In 1 Sam. 9 we have the hidden counsel and purpose of God choosing Saul in secret, who is a type of the religious system of the Jews invested with political power. He receives authority by the displacement of Samuel, who represents the spiritual power, manifested in the law and the prophets, rejected of man but owned of God, and continuing to be so secretly even when Saul—the politico-religious system—is outwardly acknowledged and under responsibility.
Now we know that the Jewish religious system did not come into the possession of political power until after the prophets had ceased to prophesy and the canon of Old Testament scripture was closed; and that though then in due time brought into manifestation and power, it was the law and the prophets which prophesied unto John the Baptist and which in truth stood for God as His witness. So we find in the whole history before us that (though Saul is brought into place and power in 1 Sam. 9 in the secret counsel of God; second, in chapter 10 in manifestation before the people; third, in chapter 11 in acknowledged possession upon proof of power; fourth, in chapter xii. in full investiture and responsibility; yet) through it all it is Samuel who stands before God and by reason of whose intercession it is that God's blessing rests upon the king and people. And when in pride and blindness of heart. Saul—the fleshly thing—ventures to intrude into God's presence on his own footing, and that with a burnt-offering and a peace-offering in chapter 13 usurping the place of Samuel—the spiritual thing—he is at once rejected as unfit for God, and another chosen in his place after God's own heart, who could occupy the place of both Samuel and Soul as prophet, priest, and king.
If we look at the account of Saul's parentage, we shall see that the Spirit of God has marked him out as a type of the fleshly religious system (chap. 9:1), Kish son of Abiel, son of Zeror, son of Bechorath, son of Aphiah, a Benjamite. This when translated runs thus—a snaring son of the “strong one,” son of “bundle,” son of the firstborn, son of the “re-created,” son of the right hand. Now if we turn to Gen. 5, which gives a prophecy of the outward worship of the God from first to last we find the same order: Lamech, “strong one,” type of the mystery of iniquity, the most perfect development of fleshly religion, son of Methuselah, “man of darts,” type of the lawless one, the most perfect development of human will in the powers of government; son of Enoch, “dedicated,” type of the church, the assembly of those firstborn—the firstborn from among the dead, who following Him ascended up above all heavens, the Son at the right hand of God.
When Samuel anoints Saul to be captain, he gives him every needed provision for his altered condition, laying one responsibility upon him in which if he failed it would be fatal. When God placed man in Eden, He made him responsible for one thing equivalent to abiding before His face. (Gen. 3:8-10.) When He was dealing with Saul He made him responsible for one thing equivalent to keeping out of His presence; and in both cases failure was the result, Adam went out and Saul rushed in. Since Cain the flesh has always thus brought upon itself the curse of God: see the men of Sodom; Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; Jeroboam, Azariah, &c. And in the account which Samuel gives in chapter 10:18, 19, of God's dealings with the fleshly nation Israel, and the result, we have a resume of God's dealings with the fleshly king Saul, and the result. He had delivered their hand from making the pots—from all servile labor; He had brought them into a pleasant land, satisfying their mouth with good things; He had saved them and ruled them, had been Himself their King in their midst by His Spirit in His prophets and priests; and now they had rejected Him their God, saying, “Set a king over us.”
So Saul was brought out of his anxiety about the asses into the knowledge that his father was sorrowing for him. (Chaps. 9:20, 10:2.) A full and satisfying portion was given him both from God and man (chaps. 9:24, 10:4); and the Spirit of God came upon him in power, so that he prophesied in the company of the prophets; but in result he as they rejected the Lord in rejecting the word, and therefore was himself rejected. (1 Sam. 13:13; 15:26.) He is thus an exact type of the fleshly politico-religious system—delivered out of Babylon into their own land, with at least a sufficient portion of blessing; with the power of the Spirit of prophecy upon them. But the end of all was that they rejected the Word manifest in the flesh and were therefore rejected of the Lord.
