Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 28-31.

I always find the account of Saul going to the medium of Endor difficult.  My understanding of Scripture has always been that those who claim to speak with the dead are either frauds or mistaking other spirits for the spirit of the dead.  Yet, this passage is quite clear that the woman summoned Samuel’s spirit and that Saul spoke with him.  This story contains an important lesson for us, one which is easy to miss.  At several points we are told that Saul had implemented God’s law in the land, at least to some degree.  In the introduction to this account we are told that Saul had expelled all of the mediums and spiritists from the land.  That was in accordance with God’s law as given to Moses.  Yet, despite implementing God’s law as the law of Israel, God departed from Saul because of his disobedience.   I don’t want to go into what Saul did, both good and bad, because it would be too easy to draw the wrong lesson.  The lesson is that God desires that we obey Him more than He desires that we offer sacrifices, or sing His praises.  King Saul thought that he could pick and choose which of God’s commands to obey.  It does not work that way, God calls us to obey all of His commands.  While He will forgive us when we fall short of His expectations, we cannot act against His commands just because we have good intentions.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 25-27.

As I was reading the story of David and Nabal again, it struck me that, while the passage does not spell it out, David had an agreement with Nabal for David to provide security for Nabal’s men and Nabal’s property.  Nabal’s response to David’s men makes more sense if he had some sort of agreement with David beforehand, even if the agreement was more or less unspoken,  David’s anger at Nabal’s response also makes more sense.  Finally, the fear clearly expressed by Nabal’s servants when they went to Abigail makes more sense.  If there was no agreement of some type between Nabal and David, why didn’t Nabal just ignore David’s messengers?  On the other hand, if there was some sort of agreement, Nabal’s answer would seem to be, “I am not going to pay you.  What are you going to do, appeal to the government over breach of contract? Sure, go ahead and appeal to King Saul’s government.  Hasn’t the king put a price on your head?”  Nabal’s servants would have quickly seen the problem with Nabal’s response.  Sure, David could not appeal to King Saul over Nabal’s failure to keep his end of the bargain, but Nabal had entered into the agreement with David in the first place because King Saul was unable to protect him from raiders and bandits…and David’s men, who had provided protection from those raiders, could easily take that which they had prevented others from taking.   We see a little later in this passage that when David took his men over the the Philistines they became raiders (although exclusively against non-Israelites).  It could be that Abigail’s good business sense was the reason David chose to marry her after the death of Nabal.

I also want to write a bit about David sneaking into King Saul’s camp and taking his spear and water jug.  This story is the first account we have of David’s contentious relationship with the three sons of Zeruiah, who were his nephews.   On the one hand, Abishai volunteers to go with David to infiltrate King Saul’s camp.  On the other hand, he also suggests that David allow him to kill King Saul, despite the fact that David had declined to kill Saul when he had previously had the opportunity.  In fact, on that previous occasion David had expressed feeling guilt about the threat implied by cutting the hem off of Saul’s cloak.  So, we see that Abishai was loyal to David, but failed to share David’s reluctance to kill his fellow Israelites (even when he might have been justified in doing so).  I am not sure what lessons we should take from this passage, but we see here the first indication that while Abishai and his brothers were fiercely loyal to David, they did not fully share his values.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 21-24.

I am going to write about some elements of today’s accounts which we often overlook.  I am not sure that they contain much in the way of spiritual insight, but we will see.  In this passage, at one point it says that David’s parents stayed with the king of Moab as long as David was “in the stronghold.”  Then at the end of the passage, after David declined the opportunity to ambush and kill King Saul, it says that David and his men “went up to the stronghold.”  On both of these occasions it uses the singular as if it was a single location. In addition, at one point the prophet Gad tells David to leave “the stronghold”.   Elsewhere, it refers to David and his men staying in “strongholds” (in the Desert of Ziph for awhile, then later in the wilderness of En Gedi).  So, I am unsure if the places where the passage uses the singular for stronghold refers to a single place (and, if so, was it the same place each time?), or was the writer just using the singular because it was easier than writing the plural…and it doesn’t really matter for us to understand what was going on.  On to another point: when David was in the Desert of Ziph, near Horesh, Jonathan was able to find him and speak with him.  Yet, just a short time later, Saul was unable to do so.  This is not particularly surprising, since David wanted to meet with Jonathan, and wanted to avoid being found by Saul.

