Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD.
Turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord. The erring but proud and obstinate monarch was not humbled. He was conscience-smitten for the moment; but his confession proceeded not from sincere repentance, but from a sense of danger and desire of averting the sentence denounced against him. For the sake of public appearance he besought Samuel not to allow their serious differences to transpire, but to join with him in a public act of worship. Under the influence of his painfully agitated feelings, he designed to offer sacrifice, partly to express his gratitude for the recent victory, and partly to implore mercy and a reversal of his doom. It was, in another view, a politic scheme, that Samuel might be betrayed into a countenancing of his design in reserving the cattle for sacrificing. Samuel declined to accompany him.