John Gills Exposition of the Bible Commentary - 1 Samuel 12:10
And they cried unto the Lord ,.... When in the hands of their enemies, and in bondage to them, and cruelly oppressed by them: and said, we have sinned ; the word for "said" is in the Cetib, or written text, singular, and in the Keri, or marginal reading, plural; and may signify, that everyone of them had a sense of their sin, and made acknowledgment of it; their confession was universal, as their sin was: because we have forsaken the Lord ; the Word of the Lord, as the Targum: and... read more
Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary - 1 Samuel 12:6-15
Samuel, having sufficiently secured his own reputation, instead of upbraiding the people upon it with their unkindness to him, sets himself to instruct them, and keep them in the way of their duty, and then the change of the government would be the less damage to them. I. He reminds them of the great goodness of God to them and to their fathers, gives them an abstract of the history of their nation, that, by the consideration of the great things God had done for them, they might be for ever... read more