CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1 Samuel 16:1. “How long wilt thou mourn,” etc. “These words show that the prophet had not yet been able to reconcile himself to the hidden ways of the Lord; that he was still afraid that the people and kingdom of God would suffer from the rejection of Saul, and that he continued to mourn for Saul, not merely from his own personal attachment to the fallen king, but also, and perhaps still more, from anxiety for the welfare of Israel.” (Keil). “Thine horn.” “A different word from the vial spoken of at 1 Samuel 10:1” (Biblical Commentary.) “Horns were anciently used for holding liquors, which were sometimes drunk out of them. They were hung up on the walls of rooms or the poles of tents” (Jamieson.) “Jesse the Bethlehemite.” “The genealogy of Jesse is traced to Boaz (Ruth 4:18-21). But the object was merely to prove that he was a link in the Messianic chain of descent, and it is left quite unknown whether Jesse was the eldest of Obed and Boaz’s family, or a younger son.” (Jamieson.) “I have provided.” “The language is remarkable and seems to imply a difference between this and the former king. Saul was the people’s choice, … the next was to be of God’s nomination.” (Jamieson.)
1 Samuel 16:2. “How can I go,” etc. “The sacred historian does not conceal the fact that Samuel was afraid … here is an evidence of veracity.” (Wordsworth.) “This fear on the part of the prophet, who did not generally show himself either hesitating or timid, can only be explained, as we may see from 1 Samuel 16:14, on the supposition that Saul was already given up to the power of the evil spirit, so that the very worst might be dreaded from his madness if he discovered that Samuel had anointed another king. That there was some foundation for Samuel’s anxiety, we may infer from the fact that the Lord did not blame him for his fear, but pointed out the way by which he might anoint David without attracting attention.” (Keil.) Say, I am come to sacrifice,” etc. “There is here an appearance of duplicity sanctioned by Divine authority which it is important for us to examine. It was the purpose of God that David should be anointed at this time as Saul’s successor, and as the ancestor and type of His Christ. It was not the purpose of God that Samuel should stir up a civil war by setting up David as Saul’s rival. Secrecy, therefore, was a necessary part of the transaction. But secrecy and concealment are not the same as duplicity and falsehood. Concealment of a good purpose for a good purpose is clearly justifiable, e.g. in war, in medical treatment, in State policy, and in the ordinary affairs of life. In the providential government of the world, and in God’s dealings with individuals, concealment of His purpose till the proper time for its development is the rule rather than the exception, and must be so.” (Biblical Commentary.)
1 Samuel 16:4. “The elders trembled,” etc. “The anxious inquiry of the elders presupposes that even in the time of Saul the prophet Samuel was frequently in the habit of coming unexpectedly to one place and another, for the purpose of reproving and punishing wrong-doing and sin.” (Keil.) “They might have been conscious of secret guilt, and supposed that Samuel coming among them as the judicial vicegerent of God, was about to investigate and punish the commission of some crime. The inhabitants of this place have long been proverbial for their refractory spirit; for even in modern times they have been often at variance with the reigning power.” (Hardy’s Notices of the Holy Land.)
