1 Samuel 12:25

25. Consumed, both ye and your king Mark the decree: By disobedience and sin even the Lord’s anointed, as well as the chosen people, shall most certainly perish! Surely a most impressive warning with which to close the prophet’s last public address to the assembled nation!

This address is a noticeable representative of the burden of prophecy as exhibited in the oracles of all the prophets that followed Samuel. Here we see the true prophet as emphatically the man of God, the messenger of Jehovah, commissioned to reveal the divine will, to rebuke the wickedness of kings and peoples, and to pronounce the judgments that would surely follow personal and national sins. He was the spiritual watchman whom Jehovah set over his people to reveal the great truths of the divine government, and apply them to the leading persons and events of his age.

Samuel appeared again at intervals in the subsequent history of Saul, but his public ministry as ruler in Israel closed with this farewell address at Gilgal. His history, as recorded in this book which bears his name, presents him as the holy child, the saintly judge, and the venerable seer and prophet.

(1) The holy child. His mother was a prophetess, as appears from the inspired psalm which she uttered at the time of his dedication, (1 Samuel 2:1-10,) and he was given her in answer to most fervent prayer. Hence his name Samuel Heard of God. 1 Samuel 1:20. Like Samson, he was a Nazarite from the womb, and the vow of his consecration was binding on him all his days. 1 Samuel 1:11. While yet a tender child his parents took him to the tabernacle at Shiloh, and, by special sacrifices, consecrated him unto the Lord; and there, until the place was desolated, he ministered unto the Lord, girded with a linen ephod. 1 Samuel 2:18. It was while he was yet a child that the Lord revealed himself to him in a vision of the night, and from that time he knew Jehovah by a divine and intimate communion. 1 Samuel 3:7. This supernatural endowment speedily elevated him to recognition by all Israel as a prophet of the Most High God. 1 Samuel 3:20. Surely Samuel’s holy childhood, like that of the blessed Jesus, proclaims to all who study it that even in its earliest and tenderest years the human heart may bear the image of the heavenly.

(2) The saintly judge. His holy childhood and early call to be a prophet invest his character as judge with more of saintliness than that of any other judge in Israel. Even Eli, who was also the high priest, never wielded the moral and religious influence that Samuel did. We first meet with him in the character of judge at Mizpeh, (1 Samuel 7:6,) where the Philistines met with one of their most disastrous defeats. 1 Samuel 7:13. Yet even on that occasion his character of judge seemed almost swallowed up in that of intercessor for the people. They looked to him as a mediator between themselves and God. 1 Samuel 7:8. He presided at the sacrifices offered there and at other places, and his own home was not without its altar. 1 Samuel 7:17. In fact, no sacrifice of the people seemed complete without his blessing; and his yearly visits to Beth-el, Gilgal, and Mizpeh (1 Samuel 7:16) were probably hailed with like interest and enthusiasm to that which greeted him at the city where he first met Saul. 1 Samuel 9:12-13. The people showed their entire confidence in his judgeship by committing to his hands the task of establishing them into a kingdom, (1 Samuel 8:5,) and when he resigned his rulership over them, they called God to witness that no unrighteous act could be laid to his charge. 1 Samuel 12:5.

(3) The venerable seer and prophet. It was this relation in which Samuel stood before God and man that gave such saintliness to his character as judge; and, in fact, whenever he appeared on public occasions it would seem that his judgeship was almost lost sight of in view of the far more exceeding sanctity and venerableness of his prophetic calling. While yet a youth, all Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, knew that he was established to be a prophet of the Lord. 1 Samuel 3:20. It is as prophet rather than judge that he intercedes with God for the people, blesses their sacrifices, and teaches them the right ways of the Lord. He was both seer and prophet. 1 Samuel 9:9. Gifted with a supernatural vision, he could discern things that were unknown to common mortals. 1 Samuel 9:20; 1 Samuel 10:22. It was in a vision of the night that the Lord first revealed himself to Samuel. 1 Samuel 3:15. Before that time, in Israel divine revelations were few and far between, (1 Samuel 3:1;) but afterwards there was an unbroken succession of prophets until the close of Old Testament history, so that the inspired apostle seems to have regarded him as the beginning of the sacred order. Acts 3:24. He was the founder of the schools of the prophets, (1 Samuel 10:5,) and after he resigned his judgeship he sought retirement at Ramah among his spiritual children in one of these schools, (1 Samuel 19:18,) and there for a time he had the training of the great psalmist king of Israel. His prophetical office he exercised after the inauguration of Saul, and that monarch ever looked up to him as his spiritual father, and showed him the profoundest reverence. We next meet with him at Gilgal, near the Jordan, where he first declared to the disobedient Saul that his kingdom should not long continue. 1 Samuel 13:14. Afterwards he counselled him to war with Amalek, (1 Samuel 15:1;) and after the battle, in which Saul was again disobedient to the divine word, he uttered before him his last solemn oracle. 1 Samuel 15:17-35. Then, in accordance with a divine revelation, he turned aside to Beth-lehem and anointed the youthful son of Jesse, (1 Samuel 16:1;) after which he retired to his home at Ramah, and there died and was buried (1 Samuel 25:1) amid the lamentations of a people with whom his word had been as the law of God. There have been other prophets in some respects, perhaps, greater than Samuel; in the office of judge, perhaps Gideon surpassed him in the number of his mighty works; and there may have been many children equally as holy and devout in their childhood; but, taking him altogether, we find for him in history no perfect parallel. His is a monumental character on which no blot appears, and on whose memory Jew and Christian will ever love to meditate.

“Samuel is the chief type,” says Stanley, “in ecclesiastical history, of holiness, of growth, of a new creation without conversion; and his mission is an example of the special missions which such characters are called to fulfil. In proportion as the different stages of life have sprung naturally and spontaneously out of each other, without any abrupt revulsion, each serves as a foundation on which the other may stand; each makes the foundation of the whole more sure and stable. In proportion as our own foundation is thus stable, and as our own minds and hearts have grown up gradually and firmly, without any violent disturbance or wrench to one side or to the other, in that proportion is it the more possible to view with calmness and moderation the difficulties and differences of others; to avail ourselves of the methods and new characters that the advance of time throws in our way; to return from present troubles to the pure and untroubled well of our earlier years; to preserve and to communicate the childlike faith, changed, doubtless, in form, but the same in spirit, in which we knelt in humble prayer for ourselves and others, and drank in the first impressions of God and of heaven. The call may come to us in many ways; it may tell us of the change of the priesthood, of the fall of the earthly sanctuary, of the rise of strange thoughts, of the beginning of a new epoch. Happy are they who, here or elsewhere, are able to perceive the signs of the times, and to answer, without fear or trembling, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’”