king was only to wage war according to God’s directives, and dispense justice according to Jehovah’s law. Indeed, Israel may have had a human monarch on the throne, but Jehovah remained her sovereign. Thus, God ordained Samuel to relay His divine will to the king. But before long, Saul began to rule according to his own judgment, acting in disregard of the counsel of the prophet.
Saul’s first misstep was the unlawful sacrifice he offered at Gilgal. As Israel prepared for battle with the Philistines, Samuel instructed Saul to wait for him to arrive. After seven days, Samuel promised to arrive at Gilgal to offer sacrifice and tell Saul what to do (1 Samuel 10:8). But the people with Saul grew tired of waiting, and began to disperse. In detaining Samuel till the last minute, and allowing the people to waiver in their support of the king, God was testing Saul’s resolve to obey His instructions. But Saul failed the test. In an attempt to persuade the men to tarry with him, Saul presumed to offer the sacrifice himself.
When Samuel appeared late on the seventh day and saw that Saul had offered sacrifice, he said to the king, ‘What hast thou done?’ Saul’s excuse, ‘I saw that the people were scattered from me’ betrayed that he was more afraid of the people’s displeasure than that of God’s (1 Samuel 13:11). At this, the prophet rebuked the king, saying, ‘Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee’ (1 Samuel 13:13). The king’s compromise not only brought upon him the condemnation of God, but resulted in public disgrace.
In spite of Saul’s self-willed actions, God gave the king a second opportunity to see whether he would yet ‘hearken…unto the voice of the words of the LORD’ (1 Samuel 15:1). As is detailed in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Samuel, the prophet commanded Saul to utterly destroy the nation of Amalek, explicitly stating that the king spare not a single human or animal alive. But again, Saul stubbornly refused to follow the instructions of God. After sparing the wicked King Agag, Saul ventured to claim that he had fulfilled the words of the Lord! Moreover, Saul excused himself for not destroying the animals because the people desired them for a spoil.
In that he ‘feared the people, and obeyed their voice’, Saul again proved his willingness to disobey the voice of God (1 Samuel 15:24). Set up for the purpose of leading the nation according to God’s will, he had twice allowed the nation to rule him according to theirs. The ‘choice young man’ of whom it was said, ‘among the children of Israel [there was not] a goodlier person than he’, who ‘from his shoulders and upward…was higher than any of the people’, had quickly degenerated into an effeminate slave of public opinion (1 Samuel 9:2).
After Saul’s sin regarding the Amalekites, Samuel did not communicate with Saul again. Having twice rejected the counsel of God, Saul proved himself unfit to rule the nation. Thus, the prophet declared, ‘because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from beingking’ (1 Samuel 15:23).
Struck with dread and terror at the sentence pronounced against him, ‘Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words’ (1 Samuel 15:24). While Saul regretted the result, he was not truly repentant for his sin. The prophet had declared that God had rejected him as Israel’s king. Yet Saul’s primary concern still lay in his public appearance. Rather than simply accept his sentence and step down, Saul sought to save face, pleading with Samuel, ‘Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me…honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD thy God’ (1 Samuel 15:25, 30).
By conceding to the people’s wishes, Saul not only lost the respect of the nation, but the approval of God. When he disobeyed, Saul gave reasons which men may find plausible; he consented to spare the best of the flocks as spoil for the people. Like Saul, our excuses may appear to be in the interests of others. However, the best thing we can do for others is to implicitly follow the counsels of God, and stand by our first commitment to obey Him. While we may not have a living prophet to dictate God’s will to us, we have access to the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus, which we are as accountable to as was Saul when God spoke to him through Samuel.
Christopher Sparks