1 Samuelchapter 15
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The Death of Agag, Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain
Key verse
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.
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 9.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Saul is sent to execute the long-standing sentence on Amalek, but spares Agag and the best of the sheep and oxen, then greets Samuel with a lie dressed as piety (I have performed the commandment of Jehovah) while the bleating is in Samuel's ears. The answer is the chapter's famous verdict: 'Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim' (15:22-23). When Saul tears Samuel's robe clutching at him, Samuel makes the tear a parable: Jehovah hath rent the kingdom from thee this day. Samuel hews Agag in pieces and comes no more to see Saul.
Context
History · Samuel, Nathan, Gad · 1 Samuel overview
Where the chapter sits
1 Samuel 15 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.’
Saul's second rejection. The Amalekite failure; ‘to obey is better than sacrifice.’
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 15The history
Amalek was a desert people of the Negev and Sinai fringe with a specific history against Israel: they attacked the exodus generation from behind, striking the stragglers and the exhausted, and the LORD swore then that he would blot out the memory of Amalek. What happens here is a sentence carried out four centuries late, not a land grab. They had also joined the Midianite raids in the days of Gideon.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The command is the ban, the Hebrew word herem, meaning devoted to destruction. Under it nothing was to be taken as personal profit; the spoil was not the army's to keep because the campaign was not the army's to profit from. The same idea, a devoted city offered up whole, appears on the Moabite Mesha Stele, where a king describes devoting a captured Israelite town to his own god. The concept was understood across the region; the point in Israel was that it applied only where God explicitly declared it and never as a general policy of war.
Saul warns the Kenites to move out first, on the grounds that they showed kindness to Israel coming out of Egypt. That detail matters: this is not indiscriminate. He knows how to distinguish, which removes the excuse from what follows.
What he keeps is Agag the king and the best of the sheep and oxen, the two most valuable categories, a royal hostage and prime breeding stock. Then he builds himself a monument at Carmel. Kings in that world routinely set up victory stelae with their own names on them; this is the first thing Israel's king does with a win.
The tearing of Samuel's robe is a sign in the visual language of the time. The hem and corner of a garment carried a man's identity and authority, legal documents in Mesopotamia were sometimes sealed with the impression of a robe's hem. Samuel reads the torn corner aloud: the LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today.
What it meant to them
Saul's defense is that the animals were kept to sacrifice to the LORD your God, religious language protecting a disobedient choice, and Samuel's reply became one of the most quoted lines in Israel's memory: to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.
For first hearers the last detail was the saddest. Saul confesses, then asks Samuel to honor him before the elders and the people anyway. He is more afraid of losing face than of losing God, and Samuel never comes to see him again.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
A. Amalek devoted: and Agag kept alive
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.Samuel opens by reminding Saul that his crown came by anointing, not by right, so obedience is the condition tied to the office itself. The command traces back to Exodus 17:14-16, where the Lord swore war with Amalek from generation to generation for the ambush at Rephidim, and to Deuteronomy 25:17-19, which commanded Israel to blot out the remembrance of Amalek once settled in the land. The verb utterly destroy renders the Hebrew herem, a ban that spares nothing captured, and it sets the standard against which every later verse in the chapter is measured.
1 Samuel 15:1, 1 voiceWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
1 Samuel 15:1
“Their territory extended over the whole of the eastern portion of the desert of Sinai to Rephidim--the earliest opponent (De 25:18; Ex 17:8-16) --the hereditary and restless enemy of Israel (Nu 14:45; 6:3), and who had not repented (1Sa 14:48) of their bitter and sleepless hatred during the five hundred years that had elapsed since their doom was pronounced.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 15:2, 3 voices
1 Samuel 15:2
“Thus saith the Lord of hosts,.... Of the celestial host of angels, and of the army of Israel, yea, of all the armies of the earth: this is premised to engage the attention of Saul: I remember that which Amalek did to Israel; four hundred years ago: how he laid wait for him in the way when he came up from Egypt; in the valley of Rephidim, just before they came to Mount Sinai, and fell upon the rear of them, and smote the feeble, and faint, and weary, see Exo 17:8.”
