1 Samuel 12

1Sa 12:1-5.

SAMUEL

TESTIFIES HIS

INTEGRITY.

1-4. Samuel said unto all Israel--This public address was made after

the solemn re-instalment of Saul, and before the convention at Gilgal

separated. Samuel, having challenged a review of his public life,

received a unanimous testimony to the unsullied honor of his personal

character, as well as the justice and integrity of his public

administration.

5. the Lord is witness against you, and his anointed is witness--that,

divine government by judges, and that, therefore, the blame of desiring

a change of government rested with themselves. This was only insinuated,

and they did not fully perceive his drift.

1Sa 12:6-16.

HE

REPROVES THE

PEOPLE FOR

INGRATITUDE.

7-16. Now therefore stand still, that I may reason with you--The burden

of this faithful and uncompromising address was to show them, that

though they had obtained the change of government they had so

importunely desired, their conduct was highly displeasing to their

heavenly King; nevertheless, if they remained faithful to Him and to

the principles of the theocracy, they might be delivered from many of

the evils to which the new state of things would expose them. And in

confirmation of those statements, no less than in evidence of the

divine displeasure, a remarkable phenomenon, on the invocation of the

prophet, and of which he gave due premonition, took place.

11. Bedan--The Septuagint reads "Barak"; and for "Samuel" some

versions read "Samson," which seems more natural than that the prophet

should mention himself to the total omission of the greatest of the

judges. (Compare

Heb 11:32).

1Sa 12:17-25.

HE

TERRIFIES

THEM WITH

THUNDER IN

HARVEST-TIME.

17-25. Is it not wheat harvest to-day?--That season in Palestine

occurs at the end of June or beginning of July, when it seldom or never

rains, and the sky is serene and cloudless. There could not, therefore,

have been a stronger or more appropriate proof of a divine mission than

the phenomenon of rain and thunder happening, without any prognostics

of its approach, upon the prediction of a person professing himself to

be a prophet of the Lord, and giving it as an attestation of his words

being true. The people regarded it as a miraculous display of divine

power, and, panic-struck, implored the prophet to pray for them.

Promising to do so, he dispelled their fears. The conduct of Samuel,

in this whole affair of the king's appointment, shows him to have been

a great and good man who sank all private and personal considerations

in disinterested zeal for his country's good and whose last words in

public were to warn the people, and their king, of the danger of

apostasy and disobedience to God.