1 Samuel 15 · Passage · Obedience
Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice
Samuel told King Saul that the LORD had rejected him as king because he kept back what God had told him to destroy.
Saul greeted Samuel with a claim of full obedience, and Samuel asked what the bleating of sheep was that he could hear.
But Samuel declared: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to His voice? Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and attentiveness is better than the fat of rams.
- The passage
- 1 Samuel 15:1 to 35, 1 Samuel 15:22 to 23
- Book
- 1 Samuel
- Hold in memory
- 1 Samuel 15:22
Summary
The LORD sent Saul to devote Amalek and all that belonged to it to destruction. Saul destroyed what was worthless and kept the king and the best of the flocks, and he called the kept flocks an offering for the LORD. Samuel answered that the LORD wants His voice obeyed more than He wants burnt offerings. The LORD tore the kingdom from him and gave it to another man.
- Samuel prayed through the night for the king before he went to meet him.
- Saul confessed that he disobeyed because he was afraid of his own troops.
- The chapter says both that the LORD regretted making Saul king and that He does not change His mind.
The Command Given to Saul
Samuel told Saul to listen to the LORD's words and gave him the command against Amalek.
Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice studies 1 Samuel 15, the war with Amalek and the verdict that followed it. It belongs to the value of obedience, because it shows that God counts a partial obedience as disobedience and will not take worship in its place.
The question the study answers is why Samuel set obedience above sacrifice and why the LORD rejected Saul for what he kept. It follows the Hebrew verb for hearing through the chapter, sets Samuel's answer beside the psalms and the prophets, and gives two questions on which readers of the chapter have differed.
The LORD of Hosts gave the reason for the war first: “I witnessed what the Amalekites did to the Israelites when they ambushed them on their way up from Egypt” (1 Samuel 15:2).
Now go and attack the Amalekites and devote to destruction all that belongs to them. Do not spare them, but put to death men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”The command is total, and every later choice of Saul's is measured against it.
The Hebrew verb behind devote to destruction is charam, which the Tyndale House brief lexicon glosses as to devote or destroy.
Shama Through the Chapter
Samuel and Saul use the same verb for opposite claims.
One Hebrew verb, shama, runs through the chapter from Samuel's command to listen to Saul's confession that he obeyed the people.
A ladder of six rungs, the six verses in which the chapter's shama means to listen, hear or obey, each with its speaker, its Berean words and what the verb marks there. The chapter's other use, in 1 Samuel 15:4, means summoned.
What Saul Kept
Five verses follow Saul from the battle to his meeting with Samuel at Gilgal.
Saul and his troops spared Agag, along with the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs, and the best of everything else. They were unwilling to destroy them, but they devoted to destruction all that was despised and worthless.The verse shows Saul choosing by his own judgment of worth, which the command had not left to him.
The Hebrew verb chamal stands in the command, rendered “Do not spare them”, and again here, rendered spared.
“I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned away from following Me and has not carried out My instructions.” And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the LORD all that night.The LORD gives His own verdict before Saul speaks, and Samuel answers it with a night of prayer.
In the morning Samuel was told that Saul “has set up a monument for himself” at Carmel and had gone down to Gilgal (1 Samuel 15:12).
Twice Saul gave the same reason for the kept flocks. They were spared “to sacrifice to the LORD your God” (1 Samuel 15:15), and the troops took them “in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal” (1 Samuel 15:21).
The Confession and the Torn Robe
Saul's two confessions came with two requests, and Samuel answered them with a sign.
Saul asked Samuel to forgive his sin and to return with him so that he could worship (1 Samuel 15:25). Samuel refused, and as he turned, Saul grabbed the hem of his robe and it tore (1 Samuel 15:27).
So Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you.Samuel turns the torn hem into a sign that the kingdom has been torn from Saul.
Saul's second confession, at 1 Samuel 15:30, was “I have sinned”. He then asked, “Please honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel.” Samuel turned and went with him, and the king worshiped (1 Samuel 15:31).
Samuel's Answer
Samuel ranked the LORD's voice over the offering and named Saul's choice rebellion.
Samuel's answer in 1 Samuel 15:22 sets three pairs side by side: burnt offerings and sacrifices against obedience to the LORD's voice, sacrifice against obedience, and the fat of rams against attentiveness. The tagged Hebrew uses shama twice in the verse, glossed like listening and to obey.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance is like the wickedness of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has rejected you as king.”The verse stands here as the verdict the whole chapter has been building toward.
