1 Samuelchapter 12
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Key verse
So the LORD sent Jerubbaal, Barak, Jephthah, and Samuel, and He delivered you from the hands of your enemies on every side, and you dwelt securely.
It stands in scene B of the chapter, verses 6 to 15.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Samuel lays down the judgeship with an audit of his own record: whose ox have I taken, whom have I defrauded, of whose hand have I taken a bribe? The people clear him. He rehearses Egypt, the judges, and the deliverances, names the demand for a king as evil in Jehovah's sight, and calls for thunder and rain in wheat harvest as the sign; the people fear greatly. His answer is grace with a spine: fear not, ye have done all this wickedness, yet turn not aside; only fear Jehovah and serve him in truth with all your heart. And of himself: 'Far be it from me that I should sin against Jehovah in ceasing to pray for you' (12:23).
Context
History · Samuel, Nathan, Gad · 1 Samuel overview
Where the chapter sits
1 Samuel 12 falls in Saul's reign: promise and rejection (chapters 9–15). Saul anointed in secret, chosen by lot, confirmed by the Ammonite deliverance. Then the presumptuous sacrifice at Gilgal (13) and the failure to destroy Amalek (15): ‘the LORD hath rejected thee from being king.’
Before it: The demand for a king, chapters 8. After it: David's rise in Saul's shadow, chapters 16–31.
The whole shape of 1 Samuel→The world behind this chapter
1 Samuel 12The history
Samuel opens with a formal audit of his own administration, and the categories are the standard ones for official corruption in that world: whose ox have I taken, whose donkey have I taken, whom have I defrauded or oppressed, from whose hand have I taken a bribe. He asks for witnesses against himself in open assembly and gets none. It is a deliberate contrast with both his own sons and the king's ways he has just described.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The history lesson that follows is a covenant lawsuit in miniature, Jacob into Egypt, Moses and Aaron, the cycle of forgetting and rescue under the judges, and then the demand for a king when Nahash came. Samuel's point is that Israel already had a king and had been rescued by him repeatedly without one on a throne.
The sign is the meteorological detail that makes the chapter land. Wheat harvest in Israel falls in late May and June, in the middle of the dry season, when rain simply does not fall, the winter rains end in April and nothing comes until October. Thunder and rain on that day was not merely dramatic; it was out of season, and it endangered the harvest lying in the fields. Everyone standing there understood both halves of the message.
Samuel's closing promise is one of the great pastoral sentences in the Old Testament: far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you. He has been replaced in office and says he will keep interceding for the people who replaced him.
What it meant to them
The people finally say it out loud, we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for a king. Samuel's answer is not you are finished; it is do not be afraid, and then, do not turn aside after empty things which cannot profit or deliver.
For first hearers the terms were now on the record. Both they and their king could still follow the LORD and live. The monarchy did not cancel the covenant; it was placed under it.
Sources cited
- Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Books of Samuel
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
A. Whose ox have I taken? Samuel renders his account
1. (vv. 1-2)
a.Samuel opens by tying his own record to the people's memory: I have hearkened unto your voice and have made a king over you states plainly that he did what they asked rather than what he counseled. He sets his sons beside him without comment, the very complaint that started the request for a king at 8:1-5, and lets the silence stand as its own answer. Old and grayheaded, from my childhood unto this day claims the whole span of a life, not a single term in office, as the record he is about to put on trial.
1 Samuel 12:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
1 Samuel 12:1-4
“Samuel said unto all Israel--This public address was made after the solemn re-instalment of Saul, and before the convention at Gilgal separated. Samuel, having challenged a review of his public life, received a unanimous testimony to the unsullied honor of his personal character, as well as the justice and integrity of his public administration.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 12:1
“Samuel therefore thinks fit to temper their joys, and to excite them to that repentance which he saw wanting in them, and which he knew to be necessary, to prevent the curse of God upon their new king, and the whole kingdom.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:2, 2 voices
1 Samuel 12:2
“My sons are with you - It is generally agreed that these words intimate that Samuel had deprived them of their public employ, and reduced them to a level with the common people. Have walked before you from my childhood - He had been a long, steady, and immaculate servant of the public.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:2
“My sons - Or, among you, in the same states private persons, as you are; if they have injured any of you, the law is now open against them; any of you may accuse them, your king can punish them, I do not intercede for them. Walked before you - That is, been your guide and governor; partly, as a prophet; and partly, as a judge.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2. (v. 3)
a.Samuel's oath answers Israel's old complaint against his sons by putting his own conduct on trial before the Lord and his anointed. The list, ox, ass, fraud, oppression, bribe, runs as the exact opposite of the catalogue Samuel himself gave at 8:11-18 of what a king takes: sons, daughters, fields, a tenth, servants. The judge who governed for decades took nothing; the king they asked for instead will take what the king's law of Deuteronomy 17 had already forbidden him to multiply.
