Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Chapter 15. Synopsis of the Chapter
Saul, commanded to destroy Amalec, spares king Agag and the better cattle: wherefore he is rebuked by Samuel, and deprived of the kingdom. He, verse 20, excuses himself, and at last coldly says: I have sinned; that Samuel may do him royal honour before the people. Samuel, verse 32, commands king Agag to be cut in pieces, and continually mourns until his death the fall of Saul.
1. And Samuel said to Saul: The Lord sent me to anoint thee king over his people Israel: now therefore hearken thou to the voice of the Lord. 2. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: I have reckoned up all that Amalec did to Israel, how he opposed them in the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3. Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath: spare him not, nor covet any thing that is his: but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 4. And Saul summoned the people, and numbered them as lambs: two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Juda. 5. And when Saul was come to the city of Amalec, he laid ambushes in the torrent. 6. And Saul said to the Cinite: Go, depart, and get you down from Amalec, lest I involve thee with him: for thou hast shewn mercy to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt. And the Cinite departed from the midst of Amalec. 7. And Saul smote Amalec from Hevila, until thou comest to Sur, which is over against Egypt. 8. And he took Agag the king of Amalec alive: but all the common people he slew with the edge of the sword. 9. And Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the flocks of sheep and of the herds, and the garments, and the rams, and all that was beautiful, and would not destroy them: but everything that was vile and good for nothing, that they destroyed. 10. And the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying: 11. It repenteth me that I have made Saul king: for he hath forsaken me, and hath not executed my commandments. And Samuel was struck with sadness, and he cried to the Lord all night. 12. And when Samuel rose in the morning to go to Saul, it was told Samuel that Saul was come to Carmel, and had set up for himself a triumphal arch, and was returned, and passed on, and gone down to Galgal: and Samuel came to Saul, and Saul was offering a holocaust to the Lord, of the chief of the spoils which he had brought from Amalec. 13. And when Samuel was come to Saul, Saul said to him: Blessed be thou of the Lord, I have fulfilled the word of the Lord. 14. And Samuel said: What meaneth then this bleating of cattle which soundeth in my ears, and the lowing of the herds which I hear? 15. And Saul said: They have brought them from Amalec: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the herds, to sacrifice to the Lord thy God: and the rest we have slain. 16. And Samuel said to Saul: Suffer me, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night. And he said to him: Speak. 17. And Samuel said: Whereas thou wast a little one in thy own eyes, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel? and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel. 18. And the Lord sent thee on this journey, and said: Go, and kill the sinners of Amalec: and thou shalt fight against them until they be consumed. 19. Why then didst thou not hearken to the voice of the Lord: but turnedst to the prey, and hast done evil in the eyes of the Lord? 20. And Saul said to Samuel: Yea, I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord, and have walked in the way by which the Lord sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalec, and have destroyed Amalec. 21. But the people took of the spoil sheep and oxen, the firstfruits of those things that were slain, to sacrifice to the Lord their God in Galgal. 22. And Samuel said: Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifices: and to hearken rather than to offer the fat of rams: 23. Because it is like the sin of witchcraft to rebel: and like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey. Forasmuch therefore as thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord hath also rejected thee from being king. 24. And Saul said to Samuel: I have sinned, because I have transgressed the word of the Lord, and thy words, fearing the people, and obeying their voice. 25. But now bear, I beseech thee, my sin, and return with me, that I may adore the Lord. 26. And Samuel said to Saul: I will not return with thee, because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee, that thou be not king over Israel. 27. And Samuel turned about to go away, but he caught hold of the skirt of his mantle, and it rent. 28. And Samuel said to him: The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to thy neighbour who is better than thou. 29. But the Triumpher in Israel will not spare, and will not be moved to repentance: for he is not a man that he should repent. 30. Then he said: I have sinned: yet honour me now before the ancients of my people, and before Israel, and return with me, that I may adore the Lord thy God. 31. So Samuel returning followed Saul, and Saul adored the Lord. 32. And Samuel said: Bring hither to me Agag the king of Amalec. And Agag was presented to him very fat, and trembling. And Agag said: Doth bitter death separate in this manner? 33. And Samuel said: As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel cut him in pieces before the Lord in Galgal. 34. And Samuel departed to Ramatha: but Saul went up to his house in Gabaa. 35. And Samuel saw Saul no more till the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul, because it repented the Lord that he had set him king over Israel.
1. THE LORD SENT ME (not so much by local motion, for Samuel did not go to Saul, but Saul came to Samuel to consult him about the asses, as by an inward instinct), TO ANOINT THEE KING.—The causes of the anointing I gave above; to which add St. Chrysostom, homily 4 on the epistle to the Philippians, in the Moral part: “Therefore,” he says, “priests, kings and prophets were anointed, because oil was a symbol of divine kindness”; and how great this kindness ought to be in kings he adds saying: “If anyone wished to praise a prince, nothing so becoming will he ascribe to him as mercy. For it is the proper office of a ruler to show mercy.” And after many things: “Precious,” he says, “is a merciful man; nay, to show mercy is to be God.”
Moreover St. Gregory: “King Saul,” he says, “is commanded to destroy the Amalecites, that if he fulfilled the command of the Lord by the slaughter of that nation, he might untie the bonds of his former disobedience.”
NOW THEREFORE HEARKEN TO THE VOICE OF THE LORD.—God had commanded three times the utter destruction of Amalec: first, Exodus 17, 14; secondly, Deut. 25, 17; thirdly here, to show how heartily and entirely He willed it to be done; wherefore the fault of Saul was grave in neglecting this precept of God. Whence Rupert, book 1 on Deuteronomy chap.
“It is not therefore wonderful or unjust,” he says, “that for such a fault Saul was irrecoverably cast off, because he dared to transgress what was commanded by the law once and again, nay even a third time, with so great gravity.”
Tropologically, let the king and ruler obey God and his Superiors, if he wishes to be obeyed by his subjects, as if to say: God has made thee king and ruler: be therefore grateful and obedient to thy God, and rule according to His will. For, as St. Augustine says, addressing God, Soliloquies, chap. 16: “As there is no hour or moment in all my life in which I do not use Thy benefit, so there ought to be no moment in which I have not Thee before my eyes, in my memory; and do not love Thee with all my strength.” Hear St. Bernard, epistle 42: “That you may safely preside, disdain not to be subject also to him to whom you owe it. For disdain of subjection renders one unworthy of preferment. Let the subjects see in you what they may render back.”
This is what David commanded his son Solomon, the new king. “Observe,” he said, “the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and observe his ceremonies, and his precepts, and judgments, and testimonies,” 3 Kings 2, verse 3. Wherefore St. Gregory wisely says, book 1 Dialogues, chap. 1: “It is indeed a custom of right conduct that he who has not learned to be subject should not dare to preside; nor command obedience from subjects which he knows not how to render to Prelates.”