And Saul said to Samuel, I have indeed hearkened to the voice of Jehovah, and have gone the way which Jehovah sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.
Saul comes back from battle and answers Samuel's charge with a flat claim of obedience. Yet Agag, the king of Amalek God told him to destroy, stands there alive. So the verse asks how a man can claim full obedience while the proof against him stands at his side.
Saul's speech moves fast, and the speed itself tells us something. One writer tracks the shifts: a boast, then the excuse of this verse, then a confession:
As Samuel comes to meet him, Saul says: "Blessed are you of the LORD; I have performed the commandment of the LORD." How prompt he is to boast about himself! In verse 20 we will see him excusing himself, and in verse 24, accusing himself with the same quickness. This quickness is stamped on everything.
But the animals he kept alive are standing there while he speaks. What he spared answers for him:
Saul seems (though it may be hypocrisy) delighted to meet Samuel, and apparently is unaware of having disobeyed God. He goes out with the bold profession, "I have performed the commandment of the LORD." The prophet might weep in secret over the rejection of the proud king. Even so, he deals with him faithfully. He asks about the spared flocks and herds, and they give the lie to the king's claim that he had obeyed the commandment of the LORD. How often do the spared things of the flesh and its desires contradict our bold claim to have put to death everything in us that belongs to the earth!
Saul now hands the fault to his soldiers. He also dresses the act up as religion, and his choice of words gives him away:
He softens his sin by saying it was to sacrifice that they spared the animals. By giving the act a religious motive he thought to escape the guilt of his conduct and its penalty. He says to Samuel, "the LORD your God." But the man of God will have none of it. Again Saul tries to shift the responsibility for his act onto the shoulders of the people: "The people took of the spoil," he says.
A king who blames his subjects has turned his own office upside down:
No doubt they were quite willing to spare them, but that did not relieve Saul from his responsibility as king. What king yields to his people, or obeys them? It is always the reverse. Samuel, however, does not dispute this, or speak of it to Saul. There is another King who had given His command. It was to Him that Saul must give an account.
Saul's excuse is not that the order was too harsh. It is that he kept the animals for God — and that, one writer argues, is the worst form disobedience can take:
Disobedience that comes from carelessness or indifference is bad. Disobedience that is pure wilfulness is worse. Worst of all is the kind that comes from wilfulness and then dresses itself up. It wears a cloak of pretended piety and zeal for the Lord's interests. That is what Saul was guilty of here. It explains the strong, drastic way God met it through the lips of Samuel.
Saul split the spoil in two: the worthless he destroyed, the good he kept. One writer turns that sorting into a test for us:
How could anything be good which was bound up with Amalek? And yet, apply this principle to the flesh and the world. Saul failed to carry it out according to God's mind about Agag and the land of the Amalekites. How common Saul's sin looks today!
Saul's answer is the answer of a man who has never seen himself as guilty. One writer shows what that self-image costs him:
Saul was the outwardly moral and religious man, but also a self-righteous man. So we get expressions like these: "I have performed the commandment of the LORD" — "I have obeyed the voice of the LORD, and have gone on the mission on which the LORD sent me." How could this man value grace? Impossible. A heart unbroken, a conscience unconvinced, can never enter into the meaning of the word grace.
- Spared — Saul kept the best and destroyed the worthless; nothing tied to Amalek was good, so the sorting itself was the sin.
- Said — Saul claimed obedience with the animals he spared standing beside him. What we keep alive contradicts what we claim to have killed.
- Shifted — he blamed the people and spoke of "the LORD your God," but a king answers to the King who gave the order.
- Screened — Saul kept the spoil "to sacrifice." Disobedience dressed as piety is worse than disobedience from carelessness or plain self-will.
- Sealed — a man who boasts, excuses, and confesses by turns never breaks. An unbroken heart cannot value grace.
But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the devoted things, to sacrifice to Jehovah thy God in Gilgal.
Samuel has caught Saul in the act: the animals God ordered destroyed are still alive. His reply is not a denial but an explanation: the people took them, and the plan was worship.
Saul does not say "I spared them." He hands the act to his subjects. But that defence costs him more than it saves.
All of Saul's excuses were empty, or worse. As Adam did with Eve, the king put the people forward to shelter himself. What was he raised up for, if not to lead the people? Was it not for the king to hold back lawlessness, rather than for them to entangle him in disobedience? Had it come to this, that the people commanded him? Such a confession could have only one result. His kingship was gone.
The record itself does not divide the guilt the way Saul does.
The Spirit of God says "Saul and the people"; Saul says "the people," and that it was for God that they spared. But our excuses, even when true, only condemn us. Saul, having no faith and not looking to God, feared the people more than God. What a slave the unbeliever is! If he is not the slave of the enemy, he is the slave of the people he seems to govern.
One small pronoun in Saul's sentence gives him away.
Twice he speaks to Samuel of "the LORD your God" (vv. 21, 30). All sense of relationship to God, and of having to do with Him for himself, seems to have left him. Unhappy man!
The stated reason is sacrifice, and it sounds generous. Saul keeps nothing for himself; the animals go to God. Mackintosh weighs what such a plea is worth.
It is useless to fall back on the plausible plea of "sacrifice to the Lord." What a miserable refuge for disobedient hearts! As if the Lord would accept a sacrifice from someone walking in open rebellion against His commandment. How many since Saul's day have tried to cover a disobedient spirit with the plausible cloak of "sacrifice to the Lord."
The verse calls these animals "the things devoted to destruction" — already handed over to judgment. Saul's men killed the worthless and kept the best. Ridout sees the same instinct in the way we handle our own evil.
It was the best of the Amalekites' possessions that were spared. They rejected everything worthless. How often people denounce the coarser sins of human nature and reject them without mercy, while still keeping up a respectable outward show! No one thinks of making room in doctrine for drunkenness and the lower vices. Yet people plead hard that we should spare other things and dedicate them to the Lord's service: whatever appeals to refined taste in ritual service, or legal formalism, or an unequal partnership with the unconverted in the work of God. But how can anyone dedicate something unclean to Him? There is only one way to dedicate evil to God, and that is to hand it over to the sword of judgment.
Saul even names the place: Gilgal. That detail makes the offer worse.
"In Gilgal," notice! Of all places, that was where he proposed to offer the fruit of self-will to God. It was Israel's first camping ground, the place where Israel used the sharp knives of circumcision. That is a lasting lesson: self-judgment is vital for everyone who would have dealings with God. Later the people understood the place no better than their first king had. They made Gilgal one of the chief centres of their sin against God.
Samuel's answer reaches far past this battlefield.
Samuel does not dispute this or discuss it with Saul. There is another King who had given His command. It was to Him that Saul must give an account. Did He delight in sacrifices as much as in obedience, even if they devoted all the cattle to Him? Then comes that famous, searching word: "to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams." It tests many a plausible claim to devotedness or service. How often people plead that we should spare something of our sinful nature and devote it to the Lord!
- Blame shifted. Saul says the people took the spoil; by admitting they overruled him, he admits he was no longer ruling.
- God borrowed. He offers sacrifice to "the LORD your God" — Samuel's God. His own sense of relationship with God had drained away.
- Piety as cover. The stated aim was worship. Disobedience wore the cloak of sacrifice, and God will not accept such an offering.
- The best kept back. Saul destroyed the worthless and kept the best, then called it devoted to God. Evil has only one true dedication — the sword of judgment.
- Obedience wanted. God wanted obedience, not fat rams. The same test still exposes every plea to spare something and call it service.