Bible Commentaries

War with Amalek. Saul's Disobedience and Rejection - 1 Samuel 15

As Saul had transgressed the commandment of God which was given tohim through Samuel, by the sacrifice which he offered at Gilgal in the warwith the Philistines at the very commencement of his reign, and hadthereby drawn upon himself the threat that his monarchy should not becontinued in perpetuity (1 Samuel 13:13-14); so his disobedience in the waragainst the Amalekites was followed by his rejection on the part of God. The Amalekites were the first heathen nation to attack the Israelites aftertheir deliverance out of Egypt, which they did in the most treacherousmanner on their journey from Egypt to Sinai; and they had been threatenedby God with extermination in consequence. This Moses enjoined uponJoshua, and also committed to writing, for the Israelites to observe in allfuture generations (Exodus 17:8-16). As the Amalekites afterwards manifestedthe same hostility to the people of God which they had displayed in thisfirst attack, on every occasion which appeared favourable to their ravages,the Lord instructed Samuel to issue the command to Saul, to wage waragainst Amalek, and to smite man and beast with the ban, i.e., to put all todeath (1 Samuel 15:1-3). But when Saul had smitten them, he not only left Agag the king alive, butspared the best of the cattle that he had taken as booty, and merelyexecuted the ban upon such animals as were worthless (1 Samuel 15:4-9). He wasrejected by the Lord for this disobedience, so that he was to be no longerking over Israel. His rejection was announced to him by Samuel (1 Samuel 15:10-23), and was not retracted in spite of his prayer for the forgiveness of hissin (1 Samuel 15:24-35). In fact, Saul had no excuse for this breach of the divinecommand; it was nothing but open rebellion against the sovereignty ofGod in Israel; and if Jehovah would continue King of Israel, He mustpunish it by the rejection of the rebel. For Saul no longer desired to be themedium of the sovereignty of Jehovah, or the executor of the commands ofthe God-king, but simply wanted to reign according to his own arbitrarywill. Nevertheless this rejection was not followed by his outwarddeposition. The Lord merely took away His Spirit, had David anointedking by Samuel, and thenceforward so directed the steps of Saul andDavid, that as time advanced the hearts of the people were turned awaymore and more from Saul to David; and on the death of Saul, the attemptof the ambitious Abner to raise his son Ishbosheth to the throne could notpossibly have any lasting success.

The account of the war against the Amalekites is a verycondensed one, and is restricted to a description of the conduct of Saul onthat occasion. Without mentioning either the time or the immediateoccasion of the war, the narrative commences with the command of Godwhich Samuel solemnly communicated to Saul, to go and exterminate thatpeople. Samuel commenced with the words, “Jehovah sent me to anointthee to be king over His people, over Israel,” in order to show to Saul theobligation which rested upon him to receive his commission as comingfrom God, and to proceed at once to fulfil it. The allusion to the anointingpoints back not to 1 Samuel 11:15, but to 1 Samuel 10:1.

1 Samuel 15:2

“Thus saith the Lord of Zebaoth, I have looked upon whatAmalek did to Israel, that it placed itself in his way when he came up outof Egypt” (Exodus 17:8). Samuel merely mentions this first outbreak ofhostility on the part of Amalek towards the people of Israel, because inthis the same disposition was already manifested which now made thepeople ripe for the judgment of extermination (vid., Exodus 17:14). Thehostility which they had now displayed, according to 1 Samuel 15:33, there was nonecessity for the prophet to mention particularly, since it was well knownto Saul and all Israel. When God looks upon a sin, directs His glancetowards it, He must punish it according to His own holiness. Thisפּקדתּי points at the very outset to the punishment about to beproclaimed.

1 Samuel 15:3

Saul is to smite and ban everything belonging to it without reserve, i.e., to put to death both man and beast. The last clause וגו is only an explanation and exemplification of וגו והחרמתּם. “From man to woman,” etc., i.e., men and women,children and sucklings, etc.

Saul summoned the people to war, and mustered them (those who weresummoned) at Telaim (this was probably the same place as the Telemmentioned in Joshua 15:24, and is to be looked for in the eastern portion ofthe Negeb). “Two hundred thousand foot, and ten thousand of the men ofJudah:” this implies that the two hundred thousand were from the othertribes. These numbers are not too large; for a powerful Bedouin nation,such as the Amalekites were, could not possibly be successfully attackedwith a small army, but only by raising the whole of the military force ofIsrael.