1 Samuel 12:3, 2 voices
1 Samuel 12:3-5
In this way, too, Samuel, who judged the people so many years, and bore rule over Israel without any pride, in the end cleared himself, saying, "I have walked before you from my childhood even unto this day: answer me in the sight of God, and before His anointed; whose ox or whose ass of yours have I taken, or over whom have I tyrannized, or whom have I oppressed? or if I have received from the hand of any a bribe or [so much as] a shoe, speak out against me, and I will restore it to you."
Irenaeus· written before 202· AGAINST HERESIES 4.26.4patristic
1 Samuel 12:3
“His anointed - i. e., king Saul. The title Messiah, Χριστὸς Christos, unctus, or anointed, had been given to the High Priests (Lev 4:3: compare also 1Sa 2:10, 1Sa 2:35); but this is the earliest instance of an actual king of Israel bearing the title of God’s Christ, and thus typifying the true Messiah or Christ of God. Any bribe - literally, a “ransom,” the fine paid by a criminal in lieu of bonds or death Exo 21:30, applied to the bribe paid to an unjust judge to induce him to acquit the guilty. (Compare Amo 5:12.)”
3. (vv. 4-5)
a.The people's answer, Thou hast not defrauded us, closes the case Samuel opened, and he seals it by calling his anointed a second witness alongside the Lord himself. The title anointed had entered Scripture only at 2:10 in Hannah's song and again at 2:35; here Samuel, the man who anointed Saul at 10:1, treats the office as sacred enough to stand as a legal witness beside God. The exchange reads as a formal lawsuit, the people twice answering He is witness, before Samuel turns from his own record to the nation's.
B. A history lesson: they forgot, they cried, he sent
1. (vv. 6-8)
a.Samuel's plea before the Lord moves from his own record to the nation's, opening a historical recitation that runs from Jacob's descent into Egypt through Moses and Aaron to the judges. The pattern he lays out, cry to God and God sends a deliverer, is the shape the book of Judges narrates at length, and Samuel compresses most of it into three verses. Reason with you renders a term for formal legal argument, the same courtroom sense carried over from the oath of verses 3 to 5.
1 Samuel 12:6, 3 voices
1 Samuel 12:6
“But he himself further adds, saying: 'The Lord, who made Moses and Aaron, and who brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt, He Himself is witness.' In this passage it should be noted that the holy man did not speak of the good things he had done, but rather set forth the evil things he had not done; so that by keeping silent he might preserve his good deeds for eternal rewards, and by speaking he might not lose the fragrance of his good reputation.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 5, Chapter 2patristic
1 Samuel 12:6
“And Samuel said unto the people,.... Having cleared and established his own character, he proceeds to lay before the people some of the great things God had done for them formerly, and quite down to the present time, the more to aggravate their ingratitude in rejecting God as their King: it is the Lord that advanced Moses and Aaron; raised them from a low estate, the one in a foreign country in Midian, the other in bondage in Egypt, to be deliverers, guides, and governors of his people Israel.”
1 Samuel 12:6
“Advanced - In the sense of appointing them to their office. It is, literally, “made” (see the margin; 1Ki 12:31; Heb 3:2). Samuel’s purpose is to impress the people with the conviction that Yahweh was their God, and the God of their fathers; that to Him they owed their national existence and all their national blessings, and that faithfulness to Him, to the exclusion of all other worship 1Sa 12:21 was the only safety of the newly-established monarchy. Observe the constant reference to the Exodus as the well-known turning-point of their national life (see 1Sa 4:8; 1Sa 6:6).”
1 Samuel 12:7, 2 voices
1 Samuel 12:7
“Righteous acts - Hebrew. the righteousnesses; that is, mercies or benefits the chief subject of the following discourse; some of their calamities being but briefly named, and that for the illustration of God's mercy in their deliverances.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:7
“Let reason rule men, and they will be good. He reasons of the righteous acts of the Lord, that is, "both the benefits he hath bestowed upon you, in performance of his promises, and the punishments he has inflicted on you for your sins." His favours are called his righteous acts ( Judg. v. 11 ), because in them he is just to his own honour.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 9-11)
a.He sold them into the hand of Sisera: The judges named, Jerubbaal, Bedan, Jephthah and Samuel, summarize a cycle of forgetting and crying out that Judges tells in full, with Sisera, the Philistines and the king of Moab standing for three separate deliverances. Bedan matches no judge by that name in the book of Judges, and some early witnesses read Barak instead, a difference of a few Hebrew letters that the older commentators note honestly without settling it. Samuel names himself last in his own list of deliverers, counting his own office among the Lord's saving acts, which Albert Barnes calls fitting rather than immodest given how recent that deliverance was.
