Bible Commentaries

1 Samuel 19:11-12

In this passage there is a minute account of an appalling danger to which David was exposed.

I. God's servants are frequently exposed to alarming dangers. (1) This danger came at an unexpected time. (2) This danger proceeded from a powerful enemy. (3) This danger assumed a most alarming aspect.

II. God's servants are frequently warned of approaching danger. (1) David's warning came from different sources. (2) David's warning demanded immediate attention. (3) David's warning led to decisive action.

III. God's servants are frequently delivered from impending dangers. The context shows that God delivers His servants in four ways: (1) By friendly mediation. (2) By personal watchfulness. (3) By conjugal fidelity. (4) By Divine interposition.

Parker, City Temple, vol. i., p. 81.

References: 1 Samuel 19:11-12 and 1 Samuel 19:18.—F. W. Krummacher, David the King of Israel, pp. 68, 86. 1 Samuel 19:18-20.—G. B. Ryley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii. p. 285; Payne-Smith, Bampton Lectures, 1869, p. 128.

1 Samuel 19:20

Prophecy, according to the notions popularly entertained of it, might be defined to be a mere prediction of future events, and the prophet one who utters such prediction. This definition, however, does not embrace the essentials of the thing defined. The prophet of former days was, in all substantial points, identical with the preacher of these. The commission of both prophet and preacher is to set forth the Divine oracles; to speak to their fellow-sinners the word which proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord. Prediction and instruction are only different portions of the Divine word. Our text presents to us two great subjects for consideration. (1) A spiritual influence exerted upon certain persons. (2) The instrumentality employed in making this impression.

I. Both the messengers of Saul and Saul himself were constrained by a strange and irresistible influence to prophesy before Samuel. Saul stripping off his royal apparel and lying down in the dust before Samuel presents to us a picture of the sinner's self-abasement, when the convicting and converting influences of the Holy Spirit first pour in upon his heart. It was marvellous that a hard and bad man should thus be absorbed into the vortex of a spiritual influence; that he should be turned aside from his purpose by the coming in upon him of a holy ecstasy, which rapt him into compliance with the suggestions of the Spirit.

II. It was the sight of the Church's ministers uttering under the Spirit's influences the mysteries of the Divine word, which made so great an impression on Saul and his messengers. It is not, however, by any mere power of moral persuasion that the alienated heart of man can be effectually turned to God. The Spirit must second the prophet's testimony, putting life and energy into the preached word and causing it to penetrate into the springs of the character.

E. M. Goulburn, Occasional Sermons, p. 97.

Reference: 1 Samuel 19:22.—Parker, vol. vii., p. 72.

1 Samuel 19:24

We are not told any remarkable points in the character or early discipline of Saul; there were probably none to tell. As we have often had occasion to notice in the earlier Scripture narratives, a man not distinguished from his fellows by any peculiar gifts, merely a specimen of the ordinary human material, may nevertheless be brought most livingly before us; we may be compelled to feel that he is an individual man, one of ourselves, and as such to care for him.

I. There are moments in the mind of the dullest, most prosaic man, when unknown springs seem to be opened in him, when either some new and powerful affection, or quite as often the sense of a vocation, fills him with thoughts and causes him to utter words which are quite alien from his ordinary habits, and which have yet in them a pledge and savour of originality. It is a fact of this kind which the record discloses to us. "God gave him another heart—the Spirit of God came upon him"—these are the words which tell us what that prophetic impulse denoted. However unwonted might be the thoughts which stirred in him and the words which he poured forth, they could not have come from some irregular tumultuous excitement, they must have proceeded from the very spirit of calmness and order. Saul was among the prophets precisely because he confessed the presence of such a spirit of calmness and order.

II. Saul is no monster who has won power by false means and then plunges at once into a reckless abuse of it—no apostate who casts off the belief in God, and sets up some Ammonite or Phoenician idol. He merely forgets the Lord and the teacher who had imparted to him that new life and inspiration, he merely fails to remember that he is under a law and that he has a vocation. The calm spirit of trust and hope has been resisted and grieved, and there comes upon him an evil spirit from the Lord, an accusing conscience warning him of what he had been, throwing its dark shadow upon the present, making the future look dim and gloomy.

III. There are glimpses of light in the later life of Saul, which we refer at once to a Divine source, which it would be sinful to refer to any other. The love and loyalty of David, in sparing his life, were not unrewarded. They struck out sparks of love in him, they made it evident that there was something deeper and healthier beneath all his strangest distortions of mind. And that sacred inspiration, of which our text speaks, which recalled the almost forgotten question: "Is Saul among the prophets?" though it came mixed with a wild kind of insanity, yet proclaimed that God's Spirit, which bloweth where it listeth, had not left this building to be a mere possession for the birds of night.

F. D. Maurice, Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, p. 17.

References: 1 Samuel 19:24.—J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 1st series, p. 90. 1 Samuel 20:3.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1870; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. v., p. 337. 1Sam 20-22.—W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 65.