1 Samuel 15:5

He then advanced as far as the city of the Amalekites, thesituation of which is altogether unknown, and placed an ambush in thevalley. ויּרב does not come from ריב, to fight, i.e., toquarrel, not to give battle, but was understood even by the earlytranslators as a contracted form of ויּארב, the Hiphil of ארב. And modern commentators have generally understood it in thesame way; but Olshausen (Hebr. Gramm. p. 572) questions thecorrectness of the reading, and Thenius proposes to alter בּנּחל ויּרב into מלחמה ויּערך. נחל refers to avalley in the neighbourhood of the city of the Amalekites.

1 Samuel 15:6-7

Saul directed the Kenites to come out from among theAmalekites, that they might not perish with them (אספך, imp. Kal of אסף), as they had shown affection to the Israelites on theirjourney out of Egypt (compare Numbers 10:29 with Judges 1:16). He thensmote the Amalekites from Havilah in the direction towards Shur, whichlay before (to the east of) Egypt (cf. Genesis 25:18). Shur is the desert ofJifar, i.e., that portion of the desert of Arabia which borders upon Egypt(see at Genesis 16:7). Havilah, the country of the Chaulotaeans, on the borderof Arabia Petraea towards Yemen (see at Genesis 10:29).

1 Samuel 15:8-9

Their king, Agag, he took alive (on the name, see at Numbers 24:7),but all the people he banned with the edge of the sword, i.e., he had themput to death without quarter. “All,” i.e., all that fell into the hands of theIsraelites. For it follows from the very nature of the case that manyescaped, and consequently there is nothing striking in the fact thatAmalekites are mentioned again at a later period (1 Samuel 27:8; 1 Samuel 30:1; 2 Samuel 8:12). The last remnant was destroyed by the Simeonites upon themountains of Seir in the reign of Hezekiah (1 Chronicles 4:43). Only, king Agagdid Saul and the people (of Israel) spare, also “the best of the sheep andoxen, and the animals of the second birth, and the lambs and everythinggood; these they would not ban.” משׁנים, according to D. Kimchi and R. Tanch., are לבטן שׁניים, i.e., animalia secundo partu edita,which were considered superior to the others (vid., Roediger in Ges. Thes. p. 1451); and כּרים, pasture lambs, i.e., fat lambs. There is no necessity, therefore, for the conjecture of Ewald and Thenius,משׁמנּים, fattened, and כּרמים, vineyards; nor forthe far-fetched explanation given by Bochart, viz., camels with two humpsand camel-saddles, to say nothing of the fact that camel-saddles andvineyards are altogether out of place here. In “all that was good” the thingsalready mentioned singly are all included. המּלאכה, theproperty; here it is applied to cattle, as in Genesis 33:14. נמבזה =נבזה, despised, undervalued. The form of the word is notcontracted from a noun מבזה and the participle נבזה (Ges. Lehrgeb. p. 463), but seems to be a participle Niph. formed from a nounמבזה. But as such a form is contrary to all analogy, Ewald andOlshausen regard the reading as corrupt. נמס (from מסס): flowing away; used with reference to diseased cattle, or such ashave perished. The reason for sparing the best cattle is very apparent,namely selfishness. But it is not so easy to determine why Agag shouldhave been spared by Saul. It is by no means probable that he wishedthereby to do honour to the royal dignity. O. v. Gerlach's supposition,that vanity or the desire to make a display with a royal slave was theactual reason, is a much more probable one.

The word of the Lord came to Samuel: “It repenteth me that I have madeSaul king, for he hath turned away from me, and not set up (carried out)my word.” (On the repentance of God, see the remarks on Genesis 6:6.) Thatthis does not express any changeableness in the divine nature, but simplythe sorrow of the divine love at the rebellion of sinners, is evident enoughfrom 1 Samuel 15:29. יי מאחרי שׁוּב, to turn round fromfollowing God, in order to go his own ways. This was Saul's real sin. Hewould no longer be the follower and servant of the Lord, but would beabsolute ruler in Israel. Pride arising from the consciousness of his ownstrength, led him astray to break the command of God. What more Godsaid to Samuel is not communicated here, because it could easily begathered and supplied from what Samuel himself proceeded to do (seemore particularly 1 Samuel 15:16.). In order to avoid repetitions, only theprincipal feature in the divine revelation is mentioned here, and the detailsare given fully afterwards in the account of the fulfilment of theinstructions. Samuel was deeply agitated by this word of the Lord. “Itburned (in) him,” sc., wrath (אף, compare Genesis 31:36 with Genesis 30:2),not on account of the repentance to which God had given utterance athaving raised up Saul as king, nor merely at Saul's disobedience, but at thefrustration of the purpose of God in calling him to be king in consequenceof his disobedience, from which he might justly dread the worst results inrelation to the glory of Jehovah and his own prophetic labours.

