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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 261. In Favour with God
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1. The period of Samuel was a critical period in the nation's life because it was a time of transition. In religion and in politics it was a period marked by change. The age of the judges was drawing to an end; the demand for a king was making itself heard. Such times of transition, when old things are passing away and the new era is not yet fully come, are difficult and perilous times in the life of a nation; they carry with them something of the mystery and of the painfulness that belong to all processes of birth; and, for any leading personality who endeavours to sum up and to guide their uncertain tendencies, they involve misunderstanding or neglect. Samuel, in whose day the theocracy at which he had been aiming in his organization of the national forces was merged in monarchy, has been called the first martyr of the order of prophets. He stood between the past and the future, the living and the dead. Brought up in reverence for the days of old, he attempted to be the mediator, in a changeful epoch, between the old and the new; and thus he found himself among those of whom it has been said that they are attacked from both sides-charged with not going far enough and with going too far, with saying too much and with saying too little; who cannot be comprehended at a glance like Moses or Elijah or Isaiah and therefore are thrust aside, and yet who are “the silent healers who bind up the wounds of their age in spite of itself”; “the reconcilers who turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and of the fathers to the children.” The real power of such men lies in the fact that, while they are driven more or less to take active part in the political developments of their country, they are or may be-as Samuel was-men of deep religious feeling, seeing Him who is invisible and trying to shape their politics, amid the hard, intractable affairs of this world, in accordance with the Divine will.
The darkest part of the night is just before the dawn. When the enemy comes in like a flood the Lord lifts up a standard against him. God never leaves Himself without a witness. Somewhere, in the most godless times, can be found those who love and serve God. Elijah may fancy that he alone is left to stand for the truth among a nation of idolaters, but God shows him that he has yet seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal. And God makes this very Elijah the beginning of a second line of prophets, that holds on through Elisha and Ezekiel even to Malachi and John the Baptist. At the very time that the army of the king of Syria is stricken with blindness, supernatural vision is granted to Elisha's servant, and the young man's eyes are opened; he sees, and, behold! the mountain is full of horses and chariots of fire round about his master. So, in every dark day in the history of His people, God wakens some chosen servant of His to see what the common crowd are blind to.1 [Note: A. H. Strong.]
2. The affairs of Israel were allowed to drift into a lamentable condition under the good and well-meaning but weak Eli. The disuniting process of centuries seemed then to have done its worst. The tribes had been falling more and more apart; and now at length, instead of forming one nation, they were more like a group of petty states, each taken up with its own individual interests, and little concerned to maintain oneness with the rest. In Israel, by Eli's time, the idea of nationality had been largely lost sight of. It was not counted worth caring for, much less fighting for; and the policy of selfishness and drift was everywhere in favour. This state of things, deplorable enough in the case of any country, was peculiarly melancholy in the case of God's favoured people, who, in addition to the ordinary ties of brotherhood, ought to have been welded together by their common loyalty to Jehovah, who offered Himself as His people's portion, and was pleased to regard them as His own inheritance. The one outward bond that subsisted longest between the tribes was the religious ceremonial observed at Shiloh. Even that, no doubt, had sunk into a piece of ritual, and in too many cases a piece of mere routine. Still, it was a bond, however slight and feeble, between the tribes, as they assembled together at stated seasons at Shiloh, professedly to worship the one Jehovah. But Shiloh itself, alas! instead of being a healthy religious centre, a throbbing heart of national piety, a “Place of Rest,” as its name means, became in course of time a centre of corruption. And then came the catastrophe for which Israel was fully ripe. An unprovoked war, waged in a heathenish spirit, could have but one appropriate result; and when poor old Eli,-the object at once of pity and of blame,-crushed under the accumulation of disaster, fell back dead in the day of woe, and passed from the midst of a nation and a time with whose necessities he had been far too feeble to cope, it was at least evident that Israelitish affairs had sunk to their very lowest. At any rate there was now the grim comfort for any patriot that things could not become worse than they were, and might possibly improve. The symbol of God's presence was gone. Shiloh, its home for three centuries, was but a shadow of what it had been; for neither Jehovah nor His ark was there, and its oracles were dumb.
The passage from a Theocracy to a Monarchy was so dangerous that it would have been no great surprise if the ship of the State had gone to pieces. That it made its journey successfully was due entirely to Samuel's skilful steering. And the skilful steering was due to Samuel's character rather than his worldly wisdom, to his knowledge of God rather than his knowledge of men. “Because,” writes Dean Stanley, “in him the various parts of his life hung together without any abrupt transition; because in him the child was father of the man, and his days had been bound each to each by natural piety; therefore he was especially ordained to bind together the broken links of two diverging epochs; therefore he could impart to others, and to the age in which he lived, the continuity which he had experienced in his own life; therefore he could gather round him the better spirits of his time by that discernment of a pure heart which sees through heaven and hell.” He knew how events were trending, what their inevitable issue must be; and if he made a mistake in the selection of the first king, it was not one that he could have avoided.1 [Note: G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 80.]