“I gave thee a king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath.” Hosea xiii. 11.
The Israelites seem to have asked for a king from an unthankful caprice and waywardness. The ill conduct, indeed, of Samuel’s sons was the occasion of the sin, but “an evil heart of unbelief,” to use Scripture language, was the real cause of it. They had ever been restless and dissatisfied, asking for flesh when they had manna, fretful for water, impatient of the wilderness, bent on returning to Egypt, fearing their enemies, murmuring against Moses. They had miracles even to satiety; and then, for a change, they wished a king like the nations. This was the chief reason of their sinful demand. And further, they were dazzled with the pomp and splendour of the heathen monarchs around them, and they desired some one to fight their battles, some visible succour to depend on, instead of having to wait for an invisible Providence, which came in its own way and time, by little and little, being dispensed silently, or tardily, or (as they might consider) unsuitably. Their carnal hearts did not love the neighbourhood of heaven; and, like the inhabitants of Gadara afterwards, they prayed that Almighty God would depart from their coasts.
Such were some of the feelings under which they desired a king like the nations; and God at length granted their request. To punish them, He gave them a king after their own heart, Saul, the son of Kish, a Benjamite; of whom the text speaks in these terms, “I gave them a king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath.”
There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence of hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural man; a plainness, austereness, and (what he considers) sadness. It is like the heavenly manna of which the Israelites complained, insipid, and at length wearisome, “like wafers made with honey.” They complained that “their soul was dried away:” “There is nothing at all,” they said, “beside this manna, before our eyes … We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick.” [Exod. xvi. Numb. xi. 5.] Such were the dainty meats in which their soul delighted; and for the same reason they desired a king. Samuel had too much of primitive simplicity about him to please them, they felt they were behind the world, and clamoured to be put on a level with the heathen.
Saul, the king whom God gave them, had much to recommend him to minds thus greedy of the dust of the earth. He was brave, daring, resolute; gifted, too, with strength of body as well as of mind—a circumstance which seems to have attracted their admiration. He is described in person as if one of those sons of Anak, before whose giant-forms the spies of the Israelites in the wilderness were as grasshoppers—“a choice young man, and a goodly; there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.” [1 Sam. ix. 2. [^1]] Both his virtues and his faults were such as became an eastern monarch, and were adapted to secure the fear and submission of his subjects. Pride, haughtiness, obstinacy, reserve, jealousy, caprice—these, in their way, were not unbecoming qualities in the king after whom their imaginations roved. On the other hand, the better parts of his character were of an excellence sufficient to engage the affection of Samuel himself.
As to Samuel, his conduct is far above human praise. Though injuriously treated by his countrymen, who cast him off after he had served them faithfully till he was “old and gray-headed,” [1 Sam. xii. 2.] and who resolved on setting over themselves a king against his earnest entreaties, still we find no trace of coldness or jealousy in his behaviour towards Saul. On his first meeting with him, he addressed him in the words of loyalty—“On whom is all the desire of Israel? is it not on thee, and on all thy father’s house?” Afterwards, when he anointed him king, he “kissed him, and said, Is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over His inheritance?” When he announced him to the people as their king, he said, “See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people?” And, some time after, when Saul had irrecoverably lost God’s favour, we are told, “Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul.” In the next chapter he is even rebuked for immoderate grief—“How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel.” [ 1 Sam. ix. 20; x. 1, 24; xv. 35; xvi. 1.] Such sorrow speaks favourably for Saul as well as for Samuel; it is not only the grief of a loyal subject and a zealous prophet, but, moreover, of an attached friend; and, indeed, instances are recorded, in the first years of his reign, of forbearance, generosity, and neglect of self, which sufficiently account for the feelings with which Samuel regarded him. David, under very different circumstances, seems to have felt for him a similar affection.