The final item we normally overlook does have a bit of spiritual lesson for us.  Because of the way the passage tells the accounts we normally miss that the priest Abiathar did not join David until he was at Keilah.  Once Abiathar had joined him in Keilah, David had Abiather use the ephod of the high priest (and presumably the Urim and the Thummin ) to consult God’s will.  However, the passage makes clear that David sought God’s guidance in his decisions before that point.  I find two points worth thinking about here.  First, if we seek God’s guidance, He will make it known to us.  In fact, He will even make it known to us in ways which others who are skeptical of our initial interpretation of God’s direction will find convincing.  Second, as we seek to know God’s guidance for our actions, He will provide us with ever clearer ways to understand what He wants from us.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 18-20.

On a couple of occasions in this passage it says that an evil spirit from the Lord came upon Saul.  The idea that an evil spirit might be from the Lord bothers me, so I looked at the translators notes.  They mention that the word translated as “evil” might also be translated as “harmful”.  I am much more comfortable with the idea that a harmful spirit was sent from God upon someone.  Each time this spirit came upon Saul he attempted to kill David right then and there.  The implication being that when these incidents happened, Saul’s personality changed on a dime and he acted in a way uncharacteristic for him.  It struck me today that there seems to be a relationship between the occasions when the evil, or harmful, spirit came upon Saul and the times when he prophesied along with a band of prophets.  One of those latter times happened when Saul pursued David after David fled to Samuel.  However, a similar thing had happened after the first time Saul and met with Samuel before he became king.  I was really hoping that once I wrote about these things I would have some insight into all fit together, but that did not happen.

I had always thought that David was ambitious and that his reluctance to marry Saul’s daughter (first one and then a second one was offered to him as his wife) was because he was aware of Saul’s plans to use it against him.  Today, as I read this, I felt like David’s reluctance to become Saul’s son-in-law was actually out of humility.  Yesterday, I noted that David’s comments about Goliath to members of Saul’s army were perhaps meant to encourage someone to stand up to Goliath in the name of God.  In a similar fashion, it occurred to me today that David’s reluctance to become Saul’s son-in-law was because he genuinely did not believe he was a prominent enough person for that role.  Or, perhaps the reason that David was willing to marry Michal, when he had resisted marrying her older sister Merab was because Michal actually wanted to marry him, while Merab would only have done so because she had no choice.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 16-17.

Before today, I never really noticed that the elders of the town of Bethlehem trembled when Samuel first arrived there and asked him if he came in peace.  Samuel calmed their fears and invited them to a sacrifice.  I need to give some thought to whether the elders feared Samuel because of what he had done, or if they feared him because of his connection to King Saul.  The next thing which occurred to me is not something new, but worth mentioning now: The two books of Samuel (and most of the other “historical” books of the Old Testament) are compilations of accounts which had been passed down independent of one another.  The above is very clear in today’s passage.  Today’s passage contains three stories about the early years of David’s career.  First, there is the account of Samuel anointing David as king to replace King Saul.  Second, there is an account of how David entered Saul’s service as a musician.  Finally, there is the account of David and Goliath.

Now, because the accounts contained in today’s passage had been passed down as separate stories, there are some apparent conflicts between them.  First I want to look at Eliab’s (David’s eldest brother) reaction to David coming down to see the battle.  Eliab had been present when Samuel anointed David, but nevertheless he interpreted David’s asking about what reward Saul had offered for the man who defeated Goliath as David trying to stir up trouble (I will come back to this later).  The next, and biggest, conflict among these stories comes from the account of King Saul sending messengers to bring David into his service as a musician and then not recognizing him when he came forth to face Goliath.  This has always bothered me: how could King Saul not recognize David if David had been in his service playing music for him when he became agitated?  The answer came to me today.  Before the incident with Goliath, David would probably only be around Saul when Saul became agitated and someone called for him to play his lyre.  In fact, David probably did not spend much time in Gibeah, since his father lived less than a day away.