(Note: “Many grave thoughts seem to have presented themselves atonce to Samuel and disturbed his mind, when he reflected upon thedishonour which might be heaped upon the name of God, and theoccasion which the rejection and deposition of Saul would furnish towicked men for blaspheming God. For Saul had been anointed by theministry of Samuel, and he had been chosen by God himself from allthe people, and called by Him to the throne. If, therefore, he wasnevertheless deposed, it seemed likely that so much would bedetracted from the authority of Samuel and the confidence of thepeople in his teaching, and, moreover, that the worship of God wouldbe overturned, and the greatest disturbance ensue; in fact, thatuniversal confusion would burst upon the nation. These were probablythe grounds upon which Samuel's great indignation rested.” - Calvin.)

The opinion that ל יחר is also used to signify deep distresscannot be established from 2 Samuel 4:8. “And he cried to Jehovah the wholenight,” sc., praying for Saul to be forgiven. But it was in vain. This isevident from what follows, where Samuel maintains the cause of his Godwith strength and decision, after having wrestled with God in prayer.

The next morning, after receiving the revelation from God (1 Samuel 15:11), Samuelrose up early, to go and meet Saul as he was returning from the war. Onthe way it was told him, “Saul has come to Carmel” - i.e., Kurmul, uponthe mountains of Judah to the south-east of Hebron (see at Joshua 15:55) - “setting himself a memorial” (יד, a hand, then a memorial ormonument, inasmuch as the hand calls attention to anything: see 2 Samuel 18:18), “and has turned and proceeded farther, and gone down to Gilgal”(in the valley of the Jordan, as in 1 Samuel 13:4).

When Samuel met him there, Saul attempted to hide his consciousness ofguilt by a feigned friendly welcome. “Blessed be thou of the Lord” (vid., 2:20; Genesis 14:19, etc.) was his greeting to the prophet; “I have set upthe word of Jehovah.”

But the prophet stripped his hypocrisy at once with the question, “Whatthen is this bleating of sheep in my ears, and a lowing of oxen that I hear?”Saul replied (1 Samuel 15:15), “They have brought them from the Amalekites,because the people spared the best sheep and oxen, to sacrifice them to theLord thy God; and the rest we have banned.” So that it was not Saul, butthe people, who had transgressed the command of the Lord, and that withthe most laudable intention, viz., to offer the best of the cattle that hadbeen taken, as a thank-offering to the Lord. The falsehood and hypocrisyof these words lay upon the very surface; for even if the cattle sparedwere really intended as sacrifices to the Lord, not only the people, butSaul also, would have had their own interests in view (vid., 1 Samuel 15:9), since theflesh of thank-offerings was appropriated to sacrificial meals.

Samuel therefore bade him be silent. הרף, “leave off,” excusingthyself any further. “I will tell thee what Jehovah hath said to me thisnight.” (The Chethibh ויּאמרוּ is evidently a copyist's error forויּאמר.) “Is it not true, when thou wast little in thine eyes (areference to Saul's own words, 1 Samuel 9:21), thou didst become head of thetribes of Israel? and Jehovah anointed thee king over Israel, and Jehovahsent thee on the way, and said, Go and ban the sinners, the Amalekites,and make war against them, until thou exterminatest them. And whereforehast thou nor hearkened to the voice of Jehovah, and hast fallen upon thebooty,” etc.? (תּעט, see at 1 Samuel 14:32.)
Even after this Saul wanted to justify himself, and to throw the blame ofsparing the cattle upon the people.

“Yea, I have hearkened to the voice of Jehovah (אשׁר serving, likeכּי ekil, to introduce the reply: here it is used in the sense ofasseveration, utique, yea), and have brought Agag the king of theAmalekites, and banned Amalek.” Bringing Agag he mentioned probably asa practical proof that he had carried out the war of extermination againstthe Amalekites.

Even the sparing of the cattle he endeavoured to defend as the fulfilment ofa religious duty. The people had taken sheep and oxen from the booty, “asfirstlings of the ban,” to sacrifice to Jehovah. Sacrificing the best of thebooty taken in war as an offering of first-fruits to the Lord, was not indeedprescribed in the law, but was a praiseworthy sign of piety, by which allhonour was rendered to the Lord as the giver of the victory (see Numbers 31:48.). This, Saul meant to say, was what the people had done on thepresent occasion; only he overlooked the fact, that what was banned to theLord could not be offered to Him as a burnt-offering, because, being mostholy, it belonged to Him already (Leviticus 27:29), and according to Deuteronomy 13:16,was to be put to death, as Samuel had expressly said to Saul (1 Samuel 15:3).

