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

When I read today’s passage two questions cross my mind.  The first one: would David have fought for the Philistines and against the Israelites if the other Philistine rulers had not demanded that Achish send him away from the battle?  Second, why is the account of Saul consulting the medium in Endor included here?  I do not think that we can answer the first question with any more than a guess.  While David lived under Achish’s rule, he was careful to never attack any Israelite settlements but told Achish that he had.  As to the second question, I think we can reach a few conclusions about why it was included.  First, it gives us an idea about how desperate Saul had become as he heads into his final battle.  Additionally, it tells us that at least some of those who claim to speak with the dead are indeed able to do so.  Finally, we learn that if we turn aside from God we will be left with nowhere to turn when things inevitably go wrong.

On the other hand, David consulted God whenever he had a decision to make.  So, when he was about to feel compelled to fight against his own people, God arranged for the Philistines to send him away from the battle, just in time for him to return to his home base to discover that his wives and possessions, and those of his men, had been taken by bandits.  Again, David consulted God before setting off in pursuit of those bandits.  With God’s help David was able to overtake the bandits and recover not only all of the goods and people which the bandits had taken from him and his men, he also recovered that which they had taken from other towns and villages nearby.  He shared some of this plunder with the elders of Judah who had provided him supplies and support while he was hiding from King Saul.

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.

There are three accounts of David’s time on the run from King Saul in today’s passage.  I am going to start with my thoughts today on the first one and we will see if I write about the other two or not.  So, first we have the account of David’s interaction with Nabal and Nabal’s wife Abigail.  The first aspect of this account is the way Nabal answered the men David sent to him.  To me reading it today, it seems like David’s response to Nabal’s words is a bit over the top. Yes, it is dismissive of David and somewhat insulting, but is it really a harsh enough insult to justify bloodshed.  However, Nabal’s own servants apparently thought it was.  They went to Nabal’s wife Abigail and begged her to do something.  So, we should be careful about judging a situation from outside it.  To me, David seems to have overreacted, but to all of those who were there, his reaction was expected and considered justified.  There is one other piece of this account I want to point out.  Both Abigail and David expressed that they were pleased that David did not avenge himself on Nabal.  Neither seem to think that he would have been in the wrong to do so, but both thought it was better that he had not done so.  In the end, God avenged David against Nabal, and David was grateful that he had not done so himself.

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 not sure why this never occurred to me before, but it struck me that David, whose great grandmother was a Moabite, took his parents to the king of Moab to keep them safe while he was on the run from King Saul.  This made me wonder if Ruth had been related to the royal family of Moab?  I think that is probably not a conclusion we are intended to reach, not even that Ruth’s descendants kept some kind of connection with her homeland.  As I have thought about it more, it seems like David went to Moab as the logical conclusion.   First, he had gone to Gath, in Philistia, and before he could ask for the king of Gath to shelter his parents he realized that he was seen as an enemy there.  If we then look at Ancient Israel we see that Philistia was on one side of Judah and Moab on the other.  Basically, after Philistia, Moab was the next place where David could take his parents.  Further, his other options would have required travelling through territory controlled by Saul, where David had no allies (at least not at this point in his life).

The other thing I want to look at is the men who followed David.  In 1 Samuel 14:52 it says that “whenever Saul saw a mighty or brave man, he took him into his service.”  In today’s passage it says that when David was at the cave of Adullam “All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander.”   Yet out of those discontented, distressed, or debtors came David’s mighty men.  Saul took the mighty and brave to build his army.  David took the outcasts.   David took the distressed, the discontented, the debtors, the outcasts and forged a force of mighty warriors.  Just as Jesus forges His Church out of the outcasts of our society.

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.

After David defeated Goliath, as King Saul and his army, including David, returned to Gibeah, the women in the towns they passed through praised Saul, but praised David even higher.  King Saul became jealous of David.  Saul’s jealousy of David is evidence of his lack of faith in God.  If Saul had been a leader who put God first in his life, he would not have been bothered by someone else receiving greater honor from the people than he did.  A leader who is serving the Lord does not mind when others get the credit, or are seen as more important.  They are not even worried if it becomes obvious that someone else will replace them as leader.  A leader who is serving God only cares that the people they are leading also follow and worship God.   If they are the leader God desires for His people, God will keep them in that position.  If God removes them from that position of leadership, it is because God has someone better in mind for that position…and the leader who is serving God desires that the people they are leading have the best possible leader, even if it is not themselves.  On the other hand, David did not particularly seek honor, as evidenced by his unwillingness to marry King Saul’s older daughter.  It was only after Michal, Saul’s younger daughter, fell in love with David that he was willing to become King Saul’s son-in-law.  David sought to do God’s will and knew that he did not need to strive after the position God wanted him in because he knew that God would put him there when the time was right.

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.

