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.