After Samuel anointed David, the passage says “from that day on, the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David. ”  I think we see what the passage meant in the account later of David and Goliath, as much in what David said to the Israelite soldiers when he first saw Goliath come forth as in what he ultimately did that day.  David tried to encourage one of the soldiers to stand forth against Goliath in faith that God would be with them. “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”  When no one else would do so, David himself stood forth, trusting in God.  I believe that this was not the first time David had “stirred up trouble” by pushing people to act in faith.

I use 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.

I was struck today by King Saul’s order to his army to bring the captured animals to a central location for butchering in order to ensure that the blood was drained from the animals before they were eaten.  In particular, his explanation for the order. which was that he did not want them to sin against God by eating meat with the blood still in it.  This appears to be King Saul attempting to faithfully follow God’s commands, and to ensure that his men do the same.  In fact, when we combine that with Saul seeking God’s guidance as to whether or not he should continue pursuing the Philistines, I believe that he was indeed seeking to serve God faithfully here.  However, it also bears a resemblance to what Saul did after he defeated the Amalekites later in the passage.  Samuel instructed Saul that he should defeat the Amalekites and destroy all of them and all that they had.  Instead of doing so, Saul had his army bring the best of their livestock back in order to hold a great sacrifice/celebration at Gilgal (I want to note that such a sacrificial ceremony would have been a huge feast and a celebration of Saul’s victory).   Samuel’s response is one which we should pay close attention:

To obey is better than sacrifice,

This phrase is indeed one which many today pay attention, but I am not sure that they get it.  This means that we should be more concerned with discipling out fellow believer (and being discipled by them) than in the amount which goes into the offering plate.

Which brings me to Saul’s other failure to keep the command which God gave him through Samuel.  Saul  also kept alive the king of the Amalekites.  I want to take notice that on several occasions the Old Testament tells us that Israel’s king took the king of Israel’s enemy captive rather than killing him.  In this case, Saul had all of the other Amalekites killed, but took the king captive.  Before killing the Amalekite king, Samuel points out that the king was more responsible for the crimes of the Amalekites than any other individual.  No explanation is given for Saul sparing the life of Agag, the king of the Amalekites, so we are left to draw our own conclusions.  To me, the most likely explanation is that King Saul felt greater kinship with King Agag than he did with the people over whom he ruled.  Thus Saul spared King Agag out of a misplaced sense of kinship.  This would be consistent with those in positions of power throughout history.  They often demonstrate greater concern for the interests of the ruling class of the enemies of the people over whom they hold authority than for the interests of those for whose interests they are theoretically responsible.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 11-13.

I want to note that the Gibeah referred to here is the same Gibeah whose crimes led to the war against the tribe of Benjamin.  One thing I have trouble following is the seven days which Samuel told Saul to wait for him at Gilgal.  This is apparently a reference back to when Samuel first anointed Saul to be king and before he did so in front of all the people at Mizpah in  1 Samuel 10:7-8.  A lot transpired between then and the events where Saul fails to follow Samuel’s instructions, but I suppose they could be lumped together under “do whatever your hand finds to do.”  Having said that, I have long believed that most of the “historical” books of the Old Testament were compilations of accounts passed down orally separately from each other.  In this case, I believe that verse 8 of Chapter 10 had originally been associated with the story contained in Chapter 13, but when they were compiling the various accounts about the beginning of Saul’s kingship, they decided to place it with the account of Saul’s first encounter with Samuel.  In any case, it does not really matter when Samuel gave these instructions.  It is clear that Saul understood that when he gathered the Israelites in Gilgal to go to war, he was to wait seven days for Samuel to come, make offerings, and give him God’s instructions.  Saul’s judgement was that he could not wait any longer for God’s instructions and chose to act.  Let us not make Saul’s mistake, let us wait for God’s guidance before we act.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 8-10.

