1 Samuel 10:24 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Samuel said to all the people, See ye him.’ Samuel must be very unhappy about this. He wasn't unhappy about complying with the Lord. He would lay down his duties to Saul because the Lord said so. He wasn't being at all truculent, but he could see the shallowness of the people, and you can hear an edge in his voice: ‘See ye him, whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people.’ There is no word here about, ‘See him. I can tell you that he is a person of immense stature and moral character and fibre.’ Nothing like that. Instead, he knows their tastes and so it is, ‘Can you see that there is no one who looks quite as he looks?’ ‘And all the people shouted and said, God save the king.’ That isn't exactly what they said in the Hebrew, but to the translators have helped us to get the spirit of what they said. ‘God save the king.’ ‘Then Samuel told the people, the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book and laid it up before the Lord, and then he sent that all the people away.’ ‘Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before the LORD.’ He gets all this from Deuteronomy: what kings should do when they come about, and the rules for them, and he seals it to the people. The kings were under divine regulation. They were not free to act as autocrats. They had authority delegated to them by God and they would all be held accountable for how they kept the law of God and taught the people to do the same.