1 Samuel 15:2
“I remember that which Amalek did - The Amalekites were a people of Arabia Petraea, who had occupied a tract of country on the frontiers of Egypt and Palestine. They had acted with great cruelty towards the Israelites on their coming out of Egypt. (See Exo 17:8 (note), and the notes there). They came upon them when they were faint and weary, and smote the hindermost of the people - those who were too weak to keep up with the rest. (See Deu 25:18).”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:2
“SAUL had been commanded to utterly slay all the Amalekites and their cattle. Instead of doing so he preserved the king and suffered his people to take the best of the oxen and of the sheep. When called to account for this he declared that he did it with a view of offering sacrifice to God—but Samuel met him at once with the assurance that such sacrifices were no excuse for an act of direct rebellion.”
Charles Spurgeon· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 686: “Obedience Better Than Sacrifice” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1866)Particular (Reformed) Baptist / Five-point Calvinist / 1689 LBCF / 19th-c. evangelical
1 Samuel 15:3, 3 voices
1 Samuel 15:3
“Utterly destroy - Rather, “devote to destruction” (Lev 27:28 note). When a city or people were thus made cherem, everything living was to be destroyed, and no part of the spoil fall to the conquerors (compare 1Sa 15:21). The valuables were put into the sacred treasury.”
1 Samuel 15:3
“Slay, &c. - Which was not unjust, because God is the supreme Lord of life, and can require his own when he pleaseth; infants likewise are born in sin, and therefore liable to God's wrath. Their death also was rather a mercy than a curse, as being the occasion of preventing their sin and punishment.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:3
“The longer judgment is delayed many times the more severe it is when it comes. God chooses out instruments to do his work that are fittest for it. This was bloody work, and therefore Saul who was a rough and severe man must do it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 4-6)
a.Saul musters two hundred thousand footmen and ten thousand of Judah at Telaim, then carries out a careful evacuation of the Kenites before the attack lands. The Kenites are spared by name because they showed kindness to Israel in the exodus generation, the same kindness clause the history books use of Rahab and later of Ruth. Saul can distinguish, and act on the distinction, when mercy is the question; the chapter's failure is that he distinguishes the very same way where the command left no room for it.
1 Samuel 15:4, 2 voices
1 Samuel 15:4
“Two hundred thousand - and ten thousand - The Septuagint, in the London Polyglot, have Four Hundred thousand companies of Israel, and Thirty thousand companies of Judah. The Codex Alexandrinus has Ten thousand of each. The Complutensian Polyglot has Two Hundred thousand companies of Israel, and Ten thousand of Judah. And Josephus has Four Hundred thousand of Israel, and Thirty thousand of Judah. All the other versions are the same with the Hebrew text; and there is no difference in the MSS.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:4
“Saul gathered the people together--The alacrity with which he entered on the necessary preparations for the expedition gave a fair, but delusive promise of faithfulness in its execution.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 15:5, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:5
“Saul came to a city of Amalek - I believe the original should be translated, and Saul came to the city Amalek; their capital being called by the name of their tribe.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:6, 3 voices
1 Samuel 15:6
“Said unto the Kenites - The Kenites were an ancient people. Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, was a Kenite. Hobab his son (if the same person be not meant) was guide to the Hebrews through the wilderness. They had a portion of the promised land, near to the city Arad. See Jdg 1:16; and for more particulars concerning them and the Amalekites, see the notes on Num 26:20-21 (note).”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:6
“Though now intermingled with the Amalekites, they were not implicated in the offenses of that wicked race; but for the sake of their ancestors, between whom and those of Israel there had been a league of amity, a timely warning was afforded them to remove from the scene of danger.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 15:6
“When destroying judgments are abroad God will take care to separate between the precious and the vile, and to hide the meek of the earth in the day of his anger. It is dangerous being found in the company of God's enemies, and it is our duty and interest to come out from among them, lest we share in their sins and plagues, Rev. xviii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (vv. 7-9)
a.Saul carries the campaign the length of Amalek's territory, from Havilah to Shur on the border of Egypt, and takes Agag alive. Verse 9 states the failure plainly: Saul and the people spared the king and the best of the flocks and herds, keeping back exactly what verse 3 had named for destruction, and destroyed only what was already worthless. Barnes reads the sparing of Agag as a king's calculation, a captive kept to be paraded, and the text itself gives no motive beyond an appetite for what was good.
1 Samuel 15:7, 2 voices
1 Samuel 15:7
“The district here described would stretch from Havilah on the extreme east to Shur, either near Suez, or further north on the coast road from Gaza to Egypt.”
