And now, behold, the king walketh before you. — No doubt, here pointing to Saul by his side. The term “walketh before you implied generally that the kingly office included the guiding and governing the people, as well as the especial duty of leading them in war; from henceforth they must accept his authority on all occasions, not merely in great emergencies. Both king and people must understand that the days when Saul could quietly betake himself to his old pursuits on the farm of the Ephraim hills were now past for ever. He must lead, and they must follow. The metaphor is taken from the usual place of a shepherd in the East, where he goes before his flock. Compare the words of our Lord, who uses the same image of a shepherd walking before his sheep (John 10:27): “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
And I am old and grayheaded. — Here the prophet, with some pathos, refers to the elders’ own words at Ramah (chap 8:5). Yes, said the seer, I am old — grown grey in your service; listen to me while I ask you what manner of service that has been. Can any one find in it a flaw? has it not been pure and disinterested throughout?
My sons are with you. — Yes, old indeed, for my offspring are numbered now among the grown men of the people. Possibly, however, a tinge of mortified feeling at the rejection of himself and his family, mixed with a desire to recommend his sons to the favour and goodwill of the nation, is at the bottom of this mention of them. — Speaker’s Commentary. It is evident that these sons, whose conduct as Samuel’s deputies had excited the severest criticism on the part of the elders (1 Samuel 8:5), had been reduced — with the full consent, of course, of their father, who up to this period exercised evidently supreme power in all the coasts of Israel — to the condition of mere private citizens.
From my childhood unto this day. — Samuel’s life had in truth been constantly before the public observation from very early days; well known to all were the details of his career — his early consecration under peculiar and exceptional circumstances to the sanctuary service, the fact of the “word of the Lord” coming directly to him when still a boy, his recognition by the people directly afterwards as a prophet, then his restless, unwearied work during the dark days which followed the fall of Shiloh. It was indeed a public life. He would have Israel, now they had virtually rejected his rule, think over that long busy life of his for a moment, and then pronounce a judgment on it.