1 Samuel 25:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Samuel 25:1

Comments

Here in this chapter is what may be described as the perfect anger management procedure for God's children. But in verse 1, ‘Samuel died.’ That is a very short verse to describe the death of Samuel. Now that must have been a major event in Israel. Samuel the prophet had kept himself out of the way for a time. Saul was anointed to be king. God would take him away, but Samuel stepped aside. One imagines that he continued to teach and lead the school of the prophets. But now he died and the people realised how much they owed to him. And it was a major event. ‘And all the Israelites were gathered together and lamented him’; they buried him at Ramah. Only now do they seem to appreciate the prophet and the last of the judges, whom they rejected. The people rejected him and his rule over them, and they cried out for a king. But now they lament him when he is dead. But then life almost at once for David returns to normal, because even an event like that, so pivotal in the life of the nation, didn't, for long, stop Saul in his pursuit of David, and his murderous campaign against him. This may be because he felt that with Samuel gone, Saul's efforts to take him would become even more focused and concentrated. That's an assumption, but why did he relocate to a new region, to a new place, on Samuel's death? It was almost as though he expected all kinds of things to go wrong. But God is going to vindicate David, and his faithfulness to the standards that he has been taught by the Lord.

Application

You find people can get very sentimental. It seems to cover over the remorse they ought to have, or the regret they ought to face up to, when in fact they have rejected that person. When the person dies, sentimentality can cover up the way that they treated him. Sadly it was so with Samuel.

What follows is this very interesting passage here in chapter 25, and that one cannot help feeling that Nabal, the churl, the fool, is really only included in the record to form a contrast with Samuel. People often ask, what is this passage doing here? What is this strange encounter doing in the whole story? What significance is he? Well we have just read about Samuel, who sent out all the poor preachers, the evangelists, through the school of the prophets, who saw revival in his own time, who was a man of such selflessness and courage: never thought anything of himself. He dies, and in the same chapter Nabal dies: rich, selfish, mean, arrogant, useless man, hopeless man: just a contrast. Even as believers, it does us good to consider which set of characteristics we are closest to: Samuel or Nabal?

What a giant in the faith was Samuel! He was a great reformer, who saw revival, who founded the School of the Prophets, who was characterised by this great perseverance and courage, and who was engaged too in the reform of the courts. He founded the circuit courts, which commentators point out were copied in this country as the result of the efforts of Alfred the great, and he got it from who? From Samuel the prophet. The circuit judges and the system of circuit justice, and so on, was established then.

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1 Samuel 25:1 Commentary and Bible Study