1 Samuel 15:7
“To Shur - That is, from one end of their country to the other; he smote all that he met with: but a great number of them fled away upon the noise of his coming, and secured themselves in other places, 'till the storm was over. Now they paid dear for the sin of their ancestors. They were themselves guilty of idolatry and numberless sins, for which they deserved to be cut off.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:8, 3 voices
1 Samuel 15:8
“And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive,.... This name seems to be a common name of the kings of these people, as Pharaoh was of the Egyptians, see Num 24:”
1 Samuel 15:8
“8, 9. he took Agag . . . alive--This was the common title of the Amalekite kings. He had no scruple about the apparent cruelty of it, for he made fierce and indiscriminate havoc of the people. But he spared Agag, probably to enjoy the glory of displaying so distinguished a captive, and, in like manner, the most valuable portions of the booty, as the cattle.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 15:8
“They were idolaters, and were guilty of many other sins, for which they deserved to fall under the wrath of God; yet, when God would reckon with them, he fastened upon the sin of their ancestors in abusing his Israel as the ground of his quarrel. Lord, How unsearchable are thy judgments, yet how incontestable is thy righteousness!”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 15:9, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:9
“The fatlings - The present Hebrew text cannot be so rendered. It can only mean “the second best” (compare the margin), i. e., sheep of the age to cut or shed the two teeth, sheep in their prime. But it is probable that the reading is corrupt, and that “fat or dainty bits” is the true reading.”
B. What means this bleating? To obey is better than sacrifice
1. (vv. 10-11)
a.The word of the Lord to Samuel opens with the chapter's first of three repentance statements: it repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king. Samuel's grief and his crying unto the Lord all night show a prophet who does not carry the sentence lightly even while sent to deliver it. Most of the bench reads the Lord's repenting here as a real change in his dealings with Saul answering Saul's own change, not a change in his purpose, a reading verse 29 will state directly a few verses on.
1 Samuel 15:10, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:10
“Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel,.... The word of prophecy, as the Targum; this came to him in a dream or vision, or by an articulate voice: saying; as follows.”
1 Samuel 15:11, 4 voices
1 Samuel 15:11
“Furthermore, with respect to the repentance which occurs in his conduct you interpret it with similar perverseness just as if it were with fickleness and improvidence that he repented, or on the recollection of some wrongdoing; because he actually said, "I repent that I have set up Saul to be king," very much as if he meant that his repentance savored of an acknowledgment of some evil work or error. Well, this is not always implied.”
Tertullian· written before 220· AGAINST MARCION 2.24patristic
1 Samuel 15:11
“It grieved Samuel - “Samuel was angry, or displeased,” as Jonah was Jon 4:1, and for a similar reason. Samuel was displeased that the king whom he had anointed should be set aside. It seemed a slur on his prophetic office. He cried unto the Lord - With the wild scream or shriek of supplication. (See 1Sa 7:8-9; 1Sa 12:18.) The phrase and the action mark Samuel’s fervent, earnest character.”
1 Samuel 15:11
“Repenteth - Repentance implies grief of heart, and change of counsels, and therefore cannot be in God: but it is ascribed to God when God alters his method of dealing, and treats a person as if be did indeed repent of the kindness he had shewed him. All night - To implore his pardoning mercy for Saul, and for the people. Is turned back - Therefore he did once follow God.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:11
“He did not thus deprecate his own exclusion from the government; nor was he secretly pleased, as many a one would have been, that Saul, who succeeded him, was so soon laid aside, but on the contrary prayed earnestly for his establishment, so far was he from desiring that woeful day. The rejection of sinners is the grief of good people;”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 12-13)
a.Samuel finds Saul already arrived at Carmel, where he has set up a monument to himself before ever reaching Gilgal to meet the prophet. Saul's greeting layers two claims at once, that he is blessed of the Lord and that he has performed the commandment of the Lord, neither of which the next verse will let stand. Gill treats the monument at Carmel as the tell: a man does not raise himself a memorial for a campaign he believes left unfinished.
