And Jehovah said to Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
Israel's elders ask the aging Samuel for a king. He takes it as a personal defeat. God's reply tells him whose throne the people are really refusing. It also raises a hard question: what happens when God says yes to a request He disapproves of?
Until this moment Israel had no human king. God ruled them directly. The demand for a king set that aside.
It was in the days of Samuel that the people asked him to make them a king over them. They were tired of being under the direct government of God, who from time to time appointed judges over them. They wanted to be like the nations around them. This displeased Samuel, and he prayed to Jehovah. What was the answer of Jehovah to him? "…they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them." This is very plain. Up to this time the government of Israel had been a pure theocracy. God was their King.
Samuel's sons had been judging corruptly, and that is the reason the elders gave. God's answer looks past it.
There we find the turned-away heart of Israel. It had been drifting from the Lord ever since He brought them out of Egypt. Now it sought still greater distance from Him, and wanted a king instead of Him. The bad government of Samuel's sons at this time was their excuse, but it was only an excuse. There is no doubt that they did act corruptly... But the Lord discloses the real source of this desire for a king.
What they wanted underneath the request was room to move.
The sin was not in the idea of a king. It was in the motive.
So the thought of a king was not from man, but from God. Yet the desire for one like the nations was rebellion against God on man's part. The king God planned would be a rich blessing from Him. He purposed to give them a king before their wicked heart wanted one to get rid of Him. In man it was an evil that God must judge. In God it was grace to purpose it, and He will surely carry it out as well. Both are true; but man's mind often sets one against the other, instead of believing both.
The same sentence that names Israel's sin also lifts the weight off Samuel's shoulders.
What precious encouragement God gave His servant! It came at the very moment when Samuel was going through a discipline, and the elders of Israel had become the instruments of it. Nothing could comfort his heart more than this assurance: he was, after all, on the Lord's side. And now that the people had rejected the Lord, Samuel too had to be rejected. Is it not an honour to share the shame that the world throws on our Lord when it spurns Him?
The principle reaches past Samuel to anyone carrying God's message.
To reject a servant who is really sent out by the Lord, and who is doing His will, and is standing for Him, is to reject the Lord Himself... Blessed is that servant who, through grace, is so hidden behind his Lord that he is lost in the Lord's objects and interests, and thinks only of HIS honour and HIS claims.
God tells Samuel to listen to them. That permission is not approval.
God, however, tells Samuel to listen to their voice. They were completely set on having a king, whatever God might say about it, so He let them have their way. It was as with the quails in the wilderness: "He gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them" (Ps. 106:15; 78:29). "As sometimes He crosses us in love, so at other times He gratifies us in wrath," Matthew Henry remarks.
Samuel's experience was a small copy of something far larger.
Samuel must expect the same treatment from the nation as God Himself had received. Whoever stands with God must feel what the psalmist felt: "The reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me." Man's hatred of God has never appeared more fully than in the cross of our blessed Lord Jesus.
- Rejection. The elders blamed Samuel's sons. But the refusal went to the top: they were pushing God off His throne as King.
- Reason. They wanted to be "like the nations." God's rule felt restrictive. National pride looked better.
- Relief. The same word that exposed Israel set Samuel free. The insult was not his to carry. To be rejected alongside a rejected God is an honour.
- Request granted. God said yes, and the yes was the judgment — He crosses us in love, and sometimes gratifies us in wrath.
- Repeated. What Israel did to God here reached its full height at the cross. Yet man's sin never cancelled God's own purpose of a king.
According to all the deeds that they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, in that they have forsaken me and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.
God tells Samuel that the demand for a king was not a new failure but the latest form of an old one, going back to the day He brought Israel out of Egypt. So what had Israel been rejecting all those years, and why did God let them have their king?
Before Israel had a king, God Himself ruled the nation. He also gave the people a way to stay in touch with Him.
God Himself was their king, just as God Himself points out to Samuel (1 Sam. 8:7-8; 12:12). The priest was the point of contact, the bond between the people and God. And God raised up judges whenever the people needed them.
The words "from the day I brought them up out of Egypt" put this demand at the end of a long line. God is not judging one bad day. He is reading a record.
The Lord shows here that the demand for a king was only the climax of centuries of discontent with the position in which His grace had set them. It seems they faced the threat of an Ammonite invasion at the time (1 Sam. 12:12). They forgot the lesson of Ebenezer altogether (1 Sam. 7:12), and they turn, not to God, but to human strength. We see something similar in Judges 11. There too the Ammonites were attacking them. In their distress they turned to Jephthah for help. When will people — when will we — learn to turn to God alone in the difficulties and dangers of life?
The verse ties the demand for a king to "serving other gods." One motive lies under both.
No doubt they felt that the restraints of God's holy law were irritating. They had already gone after the gods of the nations, because that worship allowed them licence. So now they want a king "like the nations," to give them "larger freedom," as they thought. Not freedom for the practice of holiness, but freedom to feed their national vanity and political glory — "a place in the sun," as we would say today.
Being unlike everyone else was not Israel's embarrassment. It was the very thing that marked them out.
"Like all the nations" (verse 5) were truly painful words from the lips of the Lord's chosen people. It was their glory, if only they could have appreciated it, that they were not like the nations. Remember what Balaam said about them in the first of his four parables. He said, "Behold, a people dwelling alone, and not counting itself among the nations" (Num. 23:9). The people of God have always found it hard to keep the position of separation to God.
God's words "so they are also doing to you" put Samuel on His own side of the line.
This was a precious encouragement from God to His servant. It came at the very moment when Samuel was going through a discipline, and the elders of Israel had become its instruments. Nothing could comfort his heart more than this assurance: he was, after all, on the Lord's side. And now that the Lord had been rejected, Samuel had to be rejected too. Is it not an honour to share the shame that the world throws on our Lord when it spurns Him?... Even while He is disciplining him, God identifies Samuel with Himself. The people, meanwhile, looked like they were judging evil, but they were identifying themselves with the nations.
Israel's demand was sin. Yet a king was God's own thought, and commentators hold both facts together.
The thought of a king was not from man, but from God; yet the desire for one like the nations was rebellion against God on man's part... It was an evil in man to be judged; it was grace in God to plan it, and He will surely carry it out. Both are true; but man's mind often sets one against the other, instead of believing both... Samuel feels it deeply, not because it was against himself so much as against God... "And Samuel prayed." Oh that we might follow the pattern of so true a servant! When things displease us, may we pray, and not fret or fume or scold!
- Rejected King. God Himself ruled Israel. The priest was the link, and judges came when needed. Asking for a king meant refusing that rule.
- Rejected Repeatedly. This was not one bad day. It was the peak of centuries of discontent, the same instinct that made them serve other gods after Egypt.
- Rejected Restraint. Under the stated reasons lay a wish to be free of God's holy law and to gain the standing other nations had.
- Rejected Together. God tells Samuel the rejection is His, not Samuel's. He ties His servant to Himself in the moment of discipline.
- Rejected, Yet Overruled. A king was always God's own plan. He judges man's evil, and His plan still stands. Samuel's answer to it all was prayer, not complaint.