Year 1, Week 29, Day 5 Bible Reading Observations

Year 1, Week 29, Day 5

I have a brief observation for today’s reading of 1 Samuel 9-10.

Today’s reading introduces Saul, Israel’s first king. 1 Samuel 9 describes how the LORD put Saul and Samuel together. Saul is sent by his father to look for lost donkeys. In the process of the search, Saul is directed to seek out Samuel to assist in the search. The LORD has informed Samuel that Saul is on the way and that he be king. I Samuel 10 records Samuel’s private anointing of Saul as king: “Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, “Has not the LORD anointed you to be prince over his people Israel? And you shall reign over the people of the LORD and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies. And this shall be the sign to you that the LORD has anointed you to be prince over his heritage” (1 Samuel 10:1). Afterwards, Samuel publicly proclaims Saul as king: “But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, ‘Set a king over us.’ Now therefore present yourselves before the LORD by your tribes and by your thousands” (1 Samuel 10:19). Perhaps we are given a hint, at the very start, as to how things will turn out: “And he had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people” (1 Samuel 9:1). Israel gets a king who has the ideal look of all the other nations.

One of the things that struck me from today’s reading was the LORD’s guiding rule over His people: “The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Psalm 103:19). The Israelites have rejected the LORD as their king by their desire for a king. But the LORD will still provide care for His people. The LORD would provide His care through an earthly king: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me” (1 Samuel 9:16). It is the compassion of the LORD at work—the same compassion the moved the LORD to hear the cries of His people while they were enslaved in Egypt: “Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings…And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them” (Exodus 3:7,9). The guiding rule over His people is a privilege of the outworking of God’s providence, but it is a privilege that is not merited by the people, but mercifully provided by the LORD. Israel’s idolatrous foolishness cannot dry up the LORD’s compassion. Israel’s rebellion does not thwart God’s rule.

While Israel wants a king, the LORD will give them a king. But the LORD will still accomplish His purposes through the king that He installs: “When Samuel saw Saul, the LORD told him, “Here is the man of whom I spoke to you! He it is who shall restrain my people” (1 Samuel 9:17). The LORD desires to help His people in how they live. They needed help in how they lived. The period of the Judges was an era of rebellion: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). The LORD provides a remedy to this tragic condition by providing a king who might provide restraints for how the people should live. This matter of restraint is not a reference to a leader who would limit whatever legitimate rights and freedoms that people may have before God. No, this matter of restraint is a moral issue. The Israelites were called to live in the freedom that the LORD gave to them that they might serve and obey the LORD and not merely do as they please. Doing as one pleases is not true freedom, but its own kind of enslavement. Doing what pleases the LORD is what freedom is provided to accomplish. The LORD’s goal for a king to lead Israel is to guide them in doing what is right.

Israel’s king would need to guide them in doing what is right, by knowing himself what is right: “Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the LORD” (1 Samuel 10:25). Just as the people needed moral restraint, so did the king. The problem with wanting a king like all the other nations is that you end up with a king who is like all the other kings: “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take…he will appoint for himself…He will take…He will take…He will take…He will take…He will take” (1 Samuel 8:11-17). But the LORD’s ideal of a king would be very different. The LORD’s desire for a king is that he be a man who knows the Law: “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel” (Deuteronomy 17:18-20). It is in knowing and obeying the LORD that freedom comes: “But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:25).

What struck you in today’s reading? What questions were prompted from today’s reading?

Pastor Joe