The verb maas, to reject, stands twice in the verse, rendered “you have rejected” and “He has rejected you.” Saul lost the kingdom by the same act he had done to the word.
For You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You take no pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.Albert Barnes set this psalm of David's confession beside Saul's, as a sorrow for the sin itself where Saul shrank only from its punishment.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.Hosea gives the same order as Samuel, with the knowledge of God before burnt offerings.
Voices on Obedience and Sacrifice
One voice ties obedience to hearing God's word and one gives the reason obedience outranks sacrifice.
died 253 · Origen of Alexandria
Origen stands here for obedience as the price of correcting sin.
Read the page on Origen of Alexandria
“Therefore, when different prophets or different apostles should give to those who sin the counsel by which they can correct or amend the sin, they rightly will seem to have sold rams to them for sacrifice. But how much do they charge the buyers? It is, I think, the cost of reading zealously, of hearing with vigilance the word of God, and above all, I think, the most diligent obedience, about which the Lord says, ‘I prefer obedience to sacrifice; and hearing what I say rather than whole burnt offerings.’”
Origen of Alexandria · Homilies on Leviticus 4.5.6 · on 1 Samuel 15:22Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Henry stands here for the order between the law of obedience and the law of sacrifice.
Read the page on Matthew Henry
“Obedience is enjoyed by the eternal law of nature, but sacrifice only by a positive law. Obedience was the law of innocency, but sacrifice supposes sin come into the world, and is but a feeble attempt to take that away which obedience would have prevented. God is more glorified and self more denied by obedience than by sacrifice.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on 1 Samuel 15:22 to 23Puritan
Was Saul Sorry, and Did the LORD Change His Mind?
Commentators have divided over Saul's confession and over the LORD's regret.
The first question is whether Saul's confession was repentance or fear of losing the throne.
Saul meant his confessionJohn Wesley
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), wrote that “It does by no means appear, that Saul acts the hypocrite herein, in assigning a false cause of his disobedience”. On his plea for pardon he added that “charity requires us to believe, that he sincerely desired pardon, both from God and man”.
The objection: Saul's next request was to be honoured before the elders and Israel.
Saul feared the sentence more than the sinMatthew Henry; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown
Matthew Henry (1710) asked of Saul's plea for honour, “Is this the language of a penitent? No, but the contrary”. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown (1871) judged that his confession “proceeded not from sincere repentance, but from a sense of danger and desire of averting the sentence denounced against him.”
The objection: Saul named his sin and its cause without excuse in his first confession.
The second question sets two verses of the chapter side by side. The LORD said, “I regret that I have made Saul king” (1 Samuel 15:11), and Samuel said that “the Glory of Israel does not lie or change His mind” (1 Samuel 15:29).
God is said to regret when He changes His dealingsJohn Wesley
Wesley wrote on 1 Samuel 15:11 that repentance “cannot be in God”. He added that it “is ascribed to God when God alters his method of dealing”.
The objection: the chapter twice uses the same verb of the LORD, at 1 Samuel 15:11 and 1 Samuel 15:35, and does not mark it as a figure.
God changes a purpose on conditions He had laid downAdam Clarke
Adam Clarke wrote on the same verse that God's repenting means “changing a purpose according to conditions already laid down or mentally determined.”
The objection: Samuel denies in 1 Samuel 15:29 that the LORD changes His mind as a man does.
Samuel Mourned for Saul
The close joins the chapter's lesson to the grief it cost.
Saul lost his throne over flocks he meant to offer, because the LORD wanted His voice heard and done before any gift was brought to Him.
And to the day of his death, Samuel never again visited Saul. Samuel mourned for Saul, and the LORD regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel.The last verse stands here because the prophet who pronounced the sentence is the one who mourned.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament, the tagged Hebrew text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible, Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Hebrew (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Leviticus 4.5.6, on 1 Samuel 15:22.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 1 Samuel 15:22 to 23 and 1 Samuel 15:30.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on 1 Samuel 15:11, 1 Samuel 15:24 and 1 Samuel 15:25.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on 1 Samuel 15:24 to 26.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on 1 Samuel 15:24.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 1 Samuel 15:11.
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