1 Samuel 15
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CHAPTER 15
The Lord Rejects Saul as King (15:1–35)
1–3 Several hundred years earlier, the Amalekites55 had attacked and harassed the Israelites as they were crossing the desert on their way to the promised land (Exodus 17:8–16; Numbers 14:45; Deuteronomy 25:17–19). Therefore, once the Israelites had become secure in their new land, God determined to punish the Amalekites. Now, with Saul as Israel’s king, the time had come for this punishment to be carried out.
God, through His prophet Samuel, gave Saul specific instructions concerning how the Amalekites were to be punished. Saul was to totally destroy everything living that belonged to them (verse 3). The Amalekites and all their possessions were to be “devoted”—given over—to the Lord; no human or animal was to be spared for any reason.56
4–9 In these verses, the campaign against the Amalekites is described.57 Two points are important: first, Saul and his army spared Agag the king and the best of the livestock (verse 9). Second, the Israelites were unwilling to destroy the good animals; they only destroyed the weak and useless ones. Saul deliberately disobeyed God’s word. He was guilty of both rebellion and arrogance (verse 23).
Why had Saul disobeyed? First, he coveted the “best” livestock, and no doubt he wanted to please his troops by letting them have some too. But in sparing these animals, he was taking for himself and his men that which had been devoted to the Lord—by the Lord’s command. Saul was committing the sin of Achan all over again (see Joshua 7:1). Worse, Saul was leaving for the Lord only those animals that were despised and weak (verse 9). No wonder the Lord was grieved (verse 11).
10–12 The Lord revealed to Samuel that He was grieved that He had made Saul king. Is the Lord acknowledging here that He made a mistake? Had He changed His mind about Saul?
No, the Lord doesn’t make mistakes; He doesn’t change His mind like humans do (see verse 29). He knew how Saul would turn out—though He never forced Saul to do what he did. But God still “grieves” when we fail Him, when we disobey and rebel; God is personally involved with us as individuals. He grieves over us just as a human father grieves over away ward son. God never likes to see us fail. And so God would have preferred that He had never made Saul king; yet according to His larger purposes, it had always been His plan to do so.58
When Samuel went to find Saul, he learned that Saul had gone to set up a monument in his own honor (verse 12). Saul was increasingly taking credit for himself and giving less and less credit to God.
13–19 When Samuel met up with Saul, Saul lied to him: “I have carried out the LORD’s instructions” (verse 13). When Samuel asked where the noise of animals was coming from, Saul shifted the blame to his men: “The soldiers brought them” (verse 15). Then Saul told the worst lie of all: he said they had spared the animals in order to sacrifice them to the Lord.
In verse 17, Samuel says that Saul had once been small in [his] own eyes (see 1 Samuel 9:21). But now he had become great in his own eyes: he was building monuments to himself and he was disobeying God’s word. He was setting himself above God, not under Him. This was evil in the eyes of the Lord (verse 19).
20–23 Saul stubbornly persisted in his lie that the men had saved the animals in order to sacrifice them to the Lord. Then Samuel answered Saul in one of the best-known statements in the Old Testament: To obey is better than sacrifice (verse 22).
Samuel was not saying that offerings and sacrifices were displeasing to God; after all, God, through Moses, had commanded that they be offered to Him. But they had to be offered in the right spirit, that is, with an obedient heart. God would not accept sacrifices from those who deliberately disobeyed Him, who did not love Him (see Amos 5:21–24; Mark 12:32–34).
Samuel went on to compare Saul’s rebellion to the sin of divination59 (verse 23), which in essence was the making of an alliance with a false god; the punishment for divination was death (Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 19:26; 20:6,27). Then Samuel compared Saul’s arrogance to the evil of idolatry;60 Saul had, in effect, made himself into an idol; he had put himself in the place of God.
There are many people today who believe that all they have to do to please God is to “offer a sacrifice,” to observe some ritual, to attend some church. But God does not look on these outward observances: God looks at the heart. First of all, we must love God with all our heart (see Deuteronomy 6:4–5 and comment); only then will these observances bring pleasure to God and blessing to ourselves.
24–25 Because Saul had rejected God’s word-indeed, rejected God Himself-God in turn rejected Saul as king over Israel (verse 26). God’s rejection did not take effect immediately, but His judgment had fallen irrevocably.
Saul confessed, “I have sinned” (verse 24). But Samuel knew his confession was not sincere.61 Saul needed Samuel’s affirmation in order to retain the favor of the people. Saul wanted “quick forgiveness.” He wanted Samuel to come back with him so that the people would see that Samuel was still supporting him.
26–29 Samuel at first refused. Saul then grabbed Samuel’s robe and tore it. Samuel told Saul that, in a similar way, his kingdom would be torn from him and given to one better—David (verse 28). From the beginning, God had planned that David, from the tribe of Judah, should establish the royal line of Israel (Genesis 49:10). God did not change his mind (verse 29).
30–33 Saul again asked Samuel to come back with him to Gilgal and honor him before the people (verse 30). This time Samuel agreed. But Samuel did not go with Saul in order to “honor” him but rather to carry out God’s sentence on Agag, the Amalekite king. Samuel put Agag to death for the crimes he had committed. Since Agag had killed many people-leaving their mothers childless-it was fitting that his own mother should be left childless also. He thus received a punishment commensurate with his crimes.
34–35 Samuel mourned for Saul. He mourned because he had hoped that Saul would do well. Saul had great gifts, great potential, and yet in the end that potential was not realized. Why? Because, first of all, Saul hadn’t put his trust in God. He feared the Philistines (1 Samuel 13:6–7), he feared his own men (verse 24); but he didn’t fear God, as Samuel had commanded (1 Samuel 12:24). Saul was more interested in receiving honor from men (verse 30) than he was in receiving honor from God (see John 2:44; 12:42–43).
The second reason for Saul’s failure to realize his potential was his disobedience. Trust and obedience go together; as has been said, they are like two blades of a scissors: you can’t have one without the other. Trust (faith) comes first, but true faith is always accompanied by obedience (see James 2:14–26).
Saul failed both in trusting and obeying. Today there are many Christians like Saul who are not living up to their potential for God, and the reasons are the same. At some point in their lives they have shown a lack of trust or they have disobeyed God in some matter, and they have ceased to grow in their spiritual lives. The words of a popular hymn best sum up the Christian life: “Trust and obey, there is no other way.”