Though we find that Saul is manifested as king before the people at the end of chapter 10, yet Samuel remains in power as the servant of God until the people are stirred in heart to receive Saul by his courageous deliverance of Jabesh-Gilead from the hand of Nahash the Ammonite. So we find that, though the former rule was never established after the return of the Jews from Babylon, yet as to its spirit and power it still continued in the persons of Zerubbabel and Joshua—the prince and the priest—of Ezra and Nehemiah and onward, though ever more and more brought under completer subjugation by foreign powers—Greece, Egypt, Syria, until at length God raised up a temporal deliverer, such as they had sighed and groaned for, in the person of the Maccabean princes upon the occasion of the intolerable ignominy and tyranny brought upon them by Antiochus Epiphanes; who for three and a half years deprived them of all civil and religious liberty, suspended the daily sacrifice, profaned the temple, prohibited the worship of God—the observance of His law, and destroyed every copy of the sacred books that he could find.
In the Maccabean dynasty there were united as an outward thing the functions of priest and king, and so remained until the usurpation of Herod. This was to be the character of the new order of government which God was about to set up in a man after His own heart, but which must first be manifested as a thing in the flesh to prove the weakness of the flesh, and the instability of everything founded on it. Of the circumstances above mentioned we find an exact antitype in the transactions between Nahash the Ammonite and the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead. The words “Jabesh-Gilead” signify a “dry heap of witness.” This is a most accurate description of the state of the people or worship and government of the Jews—the witness for God truly, but dry and lifeless. Against Jabesh-Gilead comes Nahash the Ammonite, and encamps against it. Nahash is a striking type of Antiochus, and indeed of Antichrist to come, not only oppressing the people of God, but bating and setting himself above God Himself. This was plainly so with Antiochus as just noted, and as to Nahash, whose name means the “serpent born of incest,” we see that it was not so much his desire to slay the men of Jabesh as to lay a reproach upon Israel (1 Sam. 11:2); and that by, putting out their right eyes. And nothing could more aptly describe what the temple and the law were to the Jews than the right eye, and also that it was the only means the Jew had of seeing the light. And just as it was at this time of imminent peril, Saul comes forward for the honor of the Lord, and delivers Jabesh, is made king before the Lord in Gilgal, and rejoices greatly with all the men of Israel. So also the Maccabeans encourage the people to stand up for the law and the name of Jehovah, deliver Jerusalem, re-consecrate the temple; and having already taken the place of king one assumes in addition the Office of high priest, celebrating the renewal of the worship of God and the deliverance of their country by a yearly feast and the commencement of a new epoch.
In chapter 13 we find that the time of testing and trial comes upon Saul, and he proves reprobate. First the flesh appropriates the honor due only to the Spirit; for Jonathan (that is “the one whom the Lord has given” —for such is the meaning of His name) smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and all Israel heard say that Saul—the one “asked for” by the people—had done it, for he blew a trumpet and said, “Let the Hebrews hear.” But though by these means he gets all the people to follow after him trembling, he has no power to oppose the enemy who pitch in his strongholds, and he is driven back to Gil-gal, the last place of strength which remained to him in the land. His appropriation to himself of the honor which belonged to Jonathan having failed to inspire the people with confidence in him, he next ventures to bring God upon the scene as his supporter, and to pretend to fellowship with a power from Him, making the things of God a cloak for his worldly policy.
In his reply to Samuel (chap. 13:11, 12) God never enters into his thoughts; it was how to keep the people together and to repulse the enemy—the fleshly eye upon the things which are seen. He wants to make the people trust in him, not in God. Therefore he does not offer a sin-offering, which would have been to take the place of humiliation and weakness—a place befitting him: but he offers a burnt-offering, thereby claiming acceptance and blessing—the place of honor and power—done for the sake of appearance, busied about himself, his people, Samuel, the enemy, anything but God. Samuel's answer is that of the spiritual man with God. His heart, his mind, his eye, are all upon God; he measures all things in His presence. For him the Lord is the beginning and the end. “Thou hast not kept the commandments of the Lord thy God.... the Lord would have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever, but now thy kingdom shall not continue. The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.” This occurred at the close of Saul's reign, but how the Spirit of God links up the fact of disobedience which filled up the measure of transgression with the command given him in view of his kingly responsibility, before he entered upon it! (1 Sam. 10:8.) “Thou shalt go down before me to Gilgal, and lo I will come down unto thee to offer burnt-offerings, and to sacrifice sacrifices of peace-offerings: seven days shalt thou tarry till I come to thee and show thee what thou shalt do.” God would have preserved the earthly kingdom and the natural man as king of it, if nature and flesh had kept the place which He had appointed it, namely, out of His presence, approaching Him only through a mediator. But when the flesh takes the place of the Spirit, the man, that of the mediator, and presumes as one that has a standing before God to offer burnt-offerings and to sacrifice peace-offerings, it then comes into a place of judgment and is condemned and rejected forever.
