1 Samuel 15

1. The Lord sent me, etc. God did not finally reject Saul till He had given him another opportunity of recovering His favour, by fully carrying out His commands. But Saul’s repeated disobedience sealed his doom.

2. Amalek. The Amalekites had always been implacable enemies to Israel. Their unprovoked cruelty, related in Exod. xvii. 8-16, had called forth a Divine decree against them (Deut. xxv. 17-19). They had been parties to many of the confederacies formed against Israel (see Numb. xiv. 45; Judges iii. 13; vi. 3; Psa. lxxxiii. 7), and they had recently spoiled the land (xiv. 48). Thus, like the nations of Canaan, they had long experienced Divine forbearance; but had only gone on to fill up the measure of their sins.

3 utterly destroy. In Saul’s time, and long afterwards, the customs of war were so thoroughly barbarous that when lives were spared it was not from motives of humanity, but from avarice or lust. This command, therefore, to Saul and the Israelites was not only a judicial sentence, but a test of their self-denial, in giving up the slaves, the female captives, and the rest of the booty, and acting as men who fought for God only, and not for themselves. In direct disobedience to this command, Saul spared the best of the sheep and oxen for the purpose of having a great sacrificial feast; and he spared Agag in order to have the glory of exhibiting a captive king eating bread under his table. He certainly could not plead humanity as his motive, inasmuch as the women and children had been destroyed.

6 the Kenites. Connected with Israel by Jethro, father-in-law to Moses (Judges i. 16). Jael was also a Kenite: and the Rechabites, mentioned in the later history, belonged to the same tribe.

7. Havilah. See Gen. xxv. 18. “Havilah” appears to be the name of the whole desert south-east of Palestine as far as Chaldea. “Shur” was the part of the desert bordering on Egypt.

8 all the people. That is, the great mass of the people. A portion escaped: see xxvii. 8; xxx. 18.

11 it grieved Samuel. Rather, “displeased”; “Samuel was wroth” (R.V.).

12 set him up a place. A memorial of his victory. This “Carmel” was in the south-east of Judah: see xxv. 2, 5; Josh. xv. 55. It lay on his way from the south.

16. Stay. Or, “Leave off”; “silence.”

22 to obey is better than sacrifice. “In sacrifices man offers forcibly the strange flesh of irrational animals; in obedience he offers his own will, which is rational spiritual worship.” The language of Samuel anticipates that of the later prophets, and especially that of the New Testament.

23 as the sin of witchcraft. Witchcraft was a sin against which Saul zealously enforced the law: see xxviii. 3. This was, therefore, a most cutting rebuke.

24. I feared the people. While confessing his fault, he excused it; than which nothing is more common. His chief anxiety was to save his credit with the people: see ver. 30.

32 delicately. “With tottering steps” (Moffatt).

33. Samuel hewed Agag in pieces. As God’s legate inflicting upon Agag the Divine curse, which he justifies by referring to the chief’s own cruelties. It was not uncommon for distinguished criminals to be executed by the hands of eminent rulers.