Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Samuel 15:22 - 15:22
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Without entering, therefore, into any discussion of the meaning of the ban, as Saul only wanted to cover over his own wrong-doings by giving this turn to the affair, Samuel put a stop to any further excuses, by saying, “Hath Jehovah delight in burnt-offerings and slain-offerings as in hearkening to the voice of Jehovah? (i.e., in obedience to His word.) Behold, hearing (obeying) is better than slain-offerings, attending better than fat of rams.” By saying this, Samuel did not reject sacrifices as worthless; he did not say that God took no pleasure in burnt-offerings and slain-offerings, but simply compared sacrifice with obedience to the command of God, and pronounced the latter of greater worth than the former. “It was as much as to say that the sum and substance of divine worship consisted in obedience, with which it should always begin, and that sacrifices were, so to speak, simple appendices, the force and worth of which were not so great as of obedience to the precepts of God” (Calvin). But it necessarily follows that sacrifices without obedience to the commandments of God are utterly worthless; in fact, are displeasing to God, as Psa 50:8., Isa 1:11., Isa 66:3, Jer 6:20, and all the prophets, distinctly affirm. There was no necessity, however, to carry out this truth any further. To tear off the cloak of hypocrisy, with which Saul hoped to cover his disobedience, it was quite enough to affirm that God's first demand was obedience, and that observing His word was better than sacrifice; because, as the Berleb. Bible puts it, “in sacrifices a man offers only the strange flesh of irrational animals, whereas in obedience he offers his own will, which is rational or spiritual worship” (Rom 12:8). This spiritual worship was shadowed forth in the sacrificial worship of the Old Testament. In the sacrificial animal the Israelite was to give up and sanctify his own person and life to the Lord. (For an examination of the meaning of the different sacrifices, see Pent. pp. 505ff., and Keil's Bibl Archäol. §41ff.) But if this were the design of the sacrifices, it was clear enough that God did not desire the animal sacrifice in itself, but first and chiefly obedience to His own word. In 1Sa 15:22, טֹּוב is not to be connected as an adjective with זֶבַח, “more than good sacrifice,” as the Sept. and Thenius render it; it is rather to be taken as a predicate, “better than slain-offerings,” and מִזֶּבַח is placed first simply for the sake of emphasis. Any contrast between good and bad sacrifices, such as the former construction would introduce into the words, is not only foreign to the context, but also opposed to the parallelism. For אֵילִים חֵלֶב does not mean fat rams, but the fat of rams; the fat portions taken from the ram, which were placed upon the altar in the case of the slain-offerings, and for which חֵלֶב is the technical expression (compare Lev 3:9, Lev 3:16, with Lev 3:4, Lev 3:11, etc.). “For,” continued Samuel (1Sa 15:23), “rebellion is the sin of soothsaying, and opposition is heathenism and idolatry.” מְרִי and הַפְצַר are the subjects, and synonymous in their meaning. קֶסֶם חַטַּאת, the sin of soothsaying, i.e., of divination in connection with the worship of idolatrous and demoniacal powers. In the second clause idols are mentioned instead of idolatry, and compared to resistance, but without any particle of comparison. Opposition is keeping idols and teraphim, i.e., it is like worshipping idols and teraphim. אָוֶן, nothingness, then an idol or image (vid., Isa 66:3; Hos 4:15; Hos 10:5, Hos 10:8). On the teraphim as domestic and oracular deities, see at Gen 31:19. Opposition to God is compared by Samuel to soothsaying and oracles, because idolatry was manifested in both of them. All conscious disobedience is actually idolatry, because it makes self-will, the human I, into a god. So that all manifest opposition to the word and commandment of God is, like idolatry, a rejection of the true God. “Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, He hath rejected thee, that thou mayst be no longer king.” מִמֶּלֶךְ = מֶלֶךְ מִהְיֹוה (1Sa 15:26), away from being king.