1 Samuel 16:5. “I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord.” “It is evident from this that the prophet was accustomed to turn his visits to account by offering sacrifices, and so building up the people in fellowship with the Lord.” (Keil.) “Sanctify yourselves.” By the preparation prescribed in Exodus 19:14-15. “He sanctified Jesse,” etc., i.e., he took care that they were sanctified.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 16:1-5
SAMUEL’S VISIT TO BETHLEHEM
I. God helps man to a better condition by the instrumentality of man. Those parts of the earth that are by nature useless to man, may by cultivation be made to minister to his comfort. Weeds and unfruitful trees may be uprooted, and trees yielding fruit and herbs for the service of man may take their place. But man himself must work the change. If the desert is to rejoice and blossom as the rose, human instrumentality must exert itself. And so is it in matters relating to man’s spiritual and moral well-being. If a moral wilderness is to be transformed into a garden of the Lord, God uses men, or a man, to do the work. Israel was now suffering from the misrule of a king who would not be ruled by God, and God purposed to bring about a change, to inaugurate a new and brighter era for the people, both materially and spiritually. And He chose a man to indicate His rejection of the king who had brought no blessing to the nation, and to point out him who was to lift it to a higher condition of prosperity both morally and commercially. Samuel, in the hand of God, was the man who uprooted the fruitless tree and planted in its place one which was to bear fruit for Israel’s sustenance and growth. So the higher and more blessed rule of the gospel dispensation was proclaimed to humanity by man. The state of man by nature is a state of moral misrule—of spiritual unfruitfulness; and to man was entrusted the work of proclaiming to the world deliverance from the dominion of the powers of darkness and the advent of a new King of men, under whose beneficent rule first the wilderness of individual hearts, and then by degrees all the moral wastes upon the face of the earth shall break forth into spiritual fruitfulness and beauty. When Our Lord commissioned His Apostles to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), He commanded them to proclaim the accession of a new Sovereign, under whose government all the subjects of all the kingdoms of the world might, if they were willing, be lifted into the glorious liberty of the children of God. He has ordained that by human lips this new era shall be made known to man—that by human instrumentality men shall learn who it is that is God’s Anointed One.
II. Those who are instruments of good to man sometimes shrink from the work which God calls them to do. And Samuel said, “How can I go?” God’s methods of making His children instruments of good to others are often most perplexing and painful to them, and tasks are given them to perform from which they draw back in fear and trembling. Joseph was made an instrument of great blessing both to the nation of Egypt and to his own family, but the way in which he became such a benefactor was a very rough one, and if he could have seen it lying before him without seeing the goal to which it would bring him, he would probably have asked Samuel’s question, “How can I go?” When Moses was called by God to go and stand before Pharaoh, he drew back from the mission with which God charged him with such persistency that “the anger of the Lord was kindled against him” (Exodus 4:13), although in his case the reluctance apparently arose rather from a sense of his own inability than from fear of evil to his own person. Yet in his case as in that of Samuel the cause of the shrinking back was the same, viz., a momentary failure of that full confidence in God which was an eminent feature in the characters of both these good men. The hesitation in both was but a transient cloud which only dimmed for a very short season the almost perfect obedience which each of them rendered to their God. It sufficed to show that both were men of like passions and infirmities with ourselves, and links them with God’s honoured servants in all ages, all of whom have their hours of faithlessness and consequently of fear.
III. The true servants of God in such circumstances tell out their perplexity and fear to God Himself. This is a certain cure for attacks of cowardice arising from mistrust of God’s power and wisdom. When Jonah was entrusted with a distasteful and perilous task there is no record that he made known to God his weakness and fear. He took counsel with no one but himself, and the result was ignominious defeat. But neither Moses nor Samuel seek, like the son of Amittai, to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3), but to the Lord Himself they make known their fears and their reasons for wavering. And the result in both cases is the same—their faith rises to the emergency, and in the protection and help afforded to them in performing the duty enjoined upon them they have a fresh proof that God never sends His servants to “warfare at their own charges.”
