Samuel — Young and Old

Simon Attwood

Samuel is one of those Bible characters we can trace from the start to the finish of their lives. The first time we meet him, so to speak, is in the vow his mother, Hannah, made to the Lord:[1] ‘O Jehovah of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thy handmaid, but wilt give unto thy handmaid a man child, then I will give him to Jehovah all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head’ (1 Sam. 1:11). He was born a Levite (1 Chr. 6:33–38; 1 Sam. 1:1), and was a Nazarite (Num. 6:2, 5) from infancy because his mother pledged this and because he devoted himself to the Lord. In this respect, he is an Old Testament answer to a New Testament exhortation: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service’ (Rom. 12:1).

Samuel was a man of prayer as his mother was a woman of prayer. She must have made a powerful impression on him in his very early years when he was at home with her (1 Sam. 1:22). This should encourage mothers who have the care of young children. They tend the roots of their later lives for God, and Hannah’s ministry to Samuel as a boy certainly bore fruit in him in manhood. We find him praying for Israel (1 Sam. 7:5; 12:23), so much so that Psalms and Jeremiah refer to this aspect of his service (Ps. 99:6; Jer. 15:1) — the prophet putting him on a par with Moses. He was in touch with God and His people in that order, and therefore was able to honour the one and help the other (1 Sam. 7:12). He was the last of the judges (Acts 13:20) and the first of the prophets (3:24) — a bridge from the past to the future, a link of blessing between Jehovah and His people in a day of difficulty before David became king.

Conscious of weakness and failure, we may feel intimidated by Samuel’s spiritual qualities and achievements. How can we even try to emulate this great denizen of the Bible? While it is true that he is a remarkable man, his life is recorded in Scripture as an example we can all follow in our measure (Heb. 11:32; 12:1, 2). He was not perfect, but one quality that stands out is his ability to relate to people and bring them the words God wanted them to hear. This at least should attract us to him, rather than scare us off. He never acted towards others in a personally superior way but it was evident he had divine authority (1 Sam. 3:20; 9:6–10). He aimed at their blessing and worked to recover them for the Lord where possible (11:14). There are lessons in this for all of us whether we are young or old because as Samuel grew older he interacted with people of descending ages as Eli, Saul and David vividly illustrate.

Eli

Shiloh should have been the most sacred place on earth, and it was in the sense that the tabernacle and ark of God were there, but the sons of Eli, the high priest, had made it a sink of corruption too. It is beautiful to see how God richly repaid Hannah’s trust in Him and preserved Samuel, and how he ‘ministered before Jehovah, a boy girded with a linen ephod’ (1 Sam. 2:18). Like Joseph earlier and Daniel later, he was controlled in all his ways by what pleased God despite the sinful things that were going on around him. And there is the additional feature that he served Him in a priestly as well as a Levitical character. He was not a priest as such, but in his little way he made up for the deprivations of the priests. The fact that this is recorded in Scripture shows that God takes account of faithfulness to Him from our earliest years. We do not know how much, if anything, he knew about Eli’s failure to curb Hophni and Phinehas but we read that he was like the Lord Jesus: he ‘grew on, and was in favour both with Jehovah and also with men’ (v. 26; Luke 2:52). He progressed as Eli went backwards, but he respected the hoary head (Lev. 19:32) and the office he occupied as Paul did many years later (Acts 23:4–5). Even after the unnamed man of God pronounced judgment on Eli’s house, we read: ‘the boy Samuel ministered … before Eli’ (1 Sam. 3:1).

