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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 272. Trial and Downfall
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Trial and Downfall
1. For two year Saul prospered as king over Israel, under the guidance of the Spirit of God. Then came his time of trial. The time had arrived for the children of Israel to throw off the heavy yoke of the Philistines. The victory was to be won by Saul, but in strict obedience to Jehovah's leading, as given through His prophet. Either at the time of the anointing, or at some later interview not recorded, Samuel had closely connected the instruction of 1Sa_10:8 with a muster at Gilgal for the march against the Philistines. Jonathan, in the spirit of his daring deed at Michmash a little later, threw down the gauntlet to the enemy by destroying a trophy erected by them at Geba. The Philistines mustered to avenge the insult, and the Israelites gathered at their chief's command more like sheep going to the slaughter than warriors assured of victory. Saul found himself at Gilgal confronted by an increased and increasing band of Philistines, with his own army an unarmed and disorganized rabble, panic-stricken, demoralized, and constantly deserting. And here he was hampered by a tiresome restriction put upon him by Samuel, to wait for him seven days, until he came to offer sacrifice for him and the army.
It was a hard task, worse by far than the similar inaction Divinely commanded at Jericho a few generations before. Here is a king who had been made king for the express purpose of destroying the Philistines; he is in the presence of his powerful enemy; he is anxious to fulfil his commission; he fears to fail; his reputation is at stake; he has at best a most difficult task, as his soldiers are very bad ones, and are all afraid of the enemy. His only chance, humanly speaking, is to strike a blow; if he delays, he can expect nothing but total defeat; the longer he delays, the more frightened his men will become. Yet he is told to wait seven days.
It is hard to blame Saul for failing in the test which the prophet imposed on him, when he persistently delayed till the end of the seven days. A severer trial could not have been devised for a man with military instincts, who had to watch the opportunity slipping away under his eyes. And Saul nearly stood the test. The set time seems to have been nearly up when the king, unable to bear it any longer, and unwilling to attack without securing Jehovah's aid, conquered his conscience with an effort and bade the attendants bring forward the victims.
There was some excuse, considerable temptation, no slight admixture of better motives, some superstition, some religion, some sense of the necessity of God's help, much neglect of God's directions as to the proper way of securing it. Saul showed that he could not wait for God in absolute faith that He would not fail or deceive. He was careful to maintain an outward rite, but the spirit of devotion and faith was altogether wanting. As he was, his successors would become, to the undoing of Israel; therefore his kingdom could not continue.
For anticipating the prophet's arrival by perhaps not more than an hour, Saul is told that he has forfeited his crown. But it would appear that this was not the first act of self-will on his part. It was one of a series, manifesting the tendency of the man to emancipate himself altogether from God's law and make himself supreme; to follow his own bent and natural impulse, to the setting aside of God's positive command. He owns to having forced his own conscience; he acted against the inward warning; he resisted the Spirit of God; he preferred his own thoughts to the express command of the prophet; he had light, and he chose darkness, because his heart was not with God.
I have never forgotten a clever answer given by one of our witnesses-Mrs. Kennedy, a mistress of novices-to Coleridge. Coleridge's case was that the breaches of discipline were trivial, contemptible. He pressed Mrs. Kennedy on the point, asking what had Miss Taurin done. Mrs. Kennedy said, as an example, that she had eaten strawberries. “Eaten strawberries!” exclaimed Coleridge, “what harm was there in that?” “It was forbidden, sir!” said Mrs. Kennedy-a very proper answer. “But Mrs. Kennedy,” retorted Coleridge, “what trouble was likely to come from eating strawberries?” “Well, sir,” replied Mrs. Kennedy, “you might ask what trouble was likely to come from eating an apple, yet we know what trouble did come from it!” The answer floored Coleridge. He threw himself back on his seat and laughed. The whole Court laughed. Ultimately, the jury found a verdict for the plaintiff.1 [Note: R. Barry O'Brien, Life of Lord Russell of Killowen.]
Ah! for the simple guileless faith
That raves not at the bolts of fate;
Ah! for the patient tongue that saith,
“Though late he cometh, not too late!”
The heart that beats in coolest rhyme
With “God's good time,” and “in God's good time.”2 [Note: Edmund Gosse, In Russet and Silver.]
2. As we advance, we see the self-willed man coming more and more into prominence. His own son Jonathan had wrought a mighty deliverance of Israel from their oppressors the Philistines. Yet he was with difficulty rescued from being put to death, because his father had made a rash vow, which he had unwittingly broken through.
