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

I really struggled with what to write today.  I like the story of Jonathan going over and attacking the Philistine outpost accompanied by only his armor bearer.  So I thought I might write about that, but I could not figure out what to say.  I like the account of what happened when Saul commanded that no one in his army eat until they had complete victory and Jonathan did not hear so ate some honey. But again I was not quite sure what to write.  There are a couple of other things in this passage that I thought might be a good focus, but could not figure out how to start from them.

Finally, I looked closer at the interaction between Samuel and King Saul after the defeat of the Amalekites and knew that was the place to focus.  When Samuel arrives, Saul greets him by saying that he had done what God had instructed him to do.  I had never noticed before that King Saul actually thought he had done what God had desired.  He believed this despite the fact that Samuel had told him that God wanted him to kill all of the Amalekites and all of their livestock and King Saul had taken their king prisoner and plundered the best of their livestock.  After King Saul had made all of his excuses for not having done so, Samuel tells him the thing which we must always remember: “To obey is better than sacrifice.”  Really this runs directly counter to a saying which is common today.  The saying is, “It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.”  The point of that latter saying is that, if you know that they will refuse permission, don’t ask for permission, do it anyway and ask for forgiveness afterwards.  King Saul thought that because he was going to sacrifice the animals it was OK that he did not immediately kill them, that he could take advantage of this to further cement his position.

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