1 Samuel 12:9, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:9
“According to the present arrangement of the Book of Judges, and the common chronology, the oppression of Sisera must have occurred about 200 years after the entrance into Canaan. But Samuel here places it as the first great servitude, before that under Eglon king of Moab, or that from which Shamgar delivered them. And this is in accordance with the internal evidence of the Book of Judges itself. It is also the order of Jdg 10:11, except that there the Ammonites Jdg 3:13 are placed before the Philistines.”
1 Samuel 12:11, 4 voices
1 Samuel 12:11
“Bedan - No such name occurs among the Judges who delivered Israel. Some versions and commentators read “Barak,” the form of the letters of both words being in Hebrew somewhat similar. And Samuel - There is nothing improper or out of place in Samuel mentioning his own judgeship. It had supplied a remarkable instance of God’s deliverance 1Sa 7:12-15; and, as it was the last as well as one of the very greatest deliverances, it was natural he should do so.”
1 Samuel 12:11
“Bedan--The Septuagint reads "Barak"; and for "Samuel" some versions read "Samson," which seems more natural than that the prophet should mention himself to the total omission of the greatest of the judges.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 12:11
“Secondly, with other scriptures: for among the sons of a more ancient Jair, we meet with one called Bedan, 1 Chron. vii, 17, which name seems here given to Jair the judge, to distinguish him from that first Jair. Safe - So that it was no necessity, but mere wantonness, that made you desire a change.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:11
“Perhaps this Bedan guarded and delivered them on one side, at the same time when some other of the judges appeared and acted for them on another side. Some think it was the same with Jair (so the learned Mr. Poole), others the same with Samson, who was Ben Dan, a son of Dan, of that tribe, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him Be-Dan, inn Dan, in the camp of Can.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (v. 12)
a.Here Samuel gives the occasion he remembers for the request: the sight of Nahash the king of the children of Ammon coming against them, the very threat narrated in chapter 11. Chapter 8 gave a different reason in the people's own mouth, the wish to be like all the nations and to escape the corruption of Samuel's sons, and both stand in the text without one correcting the other. When the Lord your God was your king states as settled fact the kingship the request had functionally set aside before Saul ever sat on a throne.
1 Samuel 12:12, 2 voices
1 Samuel 12:12
“When ye saw that Nahash - This was not the first time they had demanded a king; see before, 1Sa 8:5. But at the crisis mentioned here they became more importunate; and it was in consequence of this that the kingdom was a second time confirmed to Saul. Saul was elected at Mizpeh, he was confirmed at Gilgal.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:12-13
"And now," said he, "you have a king, a king of your own asking--let that be spoken to your shame; but a king of God's making--let that be spoken to his honour and the glory of his grace." God did not cast them off, even when they in effect cast him off. He shows them that they are now upon their good behaviour, they and their king.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 13-15)
a.Samuel now hands Saul to the people as their own choice, the king whom ye have chosen, before restating covenant terms that governed Israel long before a throne existed. The condition runs both directions: if the people fear the Lord, both they and the king continue following him, and if they rebel, the hand of the Lord turns against them as it did against their fathers in the judges' cycle just recited. A king does not replace the covenant of Sinai; he stands inside it, exactly as the king's law of Deuteronomy 17:14-20 had already required.
1 Samuel 12:13, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:13
“Ye have chosen - Though God chose him by lot, yet the people are said to chuse him; either generally, because they chose that form of government; or particularly, because they approved of God's choice, and confirmed it.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:14, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:14
“Then, &c. - Hebrew. then shall-ye-be, (that is, walk, or go) after the Lord; that is, God shall still go before you, as he hath hitherto done, as your leader or governor, to direct, protect, and deliver you; and he will not forsake you, as you have given him just cause to do.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:15, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:15
“To convince the people of their sin in desiring a king. They were now rejoicing before God in and with their king ( ch. xi. 15 ), and offering to God the sacrifices of praise, which they hoped God would accept; and this perhaps made them think that there was no harm in their asking a king, but really they had done well in it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
C. Thunder in wheat harvest, and a prophet who will not stop praying
1. (vv. 16-19)
a.Wheat harvest in Palestine falls in the dry season, when rain almost never comes, so Samuel's call for thunder and rain names a sign the calendar itself makes improbable. The storm arrives the same day he calls it, and the people who had stood firm on their request now beg Samuel to pray for them, confessing that asking for a king added evil to all their sins. The sign does not undo the king already anointed; it marks the request as sin without withdrawing what God had already granted through it.
