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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 270. Saul and Samuel
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It is one of the many signs of the reality and truthfulness of Scripture history, that the examples most held up for our warning are not those of the worst men, but those of persons in whom there has been a doubtful conflict between good and evil, and the evil has ultimately prevailed; or of men who, having been placed in the midst of high privileges and responsibilities, have fallen back on their ordinary characters and natural enjoyments, and despised their loftier calling. To the latter of these classes belongs Esau, whose character is referred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews for our avoidance; to the former belongs Saul, the first king of Israel. As if to throw a stronger light on the character of the unhappy Saul by comparison or contrast, the Scriptures present him along with Samuel, the man of prayer, with David, the man after God's own heart, with his son Jonathan, so lovely yet so truly great. Saul might have prayed like Samuel, might have waited upon God as David did, might have loved with largeness of heart like Jonathan. But his story is the story of the downward progress of the soul; his life is a succession of gradual changes, and in his successive trials evil prevails over the spirit of grace and opportunities of good. As a day that begins with sunshine and then clouds over gloomily and at last closes with a storm, so is the life of Saul. He is the most tragic character in the Old Testament records; historically tragic in the solitary awfulness of his might and the unutterable pathos of his fall; yet more ethically tragic, a soul of noblest endowments and highest aspirations struggling against and overborne by surroundings, duties, claims, to which his nature was unequal. It is the theme of the old Greek tragedians; they lay it on an irresistible, cruel, overruling Fate. It is the theme of Shakespeare; he bares the springs of moral and mental weakness causing it. It is the theme of the Hebrew historian; he sees in it the contest between a good and an evil spirit from the Lord.