And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.
I have sinned ... because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. This was a different reason from the former he had assigned. It was the language of a man driven to extremities; and even had it been true, the principles expounded by Samuel showed that it could have been no extenuation of the offence. The prophet then pronounced the irreversible sentence of the rejection of Saul and his family. Dean Stanley says that 'because he thought sacrifice greater than obedience, the curse descended upon him' ('Lectures on the Jewish Church,' second series, p. 22). Not so. He was judicially cut off for his disobedience of a positive command, which, as a theocratic king, it was his duty to have executed.