1 Samuel 15:12, 2 voices
1 Samuel 15:12
“He set him up a place - Literally, a hand, יד yad. Some say it was a monument; others, a triumphal arch: probably it was no more than a hand, pointing out the place where Saul had gained the victory. Absalom’s pillar is called the hand of Absalom, 2Sa 18:18.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:12
“Saul came to Carmel--in the south of Judah (Jos 15:55; 1Sa 25:2). he set him up a place--that is, a pillar (2Sa 18:18); literally, a hand, indicating that whatever was the form of the monument, it was surmounted, according to the ancient fashion, by the figure of a hand, the symbol of power and energy.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 15:13, 3 voices
1 Samuel 15:13
“Gilgal being within 15 miles of Ramah, Samuel might easily have come from Ramah that morning. Self-will and rashness had hitherto been Saul’s chief faults. He now seems to add falsehood and hypocrisy.”
1 Samuel 15:13-23
“Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord--Saul was either blinded by a partial and delusive self-love, or he was, in his declaration to Samuel, acting the part of a bold and artful hypocrite. He professed to have fulfilled the divine command, and that the blame of any defects in the execution lay with the people.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 15:13
“They - That is, the people. Thus, he lays the blame upon the people; whereas they could not do it without his consent; and he should have used his power to over-rule them.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
3. (vv. 14-15)
a.Samuel answers Saul's claim of full obedience with a question built from what his own ears can hear, the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen that should not exist if verse 3 had been kept. Saul's answer shifts the blame twice in one breath, first to the people who spared the animals and then upward, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God, dressing disobedience as piety. Henry reads the phrase the Lord thy God, rather than my God, as a small slip that already shows Saul's distance from the God he claims to be honoring.
1 Samuel 15:15, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:15
“There is something thoroughly mean in his attempt to shift the responsibility of what was done from his own kingly shoulders to those of the people. Every word uttered by Saul seems to indicate the breaking down of his moral character.”
4. (vv. 16-19)
a.Samuel's rebuke opens by returning Saul to the beginning, when thou wast little in thine own sight, the same smallness Saul once claimed for himself at his anointing. The command is restated in full, to utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, closing the door on any reading that the order was ever partial or left open to judgment calls about what counted as good. Verse 19 names the true offense without softening it: Saul did not obey, he flew upon the spoil, and Samuel calls it evil in the sight of the Lord, not merely a misjudgment.
1 Samuel 15:16, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:16
“Samuel now acquiesces in the wisdom and justice of the sentence which 1Sa 15:11 he had so strenuously resisted at first. What before was known only to the Searcher of hearts, had now been displayed to Samuel by Saul himself.”
1 Samuel 15:17, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:17
“Thus Saul, after merit of humility, became swollen with pride, when in the height of power: for his humility he was preferred, for his pride rejected; as the Lord attests, Who says, "When thou wast little in thine own sight, did I not make thee the head of the tribes of Israel?" He had before seen himself little in his own eyes, but, when propped up by temporal power, he no longer saw himself little. For, preferring himself in comparison with others because he had more power than all, he esteemed himself great above all.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· The Book of Pastoral Rule, Part 2, Chapter 6patristic
1 Samuel 15:18, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:18
“The work was honourable, to destroy the sworn enemies of God and Israel; and had he denied himself, and set aside the consideration of his own profit so far as to have destroyed all that belonged to Amalek, he would have been no loser by it at last, nor have gone this warfare on his own charges.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 15:19, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:19-21
“And when Saul was charged with negligence and a breach of the law, he did not benefit his cause by alleging his conduct on other matters. For a defence on one count will not operate to obtain an acquittal on another count; but if all things should be done according to law and justice, a man must defend himself in those particulars wherein he is accused, and must either disprove the past, or else confess it with the promise that he will desist, and do so no more.”
Athanasius of Alexandria· written before 373· LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF EGYPT 1.11patristic
5. (vv. 20-21)
a.Saul answers with a flat claim of full obedience, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, even as he stands before the evidence of the sheep and the captured king. Verse 21 hands the excuse back to the people again, framing the kept spoil as material for sacrifice at Gilgal rather than plunder held onto for its own sake. The chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed is the narrator's own verdict on the excuse before Samuel ever answers it.
