All Articles For Day of Shadows

The execution of the command that a king be set over the people had to be preceded by a solemn protest, “Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit protest solemnly against them (Hebrew, “Thou shaft certainly witness against them,”) and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them,—the manner of the king, that is, his customary way of acting, normal behavior, what he will do as king in the throne. This is what he will do. He will take their sons for himself, for his chariots and horsemen, to cultivate his fields, and manufacture his implements...

Perceiving that the Lord had indeed determined by Himself that a king be set over the people, Samuel dismissed the elders. “Go ye every man unto his city” was his final word to them. IHe did not bid them to go in peace, nor did he tell them that seeing that the Lord had so commanded, their request would be granted. Evidently the thing continued to be evil in his eyes, as far as his own understanding of the Lord’s doing was concerned. As to the elders, they obeyed Samuel. Leaving his presence, they returned to their respective places. Whether...

The Lord had sent Saul to Samuel to be anointed king over Israel. “Tomorrow about this time I will send thee a man out of the land of Benjamin,” the Lord had said to His servant, “and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people.” That the Lord sent Saul to Samuel means that the entire chain of events by which, unbeknown to himself, Saul was led step by step into Samuel’s presence, had been sovereignly designed by God in His counsel and forged into actuality by His providence. The straying of the asses from the estate of...

As we have seen, Caul received conclusive evidence of Samuel’s prophetic calling. Samuel told Saul that the asses had been found and when. He proved that he knew of Saul’s coming. He told all that was in Saul’s heart. He predicted what would befall Saul on his way home and in his place of residence. As the source of all this knowledge could be none other than the Lord, the possession of it by Samuel was of greatest significance for Saul. It proved to him Samuel’s prophetic calling. It told him that in Samuel, in his commands and instructions, he...

“And thou shalt go down before me to Gilgal;” said the prophet to Saul, “and behold, I will come down to thee, to offer burnt offerings, and to sacrifice sacrifices of peace offerings: seven days shalt thou tarry, till I come to thee, and shew thee what thou shalt do.” I Sam. 10:8 As appears from the text at I Sam. 13:1, it was not until Saul had reigned two years that he went down before Samuel to Gilgal according to the above-cited word of the prophet. The course of events was this. Having secretly anointed Saul, Samuel called the...

As we have seen, I Samuel 10:8-13:8 forms a passage that presents certain difficulties rising from Samuel’s command to Saul. This command having been dealt with and these difficulties having been explained and thereby removed, let us take up the thread of the narrative, where we broke off. Saul had been anointed and charged by Samuel in secret. In addition, the unbelieving king had been provided with a mass of indisputable evidence that Samuel truly was God’s prophet and that therefore in him, men, and in particular the king, verily had to do with God. We now come to the section...

Saul having been publicly chosen by the lot, Samuel, so the sacred writer continues, ‘‘told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before the Lord”. (I Sam. 10:24). What Samuel told the people is not revealed. The notice therefore raises a question in connection with the divine command to Samuel (I Sam. 8:9) to the effect that he witness against the people on account of their request that a king be set over them—witness against them by showing “the manner of the king that shall reign over them”, manner of...

We have taken notice of the wickedness of Nahash, the king of the Ammonites. Invading Gilead, he laid siege to Jabesh east of the Jordan. Feeling certain that they could expect no help from their brethren anywhere—their pessimism was justified; the nation had rejected and forsaken the Lord and therefore it lived in dread of the heathen—the Jabeshites decided to surrender. But what would the Ammonite king do to them once he had them in his hands? The men of Jabesh were afraid, understanding, as they did, that the mercies of the godless are cruel. So they tried to bargain...

The Lord having delivered His people out of the hand of Nahash, Samuel said to the people, “Come, let us go down to Gilgal and repair (the Hebrew verb is chadash in the piel) the kingdom there.” The kingdom, its typical-symbolical dispensation, was the Lord’s tabernacling with His people in the earthly Canaan and their fellowshipping with God in His holy temple; it was their being blessed by the Lord their God in the way of their covenant fidelity in the city and in the field; it was the Lord’s blessing the fruit of their body, and the fruit of...

Saul in Michmash with his three thousand strong and valiant men now realized that he instantly must bestir himself or suffer the loss of all his prestige. Thus now he was compelled to act by the concurrence of circumstances. The choice was no longer his. So “he blew the trumpet throughout all the land, saying, let the Hebrews hear,” hear the summons to rally about their king in Gilgal for war with the Philistines. The people responded to that call not under the impulse of faith but because they concluded that it was their only hope of survival as a...