When the Israelites asked Samuel to give them a king, they were asking him to give them a government.  They did not need a government to give them laws, God had already given them laws.  They did not need a government to judge between them when they had disputes, God had provided them with judges.  They wanted a government to enforce the laws , to force people to abide by the decisions of the judges, and to be responsible for providing for the common defense.  Those were all things which God had either promised to provide for them, asked them to do for themselves, or a combination of those two things.  The desire for a king, the need for a government, stems from our unwillingness to fully depend on God, or to follow His commands.  Samuel tried to warn them that the government for which they were asking would be composed of the same sorts of people who were why they were asking for a government.  Our society needs a government for the same reason that the Israelites wanted a king, but we must always remember that the more power we give to the government, the more likely that those who make the government work will reject God.  Asking the government to protect us means that we do not trust God to do so.  And yet, even so, God has ordained a government to rule over us, just as He gave the Israelites a king.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 4-7.

I had written an entire paragraph about the timeline of events here before I realized it would not take me anywhere interesting.  So, I deleted that and started over.  I am going to contrast the way the Israelites under the “leadership” of Eli’s sons appealed to God for aid in battle to the way the did so under Samuel’s leadership.  First, I want to point out that Eli’s sons did not actually lead the Israelites.  Instead, they  accompanied the ark of the covenant when the Israelites came and took it to battle.  Second, when the war went badly for the Israelites, they did not seek God’s guidance to learn what they had done wrong, as they had under Joshua when they suffered defeat at Ai.  No, they brought God, so they thought, to the frontlines,  believing that would force Him to give them victory.  Or to put it another way, they considered God to be just another item in their array of battle:

General looking at the battle map, “We will put that infantry unit there, this other infantry over there, and put our archers..there. Finally, put the ark of the covenant, with God inside it, in our center just behind our elite units.”

On the other hand, when Samuel led the Israelites he had them put aside all of their idols and destroy their objects for worshiping other gods.  Then he called them to assemble to worship God.  Yes, Samuel was also calling them to assemble for war, but he did not marshal them into position with a plan to take the battle to the Philistines.  Samuel called them together before God, and waited for God to act.  Under Samuel, the Israelites did not impose their will on their neighbors, but none of their neighbors were able to impose their will upon the Israelites.

Of course, part of Samuel’s success resulted from what happened after the Israelites brought the ark of covenant to war, and thought that thus they had brought God to their war.  The Philistines thought the same thing had happened, that a god had been brought to the battle, and they were frightened.  But, when they were victorious, the Philistines thought that it meant that their gods were more powerful than the Israelites’ god.  God decisively, and in “language” they thoroughly understood, showed them that He had chosen to allow them to seize the ark of the covenant.  When the Philistines won the battle, they thought that their god, Dagon, had defeated the god of the Israelites, despite being distant from Dagon’s temple and in the presence of the Israelites’ god’s presence in the ark.  But when they put the ark of the covenant inside the center of Dagon’s presence and power, Dagon “bowed” down to the god of Israel, because the god of Israel was not “god” with a lower case “g”, rather Israel’s God was the Creator of all that is and all that will be.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 1-3.

I often have trouble deciding what to write about in this passage because there are so many things worthy of a blog entry.  However, today I was struck by the Messianic prophecy by the man of God who condemned Eli for his failure to control his sons.  In Chapter 2 verse 35, the man of God tells Eli that God will raise up a faithful priest who will walk before His anointed always.  Reading the NIV it is easy to miss how much this refers to Jesus because the NIV translates the reference to who will walk before God’s anointed in the plural, implying that God will give that faithful priest descendants who will walk before Him.  That is not a bad translation, as many of those who read the original Hebrew would have interpreted it that way because of the context. However, most other translations translate that in the singular, as in “he will walk before my anointed always.”  Now, there are some interesting aspects of this.  If that “faithful priest” is Jesus (as I believe it does), who is the anointed before whom He will walk?  My answer to that question is that the anointed is also Jesus.  I want to say that I suspect that this prophecy was also partially fulfilled by another priest as well, but I am unsure about that.  I am not completely satisfied with my interpretation of this prophecy, in part because I have never really thought about it before.  Since I am convinced that the “anointed” referenced here is Jesus (although I suspect at the time this prophecy was recorded those who recorded it thought it referred to King David and his descendants who sat on the throne after him), it may be that the “faithful priest” refers to someone else (or some group).  The other question which I have, at this point, no understanding is in what way do Eli’s descendants ask of that priest for priestly duties to perform?

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