1 Samuel 15:20, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:20
“But it was their doing and not his; and, besides, it was for sacrifice to the Lord here at Gilgal, whither they were now bringing them. See what a hard thing it is to convince the children of disobedience of their sin and to strip them of their fig-leaves. Samuel gives a full answer to his apology, since he did insist upon it,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 15:21, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:21
“The Lord thy God - There is an implied censure of Samuel in this phrase. Saul says that Samuel blames him for what was done in honor of Samuel’s God; as if be had more zeal for the glory of God than was felt by Samuel.”
6. (vv. 22-23)
a.Samuel's answer is the chapter's most quoted line and one of Scripture's clearest statements on the relation of ritual to obedience: to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. Verse 23 sets the weight of the comparison, rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry, language that reaches forward to chapter 28, where Saul himself ends his reign consulting a witch at Endor. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord closes the verse with the sentence the rest of the chapter only carries out: Saul is rejected from being king, not merely rebuked for one campaign.
1 Samuel 15:22, 3 voices
1 Samuel 15:22
“Samuel, that great man, no less clearly reproved Saul, saying, "Is not the word better than a gift?" For hereby one fulfills the law and pleases God, as he says, "The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me." Let one "learn what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice," and I will not condemn the adversaries.”
Athanasius of Alexandria· written before 373· Letter 19.5patristic
1 Samuel 15:22
“Sacrifice - Because obedience to God is a moral duty, constantly and indispensably necessary; but sacrifice is but a ceremonial institution, sometimes unnecessary, as it was in the wilderness: and sometimes sinful, when it is offered by a polluted hand, or in an irregular manner. Therefore thy gross disobedience to God's express command, is not to be compensated with sacrifice.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:22-23
“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 (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 15:23, 4 voices
1 Samuel 15:23
“24. What is it that those who resist and refuse to comply are likened by the prophet to diviners and idolaters, except that diviners strove to know divine things and to divine hidden matters, while idolaters subjected themselves to figments by venerating them? But those who resist the commands of their superiors resist precisely because they judge that they know the divine will better.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 6, Chapter 2patristic
1 Samuel 15:23
“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,.... Or divination (e), in whatsoever way it was exercised; for there were various sorts of it among the Heathens, and all condemned by the law of God, Deu 18:”
1 Samuel 15:23
“He probably did 99 percent of what he was told to do. Yet God called his nearly complete obedience—rebellion (1 Sam. 15:23)!”
John Bevere· The Fear of the Lord (excerpted in Charisma Magazine, "Partial Obedience Is Disobedience") (1997)Charismatic / Pentecostal-evangelical / Independent / Holiness-corrective stream within charismatic mainstream
1 Samuel 15:23
“Stubbornness - Contumacy in sin, justifying it, and pleading for it. Iniquity - Or, the iniquity of idolatry. Rejected - Hath pronounced the sentence of rejection: for that he was not actually deposed by God before, plainly appears, because not only the people, but even David, after this, owned him as king.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
C. The torn skirt, and Agag hewn in pieces at Gilgal
1. (vv. 24-25)
a.because I feared the people: Saul's confession names the sin correctly, I have sinned, and gives its true cause in the same breath, because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice, a king ruled by the very subjects he was set over. His request in verse 25 asks Samuel to turn again with him and worship, seeking restoration to standing before he has shown any change beyond the words themselves. Wesley and Gill both read the confession as sincere in naming the act but shallow in what it asks for, honor and company rather than any offered remedy.
1 Samuel 15:24, 4 voices
1 Samuel 15:24
“26. What does it mean that Saul is rebuked by the prophet for not having heard the voice of the Lord and for having done evil in His eyes, and yet he does not at all confess that he has sinned; but when he sees himself rejected from the kingdom, he confesses that he has sinned and transgressed the word of the Lord and His commands? It is because the proud are bold in despising the words of the humble, yet they cannot, in the manner of the elect, despise the honors they covet.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 6, Chapter 2patristic
1 Samuel 15:24
“I have sinned - because I feared the people - This was the best excuse he could make for himself; but had he feared God more, he need have feared the People less.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:24
“I have sinned - It does by no means appear, that Saul acts the hypocrite herein, in assigning a false cause of his disobedience. Rather, he nakedly declares the thing as it was.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:24
“David, though convinced by the ministry of Nathan, yet, in his confession, has his eye to God alone, not to Nathan. 4 Against thee only have I sinned. But Saul, ignorantly enough, confesses his sin as a transgression of Samuel's word; whereas his word was no other than a declaration of the commandment of the Lord.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 15:25, 2 voices
1 Samuel 15:25
“Pardon my sin - Literally, bear my sin; take it away; forgive what I have done against thee, and be my intercessor with God, that he may forgive my offense against him; turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:25
“Pardon my sin - Neither can it be proved that there was any hypocrisy in this. Rather charity requires us to believe, that he sincerely desired pardon, both from God and man, as he now knew, he had sinned against both.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2. (vv. 26-28)
a.Samuel refuses Saul's request outright, I will not return with thee, and repeats the sentence of rejection a second time in two verses. When Saul seizes Samuel's mantle to hold him back and it tears, Samuel reads the accident as a sign handed to him rather than one he staged: the Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day. The neighbour of thine, that is better than thou goes unnamed in this chapter, and chapter sixteen supplies the name in the very next scene of the book, David.
