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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 271. Israel's Chosen King
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Israel's Chosen King
Saul is the first king of Israel. In him that new and strange idea became impersonated. In him we feel that we have made a marked advance in the history-from the patriarchal and nomadic state, which concerns us mainly by its contrast with our own, to that fixed and settled state which has more or less prevailed ever since.
But, although in outward form Saul belonged to the new epoch, although even in spirit he from time to time threw himself into it, yet on the whole he is a product of the earlier condition. Whilst Samuel's existence comprehends and overlaps both periods in the calmness of a higher elevation, the career of Saul derives its peculiar interest from the fact that it is the eddy in which both streams converge. In that vortex he struggles, the centre of events and persons greater than himself; and in that struggle he is borne down, and lost.
2. That Samuel should be gravely displeased was only natural. The reflection upon his sons was indirectly also a reflection upon himself, and, moreover, he may well have doubted if the request was consistent with loyalty to the Covenant-God. But when he brought the matter before the Lord, the Lord said to him, “Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not be king over them.” At first sight it seems a little strange that God should command Samuel to hearken to the voice of the people, while yet protesting solemnly to them that in this request they had rejected, not Samuel, but the Lord. Yet the meaning should be plain. Jehovah was Israel's God, and though the appointment of a human ruler might be quite consistent with this, and is indeed presupposed in the earlier code, yet that human ruler should be a theocratic king, wielding an authority which was at all times the carrying out of God's wish, devoid of all wish for mere personal aggrandizement, but doing all in his power at all times for the good of the people whom God had entrusted to him. Not such was the king in the mind of the people. Clearly they were blamed, not for the fact that they had asked for a king, but because they pictured to themselves a king who was simply like any other Eastern despot, a king who practically dethroned God from the sovereignty of Israel. It was the very glory of Israel that they were not like the nations, yet to be ruled by Jehovah seemed as nothing. Samuel's appeal to them, however, failed, and God granted their request.
Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, about the “Divine Right of Kings,” moulders unread now in the Public Libraries of this country. Far be it from us to disturb the calm process by which it is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in those repositories! At the same time, not to let the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, some soul of it behind-I will say that it did mean something; something true, which it is important for us and all men to keep in mind. To assert that in whatever man you chose to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of clutching at him); and clapt a round piece of metal on the head of, and called King,-there straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so that he became a kind of god, and a Divinity inspired him with faculty and right to rule over you to all lengths: this-what can we do with this but leave it to rot silently in the Public Libraries? But I will say withal, and that is what these Divine-Right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human Authorities, and relations that men god-created can form among each other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong; one or the other of these two! For it is false altogether, what the last Sceptical Century taught us, that this world is a steam-engine. There is a God in this world; and a God's-sanction, or else the violation of such, does look-out from all ruling and obedience, from all moral acts of men. There is no act more moral between men than that of rule and obedience. Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is!1 [Note: Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero-Worship.]
3. The granting to Israel of the king whom they desired is but one instance of the law which is exemplified in God's dealing with nations and individuals according to which He lets them have their own way, that they may “be filled with their own devices.” He who governed the Israelites, who was their real King, taught His judge and prophet that he was not to resist the craving of the people-though it was a self-willed, idolatrous, mischievous craving-to have a ruler of their armies who should make them like the nations round about; that he was to yield to them and let them have their way. And now, it is said, God appointed the king who would answer to the desires of this people, who was the kind of man that they had conceived of,-cast in their own mould, distinguished from them chiefly by mere outward superiority,-the very person who would cause them to experience that which it was absolutely necessary for them to experience.
I have been amazed and even stupefied sometimes to consider how my own little petty, foolish, whimsical desires have been faithfully and literally granted me. We most of us do really translate into fact what we desire, and as a rule we only fail to get the things which we have not desired enough. It is true indeed that we often find that what we desired was not worth getting; and we ought to be more afraid of our desires, not because we shall not get them, but because we shall almost certainly have them fulfilled. For myself I can only think with shame how closely my present conditions do resemble my young desires, in all their petty range, their trivial particularity. I suppose I have unconsciously pursued them, chosen them, grasped at them; and the shame of it is that if I had desired better things, I should assuredly have been given them. I see, or seem to see, the same thing in the lives of many that I know. What a man sows he shall reap! That is taken generally to mean that if he sows pleasure, he shall reap disaster; but it has a much truer and more terrible meaning than that-namely, that if a man sows the seed of small, trivial, foolish joys, the grain that he reaps is small, trivial, and foolish too. God is indeed in many ways an indulgent Father, like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son; and the best rebuke that He gives, if we have the wisdom to see it, is that He so often does hand us, with a smile, the very thing we have desired.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 90.]
This is what may be called the private, inner view of his call. His anointing was thus far a secret known only to Samuel and himself.
How many a born king spends his whole life in the pursuit of asses for want of some kind prophet to tell him he is a head and shoulders taller than other people.1 [Note: M. E. Coleridge, Gathered Leaves, 226.]
Now no man can define or describe for another man the likeness and fashion of the Divine vocation. No man's circumstances are exactly commensurate with another's, and the nature of our circumstances gives distinctiveness and originality to our call. Moreover, the Lord honours our individuality in the very uniqueness of the call He addresses to us. The singularity of our circumstances and the awful singularity of our souls provide the medium through which we hear the voice of the Lord. How strangely varied are the “settings” through which the Divine voice determines the vocations of men, as they are recorded in the Scriptures!2 [Note: J. H. Jowett, The Preacher: His Life and Work, 7.]