IV. Those who are instruments of good to their fellow-creatures are often regarded by them with distrust and suspicion. No man in the land of Israel could have had any reason to regard Samuel in any other light than in that of a true friend, yet the elders of the town meet him with the question, “Comest thou peaceably?” A consciousness of guilt is often at the bottom of this distrust and dislike. The entrance of a faithful man of God into some circles or localities is unwelcome because his very presence arouses in the ungodly a sense of their guilt. The feeling may not be very clearly defined even to themselves, but it is the cause which makes them dislike the company of such a man. The officer of justice, whether he be clothed in a policeman’s uniform or a judge’s ermine, is regarded by an innocent man as a “minister of God for good” (Romans 13:4). But the guilty man does not feel at rest in his presence. Samuel was a man of God whose very presence was enough to arouse in guilty men a sense of their deserts, and he was also a judge in Israel whose visit to Bethlehem might have been regarded with fear by the villagers, because they knew that they had been guilty of outward acts of disobedience to the law of God. Or their distrustful reception of Samuel might have arisen from a suspicion that he was to be the instrument of a change of rule in Israel. Men are often so little alive to their true interests, and so averse to any change, that they resent any disturbance in the existing order of things, even although it would bring much blessing to themselves. The Bethlehemites might have been certain that any change which came to them from God through Samuel would be for good, and not for evil, and yet fear of Saul and an unwillingness to be disturbed might have made them prefer the rule of their present unworthy monarch to a new order of government. A fear of immediate unpleasant consequences and a cowardly and unworthy content with things as they are has often made men regard with suspicion and with positive hatred those who have desired to bring them under a better rule—those who have endeavoured to free them individually from the tyranny of Satan, or, nationally from bondage to Satan’s emissaries. The reformers of all ages, both in the Church and in the State, have been coldly welcomed by the majority of those to whom God has made them instruments of blessing. But this need not be a matter of either surprise or discouragement when we remember that those whom the Son of God came to make “free indeed” (John 8:36) cried, “Crucify Him! crucify Him!” and that His great apostle whose heart’s desire and prayer was for the salvation of his fellow-countrymen (Romans 10:1) received from them this sentence, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that He should live” (Acts 22:22).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1 Samuel 16:1. It is an unnatural senselessness not to be affected with the dangers, with the sins, of our governors. God did not blame this sorrow, but moderated it. It was not the affection He forbade but the measure. In this is the difference betwixt good men and evil; that evil men mourn not for their own sins, good men do so mourn for the sins of others that they will hardly be taken off. If Samuel mourn because Saul hath cast away God by his sin, he must cease to mourn because God hath cast away Saul from reigning over Israel in His just punishment. A good heart hath learned to rest itself upon the justice of God’s decree, and forgets all earthly respects when it looks up to heaven.—Bp. Hall.
The affairs of the kingdom of God go their way without break or halt according to God’s high thoughts and decrees, though human sin and its attendant judgment (as in Saul’s case), or human weakness (as in Samuel’s inordinate grief for Saul), may seem to hinder the plans of the Divine wisdom. But it is also precisely by human sin and foolishness that the history of God’s kingdom under the guidance of the Divine wisdom and providence receives new occasions and impulses to wider and higher development according to the aims which God sets before Himself.—Lange’s Commentary.
God demands in the souls He sets apart for Himself and for the guidance of others, such a dying to all things that He does not allow them to regard any other interest than His, whatever reason may be alleged.—Berlenberger Bible.
Remedies for improper mourning.
1. Submission to the will of God (“I have rejected him”).
2. Diligence in present work for God (“Fill thy horn and go”).
3. Hope that God will bring a better future (“I have provided me a king”)—Translator of Lange’s Commentary.
In the providence of God, there is a blessed arrangement by which the new duties and cares which are occasioned by bereavements, losses, or disappointments become the means of alleviating distress and improving the soul.… Persons in public positions are summoned from their humiliation and melancholy, induced by the defeat of favourite schemes, to endeavour to retrieve their influence, and do some good before they die. The sense of personal and relative responsibility is thus made by God to rebuke and cure a sorrow deemed inconsolable.…
1. There is a duty to the Lord.… It would not be reverent to quarrel with His providence: it would be disobedient and impious …
2. There is a duty to your own soul. “Fill thine horn with oil,” and go to the new duties to which you are called, that it may be well with yourself.
3. There is a duty to others. Samuel had something more to live for than his own interest. His grief was a public calamity. The sorrow into which he was plunged might do injury.… When there are others to care for, our grief must not be immoderate.—Steel.
1 Samuel 16:2. Perhaps desire of full direction drew from him this question, but not without a mixture of diffidence; for the manner of doing it doth not so much trouble him as the success. It is not to be expected that the most faithful hearts should be always in an equal height of resolution: God does not chide Samuel, but instruct him.—Bishop Hall.
1 Samuel 16:4. Hundreds of years after this, when the heavenly light was seen in the same place by the shepherds, they too were “sore afraid;” but there was as little to fear in the one case as in the other; for in both there was a provided sacrifice, and in both the mission was one of peace; yea, as Samuel came to anoint David to be a king, so the angel-heralded Jesus appeared “to make us kings and priests unto our Lord and His Father.”—Dr. W. M. Taylor.