1 Samuel 15:26, 2 voices
1 Samuel 15:26
“And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee,.... Not being satisfied with his repentance and confession, he still extenuating his sin, and laying the blame of it on the people.”
1 Samuel 15:26
“This may relieve many perplexed consciences, who think themselves obliged to do what they have said they would do, though they see just cause to change their minds. Hath rejected thee, &c. - But he does not say, he "hath rejected thee from salvation." And who besides hath authority to say so?”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:27, 2 voices
1 Samuel 15:27
“And as Samuel turned about to go away,.... From Saul, a different way from Gilgal, perhaps towards his own city Ramah, with an intention to have nothing more to say to Saul, or to do with him, or to see his face no more; so displeased was he with him: he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle; in order to detain him, and prevent his departure from him, and his going a different way: and it rent; Samuel twitching away from him with great vehemence and warmth.”
1 Samuel 15:27
“As the thing appeared to him upon the first view, he thought it altogether unfit for him so far to countenance one whom God had rejected as to join with him in giving thanks to God for a victory which was made to serve rather Saul's covetousness than God's glory.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (v. 29)
a.The chapter's second repentance statement stands directly against the first: the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent, for he is not a man, that he should repent. Barnes notes that the title Strength of Israel occurs nowhere else in Scripture, chosen here for its weight of permanence against the change just described in verse 11. The bench reads the tension as two levels of language rather than a contradiction: verse 11 and verse 35 describe the Lord's grief and change of dealing toward Saul, while verse 29 states his covenant faithfulness and unchanging character, and both stand without one erasing the other.
1 Samuel 15:29, 3 voices
1 Samuel 15:29
“The strength of Israel - A phrase which occurs only here. The word means, perpetuity, truth, glory, victory, and trust, or confidence.”
1 Samuel 15:29
“But God needs no such artifices; he can do whatsoever he pleaseth by his absolute power. Repent - That is, nor change his counsel; which also is an effect of weakness and imperfection, either of wisdom or power. So that this word is not here used in the sense it commonly is when applied to God, as in Jer. xi, 1-23, and elsewhere.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:29
"He is determined to depose thee, and he will not change his purpose. He is not a man that should repent. " Men are fickle and alter their minds, feeble and cannot effect their purposes; something happens which they could not foresee, by which their measures are broken.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 30-31)
a.Saul's second confession repeats I have sinned but asks again for honor before the elders and before Israel rather than for mercy from the Lord he has offended. Samuel grants the outward request and turns again after Saul, and Saul worships the Lord, a scene the commentators read as Samuel preserving the people's confidence in their king's standing rather than approving what Saul has asked for. The distinction matters for what follows: Samuel accompanies Saul in public and still carries out the sentence just pronounced.
1 Samuel 15:30, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:30
“The pertinacity with which Saul clings to Samuel for support is a striking testimony to Samuel’s integrity. With all his worldly-mindedness Saul could perceive and appreciate the purity of Samuel’s character as a man of God. The Lord thy God - As above, 1Sa 15:15.”
1 Samuel 15:31, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:31
“Samuel turned again after Saul--not to worship along with him; but first, that the people might have no ground, on pretense of Saul's rejection, to withdraw their allegiance from him; and secondly, to compensate for Saul's error, by executing God's judgment upon Agag.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
5. (vv. 32-33)
a.Agag comes before Samuel delicately, expecting the courtesy shown to a captured king, and his own words betray the hope: Surely the bitterness of death is past. Samuel's sentence answers Agag's own record, as thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women, and he carries out with his own hand the destruction Saul had left undone. Agag's line is picked up centuries later at Esther 3:1, which names Haman the Agagite; the descent from this king to that enemy of the Jews is the church's tradition rather than a stated genealogy, and it is held so.