We must fare forth, unsped,
From homely board and bed;
We must set sail for port unknown,
On an uncharted course, alone.
Push off. We have to go,
Whether we choose or no.
The Call, though faint and far away,
Has reached us, and we must obey.
What will the voyage cost?
We are already lost
Who turn from land and love, to face
This blank immensity of space.
Push out. We have to go,
Whether we fear or no.
And why stand shivering and appalled?
We go because the Voice has called.
What matters where we go?
We do not ask to know.
He called us, and we came. The quest
For us is ended, and we rest.1 [Note: Ada Cambridge, The Hand in the Dark, 40.]
2. But there was another, an outer, call, which is related independently. An assembly was convened by Samuel at Mizpeh, and lots (so often practised at that time) were cast to find the tribe and the family which was to produce the king. Saul was named, and was found hid in the circle of baggage which surrounded the encampment. His stature at once conciliated the public feeling, and for the first time in Israel the shout was raised, afterwards so often repeated down to modern times, “Long live the king!”
There is nothing that so often oversets the whole balance of a mind, that brings out at once faults unsuspected before, as a sudden and abrupt elevation from a very low to a very high position. Now, there has seldom been a more abrupt elevation than was Saul's. But he gives no token, at all events at the outset of his career, that it has wrought this mischief in him. The Lord's anointed, Israel's king, he bides his time, returns with a true simplicity to humblest offices in his father's house. He would gladly, and that out of a genuine modesty, hide and withdraw himself from the people's choice. At every step of Samuel's revelations he had been taken by surprise. “Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then speakest thou so to me?” The ceremony over, all things seemingly lapsed back into the old quiet, and Saul returned to his herd, like Cincinnatus to his plough. There was just a little temporary upheaval of feeling. Though a band of valiant men loyally gathered round the young king and accompanied him home, certain “sons of Belial,” worthless fellows, as the phrase means, derided what had been done, and refused the customary homage. Amid all this, Saul wisely said and did nothing; he behaved as though he were deaf.
His patience and tolerance as a speaker argued magnificent self-control in a man of Morris's temperament. The violent criticisms of other Socialists never disturbed him, as it would have done a more self-centred man. At one of the West London meetings, a well-known anarchist got up and accused him of “talking-nonsense!” Morris did not comment; he went on with his speech, and at the close, when those around him on the platform fully expected he would turn and rend the interrupter, he went up to him, took his arm, and invited him back to supper and a chat. He knew the man was a genuine man behind all his violence. He was willing to talk the matter out as man to man, and this individual became one of his greatest admirers. He knew how few would have treated him as Morris did. Morris's friends never lost their self-respect. They knew they could be outspoken, and that it was not necessary, as it is with some, to be sycophantic or self-effacing to retain his consideration.1 [Note: A. Compton-Rickett, William Morris: A Study in Personality, 238.]
3. Even after this public ratification of his private call, Saul did not assert his royal dignity; but all at once came a startling incident which changed his apparent torpor into fierce activity. After a long day's work, as he climbed with his oxen the steep ascent to the city a sudden summons came to him. A loud wail, so characteristic of Eastern peoples, struck his ear, and on inquiring the cause, he learnt that their old enemies, the Ammonites, had fallen upon the men of Jabesh. In a moment the patriotism of Saul was aroused. The spirit of God came upon him, and, hewing in pieces two of his oxen, he sent their bones through the country-just as in the Scottish Highlands the Fiery Cross as a signal for war used to be passed from hand to hand-with the significant warning, “Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.” The fear of the Lord came upon the people; they rose as one man, and the Ammonites were so completely defeated and scattered “that two of them were not left together.”
It was a great and timely victory, and it placed Saul on the very pinnacle of greatness. Many clamoured for those who had opposed Saul to be put to death, but the then virtuous king would not hear of it. He said, “There shall not a man be put to death this day: for to-day the Lord hath wrought deliverance in Israel.” Saul was now seated securely on the throne. The east of the Jordan was regarded as his special conquest. The people of Jabesh never forgot their debt of gratitude. The house of Saul were safe there when their cause was ruined everywhere else.
In the joy of their great victory the tribes gathered at Gilgal, between Jericho and the Jordan, one of their ancient mustering-places. There they hailed Saul as their king, and solemnly ratified their election by offering public sacrifice to the God of Israel. The assembly at Gilgal marks an important epoch in Jewish history. It ratified the work of the assembly at Mizpeh, finally closed the period of the judges, and formally inaugurated the new monarchy. Samuel, though he was still to retain his influence and authority as prophet, now resigned his office as judge, and in doing so delivered a solemn address to the assembled people.
The Hebrews believed that in every just quarrel the Lord of hosts was with them, that they were fighting the battles of the Lord, whose spirit came upon them to arouse them to action, who taught their hands to war and their fingers to fight, who girded them with strength for battle, who went forth with their hosts, whose right hand and holy arm got Him the victory. Their true successors are the Christian soldiers of to-day who contend for justice and liberty and humanity. Dan, the scene of Abram's triumph, was the first of many fields of honour in Canaan-Jericho, Michmash, Bethhoron, Kishon, Mizpeh, Jezreel, Bethbarah, Aphek-where the Hebrews won great victories, renowned in legend and song. The memories of battles fought for liberty are among a nation's best traditions, and consecrate a land scarcely less than its altars. The appropriate limits of the Holy Land-Dan and Beersheba-were a battlefield and a shrine. Valour and faith are the springs of all that is most glorious and inspiring in a nation's history. To use Samuel Johnson's well-known words, “The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.”1 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 55.]