That Samuel's special place, appointed him of the Lord, was that of intercessor we find in Jer. 15:1, expressly intimated at the outset of his ministry (1 Sam. 3:21; 4:1); for the Holy Spirit testifies that the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord, and the word of Samuel came to all Israel. He was the mediator of a covenant and kingdom which was to pass away (see 1 Sam. 12:18, 25; 13:13, 14 and Heb. 12:18, 28); but he was also the voice which cried concerning a new and better covenant and a kingdom which could not be moved, wherein God may be served acceptably though He be a consuming fire (Heb. 12:28, 29). In this latter aspect of his work he is an exact type of John the Baptist. In Shiloh Samuel's work is a type of the Holy Spirit's in the law and the prophets, for from thence by him the word of the Lord came to all Israel, and the prophets spoke by the Spirit of Christ of the Shiloh to come (Gen. 44:10), of the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow (1 Peter 1:10). In Gilgal his work and ministry are typical of John the Baptist's who preached the baptism of repentance for remission of sins, and was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord and make His paths straight. (See Sam. 11:14, 15; ch. 12.)
Chapter 13. The events of this chapter, looked at prophetically, are very striking. Saul's strength lay in Michmash, that is “hidden treasure,” and Bethel, that is “house of God;"“ while Jonathan's strength lay in Gibeah of Benjamin, “son of my right hand.” So we find that the fleshly Jewish system put all their confidence as an outward thing, in the law-hid treasure—(Psa. 119:11 and 14), and the temple of God (Matt. 26:61; Mark 14:58) (compare Acts 6:11, 13 and 14:) while all the hope of the faithful remnant was in the One that was to come (Matt. 11:3), the One that was to redeem Israel (Luke 1:54 and 68, 75; 2:25, 32, 38). This hope as the end of that age drew near became bright and the means of much spiritual power in the heart of the Jew that looked for redemption: the power of the world and the flesh—the Philistine—being cast out. The fleshly system then took up the same hope in a fleshly way, but altogether without power, the result being that a greater door is opened for the intrusion of the flesh into the things of God, and the people are scattered as sheep without a shepherd; till, at length, the fleshly thing, from motives of worldly policy and love of power, despairing of help from God and seeing with dismay the advancing tide of opposing powers which had reached the word itself—for the Sadducees denied the inspiration of all the scripture except the books of Moses, denying even them in fact (Matt. 22:29, 33)—forced itself to take the place which could only be occupied by the spiritual thing that was to come, namely, the right and title to God's favor and salvation on the ground of its own sanctity and righteousness, and this the orthodox Jew claimed on the grout d of circumcision (Gilgal—Josh. 5:9; Acts 15:1, 5). For nothing else remained to them: the house of God had become a house of vanity (Matt. 23:38)Beth-even (1 Sam. 13:5); and Bethel, 1 Sam. 13:2, Michmash. As for the word the Sadducees denied it and the Pharisees despoiled it (Matt. 15:1, 20): see Matt. 23:4, 5 and 18, 28, in which chapter there is a divine description of the state of things as seen by God. But when at length the spiritual man came and the whole nation went out to meet him (Matt. 3:5, 6 and 1 Sam. 13:10) to be before God in repentance and the putting away of sins, there was nothing left for him but to denounce woe, judgment, and rejection upon the existing system, in consequence of the position taken by the rulers (Matt. 3:9, 10; 11:16, 24; Mark 11:31) who came not to the baptism of John as a body, though many individuals among them did, and to declare the bringing in of a new kingdom and a new captain (Matt. 3:11, 12, Matt. 21:18, 45, Luke 12:18, 36), leaving circumcision (1 Sam. 13:15) or Gilgal, as a ground of hope for God's salvation, and looking for the, One that should come for deliverance (Gibeah of Benjamin), Matt. 3:9, 12.,
In 1 Sam. 14 the fleshly thing, judged of God but in His long-suffering not yet cast out, is seen filling up the measure of its iniquity by seeking to slay and cast out the only living power that was in it at a time when that power had been most gloriously manifested. (Saul) had gathered around it everything that could help to keep it together—political power—(all the men of war, ver. 2)—and spiritual power outwardly—(the Lord's priest in Shiloh), while Jesus, the man of faith, born under the law, servant of the circumcision (Jonathan, that is “whom the Lord has given,” son of Saul), has none with Him but the Holy Spirit (his armor bearer); yet the one is powerless for any good while the other passes from the rock of glory (Bozez “shining,” ver. 4) to the sharp rock of tribulation (Seneh “a thorn bush “) Ex. 3:1, 18, from the mount (Gibeah) to the hidden treasure, the kingdom of the heavens, the church (Michmash), Matthew 13:44.