Someone else’s failure is never a reason to ignore God’s mind and will. If ‘the word of Jehovah was rare in those days; a vision was not frequent’ it was not all Eli’s fault — the general state of the people had something to do with it. But ‘the lamp of God had not yet gone out’ (v. 3); He was preparing Samuel to take Eli’s place in guiding the nation. The boy’s heart was right as his three-fold cry, ‘Here am I’, showed, but his relationship with and responsibility to the Lord were through the high priest and not personal and direct yet (vs. 4–8). That would change that night but had he shut his ears when he thought that Eli was calling him, he would not have benefitted from his belated counsel and answered the Lord’s double call, ‘Samuel, Samuel!’, with the words: ‘Speak, for thy servant heareth’ (v. 10). His answer may have been imperfect but he was morally ready to receive the revelation of God’s impending judgment on Eli. Rightly, he did not relish passing it on to him, but, sad as it was, it meant that he would open the doors to a new day in more ways than one (v. 15). The blind, old man demanded to hear what God had said, and received it from the lips of a boy, but we can be sure Samuel’s spiritual qualities commended it to him. 

Saul

Samuel ‘grew, and Jehovah was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, knew that Samuel was established a prophet of Jehovah’ (vs. 19–20). But when the Philistines attacked, the people did not turn to him for counsel but used the ark as a mere totem in the struggle that followed — with disastrous results. For more than 20 years they lamented until Samuel graciously took the initiative and showed them that they needed to repent. He prayed for them, and as they humbled themselves and he presented a burnt offering for them, they gained a long-lasting victory over the Philistines with the Lord’s miraculous help. Cities were restored to them and they enjoyed a period of blessing under Samuel’s leadership (chs. 4–7).[2] But then they said to him, ‘Behold, thou art become old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now appoint us a king to judge us, like all the nations’ (8:5). There was truth in this about his sons (v. 3) — it seems that he had made a mistake — but later we learn the real reason for their request: they were afraid of Nahash the Ammonite (12:12) and wanted a king of their own to defeat him. This displeased Samuel but he prayed to the Lord who said, ‘Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king’ (8:22). God is long-suffering with His people and He expects His servants ‘not to contend, but be gentle towards all; apt to teach; forbearing; in meekness setting right those who oppose’ (2 Tim. 2:24–26). 

Proverbs 21:1 says: ‘The king’s heart in the hand of Jehovah is as brooks of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.’ Samuel was not a king but he judged the people of Israel according to this verse — something their first king never did. We get a sense of Saul’s superficiality from his first meeting with Samuel in the course of his search for his father’s asses: he hardly seemed to know anything about the ‘man of God’ of whom his servant spoke (1 Sam. 9:5–9; 18). But Samuel himself was in the Lord’s will (vs. 15–17) — he honoured the callow young man (vs. 22–24), anointed him and told him to expect signs that would show him that God was with him (10:1–13). Confirming that nothing is beneath God’s notice, he even assured Saul that his father’s asses had been found (1 Sam. 10:2, 16). He then presented him to the people (vs. 17–25), and when the new king defeated Nahash (11:1–11) as they desired, he gave them the best advice possible: ‘Come and let us go to Gilgal, and renew the kingdom there’ (v. 14). In this Samuel foreshadowed the lowly mind that was in Christ Jesus that Paul wanted for the Philippians (2:1–8) and displayed himself (vs. 17–18). There was no resentment or rancour on his part to spoil the joy of God’s people (1 Sam. 11:15), but he reminded them that God was their real resource (12:13–18) and assured them, ‘as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against Jehovah in ceasing to pray for you; and I will teach you the good and right way’ (v. 23).