The second test was of a different kind. Saul was sent to exterminate the Amalekites, whose relentless hostility had begun with the Exodus and had continued ever since. For his own purposes, and because he chose to be wiser than God, he listened to the voice of the people and spared the spoil of Amalek. The king of Amalek also he spared to grace his triumph. When accused by Samuel, he put himself on the defensive: justified his conduct, or laid the blame of it upon others. The king, who pretended to keep the booty for the purpose of offering sacrifice to the Lord his God, was evidently beginning to play the hypocrite; to make the service of God an excuse for acts of selfishness, and so to introduce all that is vilest in kingcraft as well as in priestcraft. Samuel the prophet was not trying to keep alive the habits which these names express, that he might maintain the dignity of his own office. That office enjoined him to bear the most emphatic protest against them. He was bound to tell Saul, that, if he forgot that he was a servant and fancied himself absolute, the kingdom would be rent from him and given to another.
Not without good reason was Christ's only harsh and threatening reproof directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy. It is not theft, nor robbery, nor murder, nor fornication, but falsehood, the special falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes them and makes them vindictive, destroys all distinction between right and wrong in their conscience, deprives them of what is the true meaning of all human life, and debars them from all progress towards perfection.1 [Note: Tolstoy.]
3. Saul was no monster who had won power by false means and then plunged at once into a reckless abuse of it, no apostate who had cast off the belief in God, and set up some Ammonite or Phœnician idol. He merely forgot the Lord and the teacher who had imparted to him that new life and inspiration; he merely failed to remember that he was under a law and that he had a vocation. A certain command was given him and he set about obeying it. But his obedience was partial and incomplete. The order was not entirely executed. It was partly done and partly undone; the Lord's pleasure was sought, as well as the pleasure of man. Saul tried to serve God and mammon. He would go a little on the way of obedience, and then he would leap the fence, and hold a little fellowship with the devil. He assumed that the Lord would be satisfied with the beginnings of obedience, and would pardon a small remnant of personal desire. It was like a man who has had small-pox in the house, and who was ordered to burn all the affected garments, but who decided to keep just one coat, and to burn all the rest! But to retain a rag is to allow the sovereignty of disease; and to have even a slight communion with the Evil One is to pay homage to his throne.
This second manifestation of self-will in Israel's king drew from Samuel a stern rebuke-the death-warrant of the royalty of Saul's house-“Thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.” But his punishment did not affect Saul aright: he did not say, with the patriarch, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord”; but he exclaimed, “I have sinned: yet,”-yet what?-yet pardon me? No; this is not his chief thought; no, it is, “yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people.” God's pardon is not what he seeks. Ambition and power, these are the shrines upon which he will offer incense, these the sole deities he cares to propitiate. It is the cry not of a penitent, but of a fugitive from justice; not hating his sin, but dreading its result; eager at any cost to keep the crown on his brow and the empire in his hand; afraid of the consequences which might ensue if his leading men detected any break or coolness between himself and the prophet. Even at that moment, had Saul thrown himself at God's feet and asked for pardon, he would have been accepted and forgiven. Even though as a monarch his kingdom might have passed from him, as a man he would have received pardon. But his only thought was to stand well with the people, and he was prepared to make any confession of wrong-doing as a price of Samuel's apparent friendship.
From the time of his disobedience in the matter of Amalek, Samuel came no more to see Saul, whose season of probation was over. The light that he had refused to follow was put out, the voice that he had declined to hear was silenced, the person that had represented high and holy refreshment and influence was removed, because he ignored his sacred help; the spiritual friend whom he declined to follow was lost to him and was never seen again till in his deep degradation, in the utter terror of his soul, in the presence of a witch, while his flesh crept with horror and his hair stood on end, the saintly image of his friend, the impersonation of all that was good in his life, called from the world of spirits by the wretched man, rose before him paralysed and speechless.
Something also I would say to the school on the subject of school greatness. I have observed lately no unnatural desire [on the part of Uppingham] to claim a position among English schools. Now you cannot claim it. It must come. Indeed we are very far from wishing that the school should come forward on the false ground of mere increase of numbers-which may be an increase of shame, for a mob is not an army-or of mere identity with other schools, which is not what has made us what we are. Yet be sure there is the means here of being great. Have you so soon forgotten the motto in your head-room-
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,-
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yes, power must come, and there are two ways for it to come. Most of all, and first, the winning a character for truth and true honour. Most of all, that no lie in word or deed, no shams, no underhand deceits shall harbour here-nothing that will not bear the light. Let this be the school character, as I trust it is, and fear not the school is great.1 [Note: Life and Letters of Edward Thring, i. 134.]
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
That I doubt His own love can compete with it? here, the parts shift?
Here, the creature surpass the Creator,-the end, what Began?
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,
And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower
Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole?
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)
These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?
Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height
This perfection,-succeed with life's dayspring, death's minute of night?
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,
Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now-and bid him awake
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
Clear and safe in new light and new life,-a new harmony yet
To be run, and continued, and ended-who knows?-or endure!
The man taught enough, by life's dream, of the rest to make sure:
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.2 [Note: Browning, Saul.]