1 Samuel 12:16, 2 voices
1 Samuel 12:16-18
“As a matter of fact, the works Moses did, Samuel did too. Moses resisted God and prevented him from destroying his people when God said to him, "Let me alone, that I may strike this people." Just see the power of Moses! What does God say to him? Let me alone; you are compelling me, your prayers, as it were, restrain me; your prayers hold back my hand. I shoot an arrow; I hurl a javelin; and your prayers are the shield of the people. Let me alone that I might strike down this people.”
Jerome· written before 420· HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 26 (PS 98)patristic
1 Samuel 12:16-18
“But Samuel made it to appear that this was designed by the almighty power of God on purpose to convince them that they had done very wickedly in asking a king; not only by its coming in an unusual time, in wheat-harvest, and this on a fair clear day, when there appeared not to the eye any signs of a storm, but by his giving notice of it before.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 12:17, 3 voices
1 Samuel 12:17
“Is it not wheat harvest today?.... Of the time of wheat harvest; see Gill on 1Sa 6:13. Rain usually fell in Judea only twice a year, called the former and the latter rain; and from the seventeenth of Nisan or March, to the sixteenth of Marchesvan or October, it was not usual for rain to fall, and so not in harvest, at that time especially, see Pro 26:1. R.”
1 Samuel 12:17
“Wheat harvest - Between May 15 and June 15. Jerome’s testimony (that of an eye-witness) “I have never seen rain in the end of June, or in July, in Judaea” is borne out by modern travelers.”
1 Samuel 12:17-25
“Is it not wheat harvest to-day?--That season in Palestine occurs at the end of June or beginning of July, when it seldom or never rains, and the sky is serene and cloudless.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 12:18, 2 voices
1 Samuel 12:18
“So Samuel called unto the Lord,.... Not in an authoritative way, or by way of command, but by prayer; so the Targum renders the clause in the preceding verse,"I will pray before the Lord:" and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day; immediately, though there was no appearance of it; it was harvest time, and a fine harvest day.”
1 Samuel 12:18
“The Lord sent thunder and rain that day - This was totally unusual; and, as it came at the call of Samuel, was a most evident miracle. Greatly feared the Lord - They dreaded His terrible majesty; and they feared Samuel, perceiving that he had so much power with God.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:19, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:19
“Pray for thy servants - that we die not - As they knew they had rebelled against God, they saw that they had every thing to fear from his justice and power. We have added unto all our sins this evil - It is no sin to have a king; a good king is one of the greatest blessings of God’s providence; but it is a sin to put a man in the place of God. Is it not strange that they did not now attempt to repair their fault?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2. (vv. 20-21)
a.Fear not opens Samuel's answer to a terrified people, and what follows is continuity rather than correction: keep serving the Lord with all your heart, the king notwithstanding. Vain things translates a word built on the same Hebrew root as the formless waste of Genesis 1:2, so idols are named by a word for emptiness itself, unable to profit or deliver by definition rather than by any particular failure. The warning reaches back past the request for a king to the older danger Israel had always faced from the gods of Canaan.
1 Samuel 12:20, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:20
“Ye have done all this wickedness - That is, although ye have done all this wickedness: what was past God would pass by, provided they would be obedient in future.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:21, 3 voices
1 Samuel 12:21
“This the prophet of the Lord, Samuel, also openly suggests when he adds: "And do not turn aside after vain things, which will not profit you, nor deliver you, because they are vain." 13. Literally, he calls vain things the images of demons. But for us, those vain things are to be understood here as what the preacher shows, saying: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. For in comparison with eternal goods, all things are vain, even temporal goods.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 5, Chapter 2patristic
1 Samuel 12:21
“After vain things - That is, idols; which he calls here התהו hattohu, the same expression found Gen 1:2. The earth was תהו tohu; it was waste, empty, and formless: so idols; they are confusion, and things of naught, for an idol is nothing in the world, it is not the representative of any intelligent being.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:21
“Turn aside-After idols; as they had often done before; and, notwithstanding this warning, did afterwards. Vain things - So idols are called, Deut. xxxii, 21 Jer. ii, 5, and so they are, being mere nothings, having no power in them; no influence upon us, nor use or benefit to us.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
3. (v. 22)
a.The reason Israel is not cast off is stated plainly: for his great name’s sake, not for any merit surviving the request that just provoked thunder from a clear summer sky. It hath pleased the Lord to make you his people rests the nation's standing on God's own prior choice rather than on the king they demanded or the sin they confessed. Moses had argued the same ground before God at Sinai, appealing to the Lord's own reputation among the nations rather than to Israel's record.
