Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Samuel 10:2 - 10:2

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Samuel 10:2 - 10:2


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To confirm the consecration of Saul as king over Israel, which had been effected through the anointing, Samuel gave him three more signs which would occur on his journey home, and would be a pledge to him that Jehovah would accompany his undertakings with His divine help, and practically accredit him as His anointed. These signs, therefore, stand in the closest relation to the calling conveyed to Saul through his anointing.

1Sa 10:2

The first sign: “When thou goest away from me to-day (i.e., now), thou wilst meet two men at Rachel's sepulchre, on the border of Benjamin at Zelzah; and they will say unto thee, The asses of thy father, which thou wentest to seek, are found. Behold, they father hath given up הָעֲתֹנֹות אֶת־דִּבְרֵי, the words (i.e., talking) about the asses, and troubleth himself about you, saying, What shall I do about my son?” According to Gen 35:16., Rachel's sepulchre was on the way from Bethel to Bethlehem, only a short distance from the latter place, and therefore undoubtedly on the spot which tradition has assigned to it since the time of Jerome, viz., on the site of the Kubbet Rahil, half an hour to the north-west of Bethlehem, on the left of the road to Jerusalem, about an hour and a half from the city (see at Gen 35:20). This suits the passage before us very well, if we give up the groundless assumption that Saul came to Samuel at Ramah and was anointed by him there, and assume that the place of meeting, which is not more fully defined in 1 Samuel 9, was situated to the south-west of Bethlehem.

(Note: As the account of Saul's meeting with Samuel, in 1 Samuel 9, when properly understood, is not at variance with the tradition concerning the situation of Rachel's tomb, and the passage before us neither requires us on the one had to understand the Ephratah of Gen 35:19 and Gen 48:7 as a different place from Bethlehem, and erase “that is Bethlehem” from both passages as a gloss that has crept into the text, and then invent an Ephratah in the neighbourhood of Bethel between Benjamin and Ephraim, as Thenius does, nor warrants us on the other hand in transferring Rachel's tomb to the neighbourhood of Bethel, in opposition to the ordinary tradition, as Kurtz proposes; so the words of Jer 31:15, “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children,” etc., furnish no evident that Rachel's tomb was at Ramah (i.e., er Râm). “For here (in the cycle of prophecy concerning the restoration of all Israel, Jer 30-33) Rachel's weeping is occasioned by the fact of the exiles of Benjamin having assembled together in Ramah (Jer 40:1), without there being any reason why Rachel's tomb should be sought for in the neighbourhood of this Ramah” (Delitzsch on Gen 35:20).)

The expression “in the border of Benjamin” is not at variance with this. It is true that Kubbet Rahil is about an hour and a quarter from the southern boundary of Benjamin, which ran past the Rogel spring, through the valley of Ben-hinnom (Jos 18:16); but the expression קְבוּרָה עִם must not be so pressed as to be restricted to the actual site of the grave, since otherwise the further definition “at Zelzah” would be superfluous, as Rachel's tomb was unquestionably a well-known locality at that time. If we suppose the place called Zelzah, the situation of which has not yet been discovered,

(Note: Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 29) supposes Zelzah to be unsuitable to the context, if taken as the name of a place, and therefore follows the ἁλλομένους μεγάλα of the lxx, and renders the word “in great haste;” but he has neither given any reason why the name of a place is unsuitable here, nor considered that the Septuagint rendering is merely conjectural, and has nothing further to support it than the fact that the translators rendered צָלַח ἐφήλατο, “he sprang upon him,” in 1Sa 10:6 and 1Sa 11:6, and took צלצח to be an emphatic form of צלח.)

to have been about mid-way between Rachel's tomb and the Rogel spring, Samuel could very well describe the spot where Saul would meet the two men in the way that he has done. This sign, by confirming the information which Samuel had given to Saul with reference to the asses, was to furnish him with a practical proof that what Samuel had said to him with regard to the monarchy would quite as certainly come to pass, and therefore not only to deliver him from all anxiety as to the lost animals of his father, but also to direct his thoughts to the higher destiny to which God had called him through Samuel's anointing.

1Sa 10:3-4

The second sign (1Sa 10:3, 1Sa 10:4): “Then thou shalt go on forward from thence, and thou shalt come to the terebinth of Tabor; and there shall meet thee there three men going up to God to Bethel, carrying one three kinds, one three loaves of bread, and one a bottle of wine. They will ask thee after thy welfare, and give thee two loaves; receive them at their hands.” The terebinth of Tabor is not mentioned anywhere else, and nothing further can be determined concerning it, than that it stood by the road leading from Rachel's tomb to Gibeah.

(Note: The opinion expressed by Ewald and Thenius, that Deborah's mourning oak (Gen 35:8) is intended, and that Tabor is either a different form of Deborah, or that Tabor should be altered into Deborah, has no foundation to rest upon; for the fact that the oak referred to stood below (i.e., to the south of) Bethel, and the three men whom Saul was to meet at the terebinth of Tabor were going to Bethel, by no means establishes the identity of the two, as their going up to Bethel does not prove that they were already in the neighbourhood of Bethel. Moreover, the Deborah oak was on the north of Gibeah, whereas Saul met the three men between Rachel's tomb and Gibeah, i.e., to the south of Gibeah.)