Without entering, therefore, into any discussion of the meaning of the ban,as Saul only wanted to cover over his own wrong-doings by giving thisturn to the affair, Samuel put a stop to any further excuses, by saying,“Hath Jehovah delight in burnt-offerings and slain-offerings as inhearkening to the voice of Jehovah? (i.e., in obedience to His word.)Behold, hearing (obeying) is better than slain-offerings, attending betterthan fat of rams.” By saying this, Samuel did not reject sacrifices asworthless; he did not say that God took no pleasure in burnt-offerings andslain-offerings, but simply compared sacrifice with obedience to thecommand of God, and pronounced the latter of greater worth than theformer. “It was as much as to say that the sum and substance of divineworship consisted in obedience, with which it should always begin, andthat sacrifices were, so to speak, simple appendices, the force and worthof which were not so great as of obedience to the precepts of God”(Calvin). But it necessarily follows that sacrifices without obedience to thecommandments of God are utterly worthless; in fact, are displeasing toGod, as Psalm 50:8., Isaiah 1:11., Isaiah 66:3, Jeremiah 6:20, and all the prophets,distinctly affirm. There was no necessity, however, to carry out this truthany further. To tear off the cloak of hypocrisy, with which Saul hoped tocover his disobedience, it was quite enough to affirm that God's firstdemand was obedience, and that observing His word was better thansacrifice; because, as the Berleb. Bible puts it, “in sacrifices a man offersonly the strange flesh of irrational animals, whereas in obedience he offershis own will, which is rational or spiritual worship” (Romans 12:8). Thisspiritual worship was shadowed forth in the sacrificial worship of the OldTestament. In the sacrificial animal the Israelite was to give up andsanctify his own person and life to the Lord. (For an examination of themeaning of the different sacrifices, see Pent. pp. 505ff., and Keil's BiblArchäol. §41ff.) But if this were the design of the sacrifices, it was clearenough that God did not desire the animal sacrifice in itself, but first andchiefly obedience to His own word. In 1 Samuel 15:22, טּוב is not to be connected as an adjective with זבח, “more than good sacrifice,” as the Sept. and Thenius render it; it israther to be taken as a predicate, “better than slain-offerings,” andמזּבח is placed first simply for the sake of emphasis. Anycontrast between good and bad sacrifices, such as the former constructionwould introduce into the words, is not only foreign to the context, but alsoopposed to the parallelism. For אילים חלב does notmean fat rams, but the fat of rams; the fat portions taken from the ram,which were placed upon the altar in the case of the slain-offerings, and forwhich חלב is the technical expression (compare Leviticus 3:9, Leviticus 3:16, withLeviticus 3:4, Leviticus 3:11, etc.). “For,” continued Samuel (1 Samuel 15:23), “rebellion is the sin ofsoothsaying, and opposition is heathenism and idolatry.” מרי andהפצר are the subjects, and synonymous in their meaning. קסם חטּאת, the sin of soothsaying, i.e., of divination inconnection with the worship of idolatrous and demoniacal powers. In the second clause idols are mentioned instead of idolatry, and comparedto resistance, but without any particle of comparison. Opposition iskeeping idols and teraphim, i.e., it is like worshipping idols and teraphim. און, nothingness, then an idol or image (vid., Isaiah 66:3; Hosea 4:15; Hosea 10:5, Hosea 10:8). On the (teraphim) as domestic and oracular deities, see at Genesis 31:19. Opposition to God is compared by Samuel to soothsaying andoracles, because idolatry was manifested in both of them. All consciousdisobedience is actually idolatry, because it makes self-will, the human I,into a god. So that all manifest opposition to the word and commandmentof God is, like idolatry, a rejection of the true God. “Because thou hastrejected the word of Jehovah, He hath rejected thee, that thou mayst be nolonger king.” ממּלך = מלך מהיוה (1 Samuel 15:26),away from being king.