1 Samuel 12:22, 2 voices
1 Samuel 12:22
“The Lord will not forsake his people - He will not as yet cast you off, though you have deserved it. His purpose in preserving them in their land and religion was not yet accomplished. It was not however for their sake that he would not cast them off, but for his own great name’s sake. He drew his reasons from himself.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:22
“And this reason God alledgeth to take them off from all conceit of their own merit; and to assure them, that if they did truly repent of all their sins, and serve God with all their heart; yet even in that case their salvation would not be due to their merits; but the effect of God's free mercy.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
4. (v. 23)
a.God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you sets intercession itself as a standard the prophet will not fall beneath, spoken by the very man Israel has just partly sidelined. Samuel does not resign his office at the people's request for a king; he keeps two duties, prayer and teaching, that no throne can take from him. The vow holds through the rest of his life, most visibly when he grieves and cries unto the Lord all night over Saul's rejection at 15:11.
1 Samuel 12:23, 3 voices
1 Samuel 12:23
There follows: "But as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you." 15. He speaks these things, to whom the Lord said above concerning those to whom he speaks: "They have not rejected you, but me, that I should not reign over them." Behold, the prophet is rejected, and he speaks to those who reject him, saying: "Far be it from me that I should commit this sin against the Lord, that I should cease to pray for you."
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 5, Chapter 2patristic
1 Samuel 12:23
“God forbid that I should sin - They had earnestly begged him, 1Sa 12:19, to pray to God for them, that they might not die; and he tells them that he should consider himself a sinner, should he cease to be their intercessor. But I will teach you the good and the right way - I will show you, as long as I am with you, what true religion is; it is the way to happiness and heaven. It is right - there is no crookedness in it; it is good - there is no evil in it.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:23
“It is a very great privilege to be permitted to pray for our fellow men. Prayer in each man's case must necessarily begin with personal petition, for until the man is, himself, accepted with God, he cannot act as an intercessor for others. And herein lies part of the excellence of intercessory prayer, for it is to the man who exercises it aright a mark of inward Grace and a token for good from the Lord.”
Charles Spurgeon· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1537: “Samuel—an Example of Intercession” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1880)Particular (Reformed) Baptist / Five-point Calvinist / 1689 LBCF / 19th-c. evangelical
5. (vv. 24-25)
a.Only fear the Lord closes the chapter on the same terms given at verse 14, and consider how great things he hath done for you names gratitude, not fear alone, as the ground of obedience. The warning that follows binds king and people in one sentence, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king, so that Saul's own fate is announced here before his first recorded failure in chapter 13. The chapter that opened on an old judge's clean record closes with a new king's future already in question.
1 Samuel 12:24, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:24
“Only fear the Lord - Know, respect, and reverence him. Serve him - Consider him your Lord and Master; consider yourselves his servants. In truth - Be ever honest, ever sincere; with all your heart - have every affection engaged in the work of obedience; act not merely from a principle of duty, but also from a pious, affectionate sense of obligation. Act towards your God as an affectionate child should act towards a tender and loving parent.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 12:25, 1 voice
1 Samuel 12:25
“But if ye shall still do wickedly,.... Continue to rebel against God, revolt from him, and depart from his worship, and despise his prophets, and serve idols: ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king; their king would be so far from protecting, that he should perish with them, be killed by the sword, as Saul their first king was, or go into captivity, as others of their kings did.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 1 Samuel 12. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 12 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1537: “Samuel—an Example of Intercession” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1880); Gregory the Dialogist, Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 5, Chapter 2; Irenaeus, AGAINST HERESIES 4.26.4; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown; Jerome, HOMILIES ON THE PSALMS 26 (PS 98); John Gill; John Wesley; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Books of Samuel; Matthew Henry and W. G. Blaikie, The First Book of Samuel (Expositor's Bible).
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