Today I want to compare Jonathan’s faith from the first account in today’s passage with Saul’s faith from the final account in today’s story.  When Jonathan left the Israelite camp and headed over to scout out, and provoke, a Philistine camp, he laid out a test before God of what he should do.  He laid out before God that he and his armor bearer would attack if the Philistines arrogantly called them to come close, but would not do so otherwise.  Then when the Philistines gave him the response to attack, Jonathan gave credit to God for the victory he was about to have.  Then in the last account of today’s passage Samuel told King Saul that God commanded him to attack and completely destroy the Amalekites, killing all of them and destroying everything which belonged to them.  Saul attacked them and completely wiped them out, but he spared their king and kept the best of their sheep and cattle.  When Saul then met Samuel he claimed to have fully carried out God’s instructions.  Then when Samuel confronted him about the sheep and cattle, Saul blamed his soldiers…and claimed that they had only done so in order to offer them to God.  Finally when Samuel told him that he had not obeyed the Lord, Saul claimed the he had done so and only kept the sheep and cattle in order to sacrifice them to “the Lord your God.”  Notice, Saul did not say, “the Lord my God,” or, “the Lord our God.”  King Saul did not view God as his God (not even as his god).

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.

In his farewell address to the people of Israel, Samuel says that they sought a king when Nahash, king of the Ammonites, started to move against Israelite lands.  He points out that they sinned by doing so because God was already their king.  However, Samuel tells them that if they, and their king, obey the Lord going forward all will be well, but if they do not, it will not be well.  Then Samuel called on God to send them a sign to illustrate their sin in asking for a king.  The sign which they received was rain and thunder out of season.  What was the point of this sign?  The sign demonstrated that Israel had had a king in God who had power over even the weather.  Instead they chose a human king whom they could physically see, but who had no such power.  Instead of trusting God to protect them and obeying Him, they chose to establish a government to protect them and force them to act morally.  We often make the same mistake today.  Instead of obeying God and loving our neighbor and trusting God to protect us and transform those around us, we turn to the government for protection and to enforce morality: thinking that if we just get the right people in positions of authority, everything will turn out right.

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.

The first thing we see in today’s passage is that when Samuel became old and appointed his sons to take over his duties, they turned out to be much like Eli’s sons had been.  This led the Israelites to request that Samuel appoint a king over them.  It really tells us a lot that the Israelites response to having two leaders in a row whose sons turned out to be evil and corrupt when their fathers turned leadership over to them decided that the solution was to appoint a leader with even greater authority whose son would, by default, inherit their father’s authority.  They would replace a leader whose authority came from the agreement of those who followed them with one to whom they had granted the authority to enforce his commands by force.  This new leader would be given hereditary authority which would pass on to his son.  They did this because the sons of their most two recent leaders were corrupt and exercised what limited authority their fathers passed on to them poorly.  Rather than recognize that the reason they had poor leaders was because they failed to choose to faithfully follow God, they blamed it on their leaders not having enough authority.  They thought that if only they had a stronger ruler who could have forced people to more stringently keep God’s laws, they would have been a better people.  Rather than turn to God and follow Him with all of their heart, they chose to try setting up a government which would force them to do so.  It doesn’t work that way, it never has, and it never will.

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.

We generally think of Eli’s death being the result of God’s judgement because of the corruption of his sons.  However, we do not normally pay attention to the fact that he was 98 years old when he died.  I think that fact supports my claim from yesterday’s post that Eli had a faith in God worth noting.  Now let’s look at what I saw in today’s passage worth thinking about.  We often focus on the misbehavior of Eli’s sons as leading to the Israelite mistake of thinking that they could force God to support them in battle against the Philistines by bringing the Ark of the Covenant to the battle.  After the Ark was returned to Israel, with all that went along with that, the passage tells us that all of the people of Israel turned back to God.  It was only after they turned back to God that Samuel became the leader of Israel.  So, the people of Israel did not turn back to God because Samuel, a righteous man, was their leader.  Rather,  Samuel became Israel’s leader because the people turned back to God.  There is one more thing worth noting.  When the Philistines attacked the Israelites at the beginning of today’s passage, the Israelites tried to force God to help them by taking the Ark with them into battle.  At the end of today’s passage when the Philistines attacked the Israelites, the Israelites did not ask Samuel to lead them into battle and bring God with him.  Rather, they asked Samuel to cry out to God on their behalf asking Him to rescue them.

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.

Today’s passage gives us three separate people showing faith in God: Hannah, Samuel, and Eli.  We often overlook Eli’s faith because of his failure as a father.  Nevertheless, all three provide us examples of acting in faith.  Let us start with Hannah.  Hannah desperately wanted a child, in particular a son.  So, she cried out to God and promised that if He gave her a son she would give him back to God to serve Him for all of his days.  When God answered her prayers, Hannah did not say, either to others or herself, “Well, it was bound to happen eventually.”  No, she said, “God has demonstrated His power by answering my prayer.  I will keep my vow and give this boy to serve God all of his life.”  She then sings a song of praise, aspects of which are reflected in the actions of both Samuel and Eli.  She tells us that there is no one like God, that He alone brings death and brings life.  He send wealth, and He sends poverty.  She reminds us that we do not prevail by strength, but by the will of God.

Which brings me to Eli’s show of faith.  While Eli failed to rein in his sons from evil, he recognized that it was God’s voice calling Samuel in the night.  He correctly told Samuel how to answer God’s call.  Then, when he got Samuel to tell him what God had said to Samuel, Eli accepted God’s judgement.  Eli knew that he had failed to raise his sons to properly fear and respect God, but he did not fail to teach Samuel what he needed to know.  And he accepted God’s judgement for his failure.  Finally, we have Samuel, whose example here is mostly in following the lead given him by his elders.  Following Eli’s instruction, Samuel responded to God’s calling and submitted himself as a servant of the Lord.

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