This sentence made so powerful an impression upon Saul, that heconfessed, “I have sinned: for I have transgressed the command of the Lordand thy words, because I feared the people, and hearkened to their voice.” But these last words, with which he endeavoured to make his sin appearas small as possible, show that the consciousness of his guilt did not govery deep. Even if the people had really desired that the best of the cattleshould be spared, he ought not as king to have given his consent to theirwish, since God had commanded that they should all be banned (i.e.,destroyed); and even though he has yielded from weakness, this weaknesscould not lessen his guilt before God. This repentance, therefore, wasrather the effect of alarm at the rejection which had been announced tohim, than the fruit of any genuine consciousness of sin. “It was not trueand serious repentance, or the result of genuine sorrow of heart because hehad offended God, but was merely repentance of the lips arising from fearof losing the kingdom, and of incurring public disgrace” (C. v. Lapide). This is apparent even from 1 Samuel 15:25, but still more from 1 Samuel 15:30. In 1 Samuel 15:25 he notonly entreats Samuel for the forgiveness of his sin, but says, “Return withme, that I may pray to the Lord.” The שׁוּב presupposes thatSamuel was about to go away after the executing his commission. Saulentreated him to remain that he might pray, i.e., not only in order to obtainfor him the forgiveness of his sin through his intercession, but, accordingto 1 Samuel 15:30, to show him honour before the elders of the people and beforeIsrael, that his rejection might not be known.

This request Samuel refused, repeating at the same time the sentence ofrejection, and turned to depart. “Then Saul laid hold of the lappet of hismantle (i.e., his upper garment), and it tore” (lit. was torn off). That the(Niphal) ויּקּרע is correct, and is not to be altered into אתהּ ויּקרע, “Saul tore off the lappet,” according to therendering of the lxx, as Thenius supposes, is evident from theexplanation which Samuel gave of the occurrence (1 Samuel 15:28): “Jehovah hathtorn the sovereignty of Israel from thee to-day, and given it to thyneighbour, who is better than thou.” As Saul was about to hold back theprophet by force, that he might obtain from him a revocation of the divinesentence, the tearing of the mantle, which took place accidentally, andevidently without any such intention on the part of Saul, was to serve as asign of the rending away of the sovereignty from him. Samuel did not yet know to whom Jehovah would give it; he thereforeused the expression לרעך, as רע is applied to any onewith whom a person associates. To confirm his own words, he adds in 1 Samuel 15:29: “And also the Trust of Israel doth not lie and doth not repent, for Heis not a man to repent.” נצח signifies constancy, endurance,then confidence, trust, because a man can trust in what is constant. Thismeaning is to be retained here, where the word is used as a name for God,and not the meaning gloria, which is taken in 1 Chronicles 29:11 from theAramaean usage of speech, and would be altogether unsuitable here, wherethe context suggests the idea of unchangeableness. For a man's repentanceor regret arises from his changeableness, from the fluctuations in hisdesires and actions. This is never the case with God; consequently He isישׂראל נצח, the unchangeable One, in whom Israelcan trust, since He does not lie or deceive, or repent of His purposes. These words are spoken θεοπρεπῶς (theomorphically), whereas in 1 Samuel 15:11 and other passages, which speak of God as repenting, the words are to beunderstood ἀνθρωποπαθῶς (anthropomorphically; cf. Numbers 23:19).

After this declaration as to the irrevocable character of the determinationof God to reject Saul, Samuel yielded to the renewed entreaty of Saul, thathe would honour him by his presence before the elders and the people, andremained whilst Saul worshipped, not merely “for the purpose ofpreserving the outward order until a new king should take his place” (O. v. Gerlach), but also to carry out the ban upon Agag, whom Saul had spared.

After Saul had prayed, Samuel directed him to bring Agag the king of theAmalekites. Agag came מעדנּת, i.e., in a contented and joyousstate of mind, and said (in his heart), “Surely the bitterness of death isvanished,” not from any special pleasure at the thought of death, or from aheroic contempt of death, but because he thought that his life was to begranted him, as he had not been put to death at once, and was now aboutto be presented to the prophet (Clericus).

But Samuel pronounced the sentence of death upon him: “As thy swordhath made women childless, so be thy mother childless before women!”מנּשׁים is to be understood as a comparative: more childlessthan (other) women, i.e., the most childless of women, namely, becauseher son was the king. From these words of Samuel, it is very evident thatAgag had carried on his wars with great cruelty, and had therefore forfeitedhis life according to the lex talionis. Samuel then hewed him in pieces“before the Lord at Gilgal,” i.e., before the altar of Jehovah there; for theslaying of Agag being the execution of the ban, was an act performed forthe glory of God.

After the prophet had thus maintained the rights of Jehovah in thepresence of Saul, and carried out the ban upon Agag, he returned to hisown home at Ramah; and Saul went to his house at Gibeah. From that timeforward Samuel broke off all intercourse with the king whom Jehovah hadrejected. “For Samuel was grieved for Saul, and it repented the Lord that hehad made Saul king,” i.e., because Samuel had loved Saul on account of hisprevious election; and yet, as Jehovah had rejected him unconditionally, hefelt that he was precluded from doing anything to effect a change of heartin Saul, and his reinstatement as king.