CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1 Samuel 10:11. “Is Saul also among the prophets?” “According to its origin, here given, this proverb does not merely express surprise at the sudden unexpected calling of a man to another calling in life, or to a high and honourable position. The personal and moral qualities of Saul, perhaps the religious-moral character of his family, or, at least, the mean opinion that was entertained of Saul’s qualities and capacities, intellectually, religiously, and morally, formed the ground of surprise at his sudden assumption of the prophetic character.” (Erdmann).
1 Samuel 10:12. “Who is their father?” A somewhat obscure phrase. The Septuagint and some other versions read, ‘Who is his father?’ i.e., Who would have expected the son of Kish to be found among the prophets? Other readings, as the authorised version, understand father to refer to the head of the prophets, and the question to reflect blame upon him for admitting such a person as Saul into the company of the prophets. Wordsworth paraphrases, ‘Who is the father of the prophets? Not man, but God. And God can make even Saul, whom ye despise, to be a prophet also.’ Kiel—‘Is their father a prophet, then?’ i.e., have they the prophetic spirit by virtue of their birth? ‘The speaker declares,’ says Bunsen, ‘against the contemptuous remark about the son of Kish, that the prophets, too, owed their gift to no peculiarly lofty lineage. Saul also might, therefore, receive this gift as a gift from God, not as a patrimony.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 10:11-12; 1 Samuel 10:27
SAUL AMONG THE PROPHETS
I. God often accomplishes his purposes by agencies both unlooked for and despised. That a Hebrew slave should be taken from a dungeon and made lord of Egypt was no doubt an event as undesired as it was unexpected by the nobles of Pharaoh’s court, and that this despised younger brother should be the instrument of saving all his house from starvation was as equally far from the desire and expectation of Jacob’s elder sons. That another Hebrew youth should be educated and fitted in Pharaoh’s court to become the axe which should be laid at the root of the tyranny of Egypt, was another event which men little expected to come to pass, and which crossed the wishes and desires of many. And it as little accorded with the expectation and wish of the majority of the Israelites who knew Saul the son of Kish that he should be found first among the prophets and then upon the throne. Those who had known the young man from his youth never expected to see him in any other position than that in which he had grown to manhood, and a larger number were as surprised as they were disappointed when they found that a member of the smallest tribe of Israel, and one who had given no proof of his power to rule, was to be elevated to the throne of the nation. But this has been the general method of the Divine working in the world. Not only in the establishment of the Gospel kingdom but in the accomplishment of most of His purposes, which are indeed all subservient to that one great Divine purpose—“God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). Men look in the high places of the earth for those who are to do the great things of the world, but God puts His hand upon some obscure and despised and unlikely instrument and uses him for the work that “they may see, and know, and consider, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it” (Isaiah 41:20).
II. The way in which men ought to regard this method of the Divine working. There are many men among the teachers of the Church of God who have been raised from a much more lowly position. Yet when another from a similar position reveals that God has bestowed gifts and graces upon him also, those who can boast no higher origin exclaim with astonishment and scorn, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” It behoves all who ask such a question to consider the origin of all intellectual and spiritual endowments—to remember that they are all bestowed by the common Father, who is not accountable to them for the distribution of them. But the spirit which would exclude some from a participation in them manifested itself very early in the Church of God. When “the Lord took of the Spirit that was upon Moses, and gave it unto the seventy elders:” and “they prophesied and did not cease,” and “Eldad and Medad prophesied in the camp, there ran a young man and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said, My lord, Moses, forbid them” (Numbers 11:25-28). But Moses remembered and acknowledged “who hath made man’s mouth, and who maketh the dumb, or the seeing, or the blind” (Exodus 4:11)—he knew whose was the Spirit which had rested so abundantly upon him, and that all the servants of God had one common Father, and he therefore answered, “Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them” (Numbers 11:29). This is the attitude which becomes all God’s servants to take when they behold a Saul among the prophets—it behoves them all to ask the question asked by one in the days of Saul, “But who is their father?” It was as great a surprise to the disciples at Jerusalem to hear of the New Testament Saul among the preachers as it was for the inhabitants of Gibeah to see the Old Testament Saul among the prophets. But the surprise in both cases arose from forgetfulness of the truth contained in the heart-searching question afterwards put by that great apostle to the Corinthian church—“For who maketh thee to differ from one another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1 Samuel 10:11-12. Let not the worst be despaired of, yet let not an external show of devotion, and a sudden change for the present, be too much relied on; for Saul among the prophets was Saul still.—Henry.