Saul made a fair start as king after a human sort (e.g. 1 Sam. 10:22; 11:13). Samuel tried to teach him dependence on the Lord but he had no confidence in God because he did not know him (10:8; 13:1–12). Samuel’s guidance was lost on him, and soon he had to say, ‘Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of Jehovah thy God which he commanded thee; for now would Jehovah have established thy kingdom over Israel for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue’ (vs. 13–14). Later, when Saul failed a further test in regard to Israel’s inveterate enemies the Amalekites, God said to Samuel, ‘It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king; for he is turned away from following me, and hath not fulfilled my words’. Samuel, ‘much grieved; … cried to Jehovah all night’ (15:11), but, as in the case of Eli, he got up early the next morning and, ignoring Saul’s blandishments, pronounced God’s judgment on him. What pathos: ‘Was it not when thou wast little in thine eyes that thou becamest the head of the tribes of Israel, and Jehovah anointed thee king over Israel?’ What reality: ‘Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, Attention than the fat of rams’ (vs. 17, 22). Unlike Eli, Saul did not really accept the sentence even though Samuel explained the true cause of it: ‘thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, and Jehovah has rejected thee from being king over Israel’ (v. 26). Consistent with this, he went home to Ramah and ‘saw Saul no more until the day of his death’. But it was with a heavy heart — he ‘mourned over Saul’ (vs. 34, 35). This is God’s character in a man: judgment is ‘his strange work, … his unwonted act’ (Isa. 28:21).

David

God said to Samuel, ‘How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thy horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided me a king among his sons’ (1 Sam. 16:1). When he was young, he had been the only one God could use; he was still available to Him now that he was old. He had told the people what to expect from a king (8:11–18) and now his words were coming true. Fear was spreading through the land and even affecting him but his obedience to and dependence on God enabled him to calm others (16:2–5). He also still had one more lesson to learn himself. Once he had said of Saul, ‘See ye him whom Jehovah has chosen, that there is none like him among all the people?’ (10:24); now as each of Jesse’s sons passed before him he heard God speak to him in a way that showed man after the flesh could not please Him, however amiable or impressive in other ways. It must be ‘a man after his own heart’, and who but the Lord can look ‘upon the heart’ to see if this is the case (13:14; 16:7). Samuel asked Jesse if he had seen all his sons and when he answered, ‘There is yet the youngest remaining, and behold, he is feeding the sheep’, he said, ‘Send and fetch him; for we will not sit at table till he come hither’ (v. 11). This was Samuel at his best. David entered, ‘ruddy, and besides of a lovely countenance and beautiful appearance’ (v. 12) — a shepherd for God’s people. The Lord said, ‘Arise, anoint him; for this is he’, and Samuel did so ‘in the midst of his brethren’ (v. 13).[3] 

What a beautiful scene, evoking the words of Hebrews 1:9: ‘Thou hast loved righteousness and hast hated lawlessness; therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with oil of gladness above thy companions.’ In David we have ‘reached Christ’, but like Christ David was persecuted (John 15:20; 1 Sam. 19:10–18). And yet he found a sanctuary in Naioth with Samuel. Here Samuel was the old man and David was the youngster. Humanly speaking, Samuel had carried out much of his public service alone. For differing reasons, those he had tried to help, like Eli and Saul, were unable to be a blessing to him. But in David he found a true companion despite their age difference. Their communion in the midst of adversity must have been encouraging to him as it was establishing to David. It appears from 1 Chronicles 9:22 that they may even have looked forward to the building of the temple. No wonder that when he died, David went down to the wilderness of Paran to be alone with God (1 Sam. 25:1).[4] Years later, when the people anointed him king over Israel in Hebron, it was ‘according to the word of Jehovah through Samuel’ (1 Chr. 11:3). 

[1] Remarkably, the last time we see him is after he has died (1 Sam. 28:15).

[2] 2 Chronicles 35:18 implies that a passover was celebrated in the time of Samuel the prophet. Perhaps this happened during this period.

[3] The horn that Samuel used to anoint David speaks of strength; the vial in Saul’s case symbolises judgment (1 Sam. 10:1).

[4] Paran means ‘their beautifying’. The mount of that name seems to speak of God acting in glory and holiness for the public display of His people (Deut. 33:2, 3; Hab. 3:2–4); the wilderness that lay below speaks of the importance of waiting on Him in that character in the meantime (Num. 10:12–36; Ps. 90:17). It is primarily a millennial picture.

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From: Truth & Testimony, 2020