The world (Philistines) gave a sign to Jesus that the Lord had delivered them into His hand (1 Sam. 14:6, 12) by their prince the adversary, the devil, for when Jesus was manifested (John 1:31) then the tempter urged Him to “come up and he would show him a thing,” first to the, edge of the temple and then to a very high mountain but only that he might if possible cast Him down. (Matt. 4:1-11.)
When Jesus gives a sign to that generation, it is the sign of Jonah, showing that when it should be God's, time and God's will He would go down to the very lowest place, even into the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:40). He goes up to the work which had been given Him to do in the posture of humility, taking a servant's form (the likeness of sinful flesh), taking His place among the grovelers of the earth, the meek One lowly in heart (1 Sam. 14:13); and at the outset He utterly sweeps away the falsities which the spirit of evil had heaped upon the law and the commandments, perfectly developing the divine mind in them (Matt. 5:17, 27, 33, 38, 43), so as to be no longer a yoke “unable to be borne” (Acts 15:10 Sam. 14:14); and the crowds are astonished at His doctrine (ver. 15), for He taught with authority, and His fame went out through the whole of Syria, for He preached the. glad tidings of the kingdom, and healed every disease and every sickness among the people, scattering on every hand by His word, touch, and presence, every ill, moral, spiritual, and physical, that oppressed the people (ver. 17). And though in it all He was ostensibly the servant of the circumcision, yet in fact it was by a power altogether outside the Jewish system as one that had gone out from it, still the politico-religious system was in authority, owned of God and under responsibility to Him (ver. 18, compare Matt. 8:4), so that it had a connection with the deliverance which was wrought (ver. 19), which Jesus acknowledged; for when He had cleansed the man from that disease which was held up by the law as a picture, of complete pollution through a multitude of sins, He says, “Go show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift which Moses enjoined for a witness to them.” a (Ver. 15, “the host:” compare Matt. 8:1-4.)
Again, when He chases away by a word the Paralysis from the centurion's servant (ver. 15, “the field"), it is shown to be in connection with the promise to Israel which is made good though the sons of the kingdom be cast out (Matt. 8:5, 18), proving that those who considered themselves the sons of the kingdom were really enemies and intruders. So also driving out with a touch the fever which had prostrated Peter's mother-in-law, casting out the spirits with a work and healing all that were ill (ver. 16, “all the people"), it is as Shepherd of the sheep, about to be stricken in fulfillment of prophecy made to the Lord's people the sheep of His pasture. (Psalm 100:3; Isa. 53:6; Matt. 8:14-17.) Yet when the representatives of the Jewish system reckon Him as one of themselves and seek in a fleshly way to connect themselves with Him, He shows that He is not to be reckoned among them but has gone out from them, and that if they are to be numbered as His it must be by a perfect separation from everything else. (Compare 1 Sam. 14:16, 18 with Matt. 8:18, 22; 10:34, 40.)
The Lord goes on to prove His power and authority from God by bringing into subjection, not oily the moral world and its action in man, as we have seen all bodily disease is the result of moral disease, but also the powers of the material universe in their action on man and the world of spirits in power over man. (Matt. 8:23-34; 1 Sam. 14:16.) In each case the powers that would oppose perish by their own swords—fall by their own counsel. For no sooner does the spirit of self-righteousness (the bringing in of something good, or the putting away of something evil, Matt. 8:20-22) intrude itself upon the Lord's notice than its very exhibition is the occasion of its destruction. So again, when the rising against Him of the winds and the sea is brought under His notice, He rebukes them, and there is a great calm. (Matt. 8:23-27.) And when two men possessed by demons come out of the tombs to meet Him and exclaim against Him, the Lord permits the demons to have their own way, and the result is, that they go down into the abyss. (1 Sam. 14:20.)
(To be continued if the Lord will)