1 Samuel 15:32, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:32
“Agag came unto him delicately - The Septuagint have τρεμων, trembling; the original, מעדנת maadannoth, delicacies; probably איש ish, man, understood; a man of delights, a pleasure-taker: the Vulgate, pinguissimus et tremens, “very fat and trembling.” Surely the bitterness of death is past - Almost all the versions render this differently from ours. Surely death is bitter, is their general sense; and this seems to be the true meaning.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:33, 4 voices
1 Samuel 15:33
“Hewed in pieces - Only found in this passage. Samuel thus executed the חרם chērem 1Sa 15:3 which Saul had violated, and so both saved the nation from the guilt of a broken oath, and gave a final example to Saul, but apparently in vain, of uncompromising obedience to the commandments of God. There is something awful in the majesty of the prophet rising above and eclipsing that of the king (compare 1Ki 21:20; Jer 38:14 ff; Dan 2:46; Dan 4:27).”
1 Samuel 15:33
“Samuel hewed Agag--This cruel tyrant met the retribution of a righteous Providence. Never has it been unusual for great or official personages in the East to perform executions with their own hands. Samuel did it "before the Lord" in Gilgal, appointing that same mode of punishment (hitherto unknown in Israel) to be used towards him, which he had formerly used towards others.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 Samuel 15:33
“Hewed - This he did by divine instinct, and in pursuance of God's express command, which being sinfully neglected by Saul, is now executed by Samuel. But these are no precedents for private persons to take the sword of justice into their hands.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:33
“He trod in the steps of his ancestors' cruelty, and those under him, it is likely, did the same; justly therefore is all the righteous blood shed by Amalek required of this generation, Matt. xxiii. Agag, that was delicate and luxurious himself, was cruel and barbarous to others.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
6. (vv. 34-35)
a.Samuel goes to Ramah and Saul to Gibeah, the two men parting company for the rest of Saul's life; the next time the text records them near each other, in chapter nineteen, Saul comes to Samuel rather than Samuel coming to him. Samuel mourned for Saul even while refusing to visit him, a grief the older writers read as sorrow over a king he had himself anointed and now watched forfeit the office rather than any relenting of the sentence. The chapter's third and final repentance statement closes the account as it opened, the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel, and the next chapter answers the verse by sending Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint the neighbour left unnamed in verse 28.
1 Samuel 15:34, 1 voice
1 Samuel 15:34
“Then Samuel went to Ramah,.... His native place, and where was his usual residence: and Saul went up to his house to Gibeah of Saul; which was also his birth place, and where was his father's house, and where he had his palace, and kept his court; and took its name from him, to distinguish it from another Gibeah; and so Josephus (w) says it was called Gabathsaoule, and was about thirty furlongs or four miles from Jerusalem. (w) De Bello Jud. l. 5. c. 2. sect. 1.”
1 Samuel 15:35, 2 voices
1 Samuel 15:35
“To see Saul - That is, to visit him, in token of respect or friendship: or, to seek counsel from God for him. Otherwise he did see him chap. xix, 24. Though indeed it was not Samuel that came thither with design to see Saul, but Saul went thither to see Samuel, and that accidentally.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 15:35
“He mourned for his everlasting state, having no hopes of bringing him to repentance. When he wept for him, it is likely, he made supplication, but the Lord had repented that he had made Saul king, and resolved to undo that work of his, so that Samuel's prayers prevailed not for him. Observe, We must mourn for the rejection of sinners, 1.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Threads running through this chapter
- The war with AmalekPattern, vv. 8 to 9
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 1 Samuel 15. 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 14 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Athanasius of Alexandria; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 686: “Obedience Better Than Sacrifice” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1866); Gregory the Dialogist; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Bevere, The Fear of the Lord (excerpted in Charisma Magazine, "Partial Obedience Is Disobedience") (1997); John Gill; John Wesley; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Books of Samuel; Matthew Henry; Tertullian, AGAINST MARCION 2.24 and W. G. Blaikie, The First Book of Samuel (Expositor's Bible).
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