The fact that the three men were going up to God at Bethel, shows that there was still a place of sacrifice consecrated to the Lord at Bethel, where Abraham and Jacob had erected altars to the Lord who had appeared to them there (Gen 12:8; Gen 13:3-4; Gen 28:18-19; Gen 35:7); for the kids and loaves and wine were sacrificial gifts which they were about to offer. לְשָׁלֹום שָׁאַל, to ask after one's welfare, i.e., to greet in a friendly manner (cf. Jdg 18:15; Gen 43:27). The meaning of this double sign consisted in the fact that these men gave Saul two loaves from their sacrificial offerings. In this he was to discern a homage paid to the anointed of the Lord; and he was therefore to accept the gift in this sense at their hand.

1Sa 10:5-6

The third sign (1Sa 10:5, 1Sa 10:6) Saul was to receive at Gibeah of God, where posts of the Philistines were stationed. Gibeath ha-Elohim is not an appellative, signifying a high place of God, i.e., a high place dedicated to God, but a proper name referring to Gibeah of Benjamin, the native place of Saul, which was called Gibeah of Saul from the time when Saul resided there as king (1Sa 10:16 : cf. 1Sa 11:4; 1Sa 15:34; 2Sa 21:6; Isa 10:29). This is very apparent from the fact that, according to 1Sa 10:10., all the people of Gibeah had known Saul of old, and therefore could not comprehend how he had all at once come to be among the prophets. The name Gibeah of God is here given to the town on account of a bamah or sacrificial height which rose within or near the town (1Sa 10:13), and which may possibly have been renowned above other such heights, as the seat of a society of prophets. פְלִשְׁתִּים נְצִבֵי are not bailiffs of the Philistines, still less columns erected as signs of their supremacy (Thenius), but military posts of the Philistines, as 1Sa 13:3-4, and 2Sa 8:6, 2Sa 8:14, clearly show. The allusion here to the posts of the Philistines at Gibeah is connected with what was about to happen to Saul there. At the place where the Philistines, those severe oppressors of Israel, had set up military posts, the Spirit of God was to come upon Saul, and endow him with the divine power that was required for his regal office. “And it shall come to pass, when thou comest to the town there, thou wilt light upon a company of prophets coming down from the high place (bamah, the sacrificial height), before them lyre and tambourin, and flute, and harp, and they prophesying.” חֶבֶל signifies a rope or cord, then a band or company of men. It does not follow that because this band of prophets was coming down from the high place, the high place at Gibeah must have been the seat of a school of the prophets. They might have been upon a pilgrimage to Gibeah. The fact that they were preceded by musicians playing, seems to indicate a festal procession. Nebel and Kinnor are stringed instruments which were used after David's time in connection with the psalmody of divine worship (1Ch 13:8; 1Ch 15:20; Psa 33:2; Psa 43:4, etc.). The nebel was an instrument resembling a lyre, the kinnor was more like a guitar than a harp. Toph: the tambourin, which was played by Miriam at the Red Sea (Exo 15:20). Chalil: the flute; see my Bibl. Archaeology, ii. §137. By the prophesying of these prophets we are to understand an ecstatic utterance of religious feelings to the praise of God, as in the case of the seventy elders in the time of Moses (Num 11:25). Whether it took the form of a song or of an enthusiastic discourse, cannot be determined; in any case it was connected with a very energetic action indicative of the highest state of mental excitement. (For further remarks on these societies of prophets, see at 1Sa 19:18.)

1Sa 10:6

“And the Spirit of Jehovah will come upon thee, and thou wilt prophesy with them, and be changed into another man.” “Ecstatic states,” says Tholuck (die Propheten, p. 53), “have something infectious about them. The excitement spreads involuntarily, as in the American revivals and the preaching mania in Sweden, even to persons in whose state of mind there is no affinity with anything of the kind.” But in the instance before us there was something more than psychical infection. The Spirit of Jehovah, which manifested itself in the prophesying of the prophets, was to pass over to Saul, so that he would prophesy along with them (הִתְנַבִּיתָ formed like a verb הל for התנבאת; so again in 1Sa 10:13), and was entirely to transform him. This transformation is not to be regarded indeed as regeneration in the Christian sense, but as a change resembling regeneration, which affected the entire disposition of mind, and by which Saul was lifted out of his former modes of thought and feeling, which were confined within a narrow earthly sphere, into the far higher sphere of his new royal calling, was filled with kingly thoughts in relation to the service of God, and received “another heart” (1Sa 10:9). Heart is used in the ordinary scriptural sense, as the centre of the whole mental and psychical life of will, desire, thought, perception, and feeling (see Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychol. pp. 248ff., ed. 2). Through this sign his anointing as king was to be inwardly sealed.

1Sa 10:7

“When these signs are come unto thee (the Kethibh תבאינה is to be read תְּבֹאֶינָה, as in Psa 45:16 and Est 4:4; and the Keri תָּבֹאנָה is a needless emendation), do to thee what thy hand findeth, i.e., act according to the circumstances (for this formula, see Jdg 9:33); for God will be with thee.” The occurrence of the signs mentioned was to assure him of the certainty that God would assist him in all that he undertook as king. The first opportunity for action was afforded him by the Ammonite Nahash, who besieged Jabesh-gilead (1Sa 11:1-15).