I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 14-15.

    We see in today’s passage that Saul chose the appearance of godliness over the actuality of doing what God commanded. After winning a decisive victory because of the actions of his son, Jonathan, Saul takes an oath placing a curse on any member of his army who eats before the enemy forces are completely destroyed. Two things come out of this. His men become tired and weak because they do not eat and Jonathan falls under his curse because he did not hear Saul’s curse and eats some honey which he comes upon.

I want to take note of something here which is not part of my main theme. We are told that those Hebrews who had joined with the Philistine army turned on the Philistines and sided with Saul when the battle started to go against the Philistines. This is significant because it sets the stage for the Philistines refusing to allow David to join their battle against Saul later on. In addition, I have long wondered if the writer used the word “Hebrews” to distinguish between those descendants of Jacob who did not choose to follow Saul as their king (and thus were not part of the nation of Israel) or to indicate that there were Hebrews in the land who were not descendants of Jacob.

Later, Samuel tells Saul that God has commanded that he completely destroy the Amalekites, including all of their livestock. Instead of doing so, Saul takes their king prisoner and allows his men to keep the best of their livestock. Despite having done this, when Samuel came to meet him Saul claimed to have followed God’s command. Saul truly believed that he had followed God’s command because he was bringing the best of the Amalekites livestock to where the Ark of the Covenant was to hold a great victory feast there while sacrificing them. I am not sure how he justified to himself not killing their king. We have a tendency to justify not acting according to God’s commands in the same way that Saul did, by proclaiming that we will use the “proceeds” to honor God. Samuel’s reply to Saul applies to us as well, “Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.”