CHAPTER XIII
Samuel
Samuel, 1:1-29
Agnes M. Lawson
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The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
After the
death of Joshua, the twelve tribes of
Israel settled each on its own portion of
the land. The wandering nomadic tribes
now had a country, and the elements of
national unity in their common
acknowledgment of Jehovah as their God
and Moses as their lawgiver. Otherwise
they were scattered, and each still had
his own borders to fortify, for the
Canaanites were far from conquered.
At this
period of Hebrew history we have an
Anarchial state of society. Anarchy
(self-government) is supposed to be the
antipode of Socialism. In fact, Anarchy
must precede Socialism. I am using these
terms in their original meaning, not in
the party significance given them in
modern politics. Until the individual is
self-governing, he can by no means
affiliate under a social form of
government. Socialism, which is unity in
government, the welfare of the whole, the
ideal that all must conform to, can
result only from the aggregation of
self-governing units, each voluntarily
giving up selfish purposes for the good
of the whole. We cannot give up self
until we possess it, therefore a period
of anarchy is absolutely essential in
both individual and national growth. In
this period of Hebrew history there is no
central government. “Every man did
that which was right in his own
eyes.”
Do we not
find this true in our individual growth?
After the restraints of childhood, it
matters not how lovingly administered,
there is a period of anarchy in the life
of every boy and girl, which we find most
unmanageable. The youth must find his own
central self. This is so apparent that
our psychologists say, “There never
was a child who did not at some time wish
its parents dead.” It is indeed the
wise parent who knows this fact and gives
to his child that period in which he must
find himself untrammeled, and the child
may voluntarily come to him for advice
without being either ridiculed or
coerced.
The nation
is but the aggregation of the individual
and passes through the same phases.
Russia and Mexico are both in this period
today. Should we not understand by now
and be both tolerant and patient, until
these nations find themselves? Judges is
this period of Hebrew history. When men
came in conflict with each other their
disputes were carried before a judge.
These “judges” imply to us
something quite different from what they
implied to the Hebrew. Disputes were
settled by the elders of the tribe of the
village or town. At this period there
were no appointed heads of government,
but natural ability, fairness and
spiritual power drew its own clientele,
and these people were called judges. This
period lasted for about two hundred
years. The last and greatest of the
judges was Samuel, who found the nation a
loosely knit body of tribes, but left it
a united people with national aspirations
and power.
Samuel
(asked of God) received his name because
he is the answer to his mother’s
prayer. Hannah consecrated her child to
the Lord all the days of his life, before
he was born, and in the fullness of her
heart at his birth burst into lyric
thanksgiving:
”Mine heart exulteth in the
Lord,
Mine horn is exalted in the Lord.
My mouth is enlarged over mine
enemies;
Because I rejoice in thy
salvation.”
Eli is judge
at this time, and Shiloh is the center of
national worship. Here the ark of the
covenant rests, and to this temple
presided over by Eli, the little Samuel
is brought by his grateful mother.
“And the child Samuel ministered
unto the Lord before Eli, and the word of
the Lord was precious in those days;
there was no open vision.”
There can be
but one reason for this; no one was at
this time able to see the Vision. Eli in
his indulgence of his sons, a sin against
God, his sons, and society, could not see
it. The penalty for sin is spiritual
blindness. The Vision never fails, it
always abides, but, alas, those who have
the eyes that see, the ears that hear,
are always the few, never the many.
Samuel’s birthright is the Open
Vision. It is woman indeed who must crush
the head of the serpent (materiality) as
she carries the unborn generations. Did
woman but know the formative power of her
own consciousness, each child would be
born into the world with Samuel’s
gift; and humanity would walk freely on
the King’s Highway of creative
power, spiritual unity, and the joy that
no man can take from them.
It is a
touching and beautiful account that we
read in first Samuel; of the little lad
girded in the linen ephod, serving in the
temple with the old Eli. Samuel and Eli
had both “laid down to sleep, in
the temple of the Lord, where the ark of
God was; then the Lord called Samuel; and
he said, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli,
and said, Here am I; for thou callest me.
And he said, I called not; lie down
again. And he went and lay down. And the
Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel
arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am
I; for thou callest me. And he answered,
I called not, my son; lie down again. Now
Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither
was the word of the Lord yet revealed
unto him. And the Lord called Samuel
again the third time. And he arose and
went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for
thou callest me. And Eli perceived that
the Lord had called the child. Therefore
Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down; and
it shall be, if he call thee, that thou
shalt say, Speak, Lord; for thy servant
heareth.”
So the Lord
speaks to Samuel, and Samuel tells Eli
every whit; and Eli, recognizing his sin
and the justness of his doom,
submissively says: “It is the Lord,
let him do what seemeth good.” But
Samuel’s secret is the key to every
great life. “And Samuel grew and
the Lord was with him, and did let none
of his words fall to the
ground.”
We meet at
this period an enemy that the nation was
long in conquering, the Philistines.
These people, unlike the rest of the
Canaanites, are not Semites, and have a
strong political organization.
Samuel is
not a man of war as was Joshua, nor a
lawgiver as was Moses; but he “was
a friend of man, and he dwelt by the side
of the road.” The people come to
him in trouble, and he prays for them. He
has “the hearing ear, and the
seeing eye,” and they are always at
the service of his fellow-man. He is a
natural unifier and peacemaker and forms
such a strong national organization, that
while the Philistines are not conquered,
they come no more to the border of Israel
all the days of Samuel.
Samuel grows
old in the service, and his sons walk not
in his ways, so the nation comes to the
conviction that centralization of
government means national strength. They
demand that Samuel appoint a king over
them. He who has harmonized the scattered
tribes and has become a recognized
national leader is the one who has made
the monarchy possible, and he must find
and anoint the king. He is much
displeased at this demand. Was not
Jehovah their king? And was not the
national government a theocracy under
this invisible king? Samuel is not a
terrorist as many of the doom prophets
were, but he shrewdly tells them what
will occur if they insist on a
monarchy.
And he says,
“This will be the manner of the
king that shall reign over you: he will
take your sons, and appoint them unto
him, for his chariots, and to be his
horsemen; and they shall run before his
chariots; and he will appoint them unto
him as captains of thousands, and
captains of fifties; and he will set some
to plow the ground, and to reap the
harvests, and to make instruments for
war, and to make instruments for
chariots. And he will take your daughters
to be confectioneries, and to be cooks
and to be bakers. And he will take your
fields and your vineyards, and your olive
yards, even the best of them, and give
them to his servants. And he will take
your manservants, and your maidservants,
and the tenth of your seed, and of your
vineyards, and give to his officers and
to his servants. He will take your sons
and your daughters and put them to work.
He will take a tenth of your flocks and
ye shall be servants. And ye shall cry
out in that day because of your king
which ye have chosen you; and the Lord
will not answer you in that
day.”
It all falls
on ears that can not listen to reason,
they wish to be as other nations and have
“a king to rule over us.”
Samuel gives way to the popular demand,
and anoints [the] first king of Israel,
Saul, “A young man and goodly; and
there was not among the children of
Israel a goodlier person than he.”
Over against the monarchy, however, stood
the restraining bands, or schools of the
prophets. They are the antidote for the
king. The Hebrew word for
“prophet” means to
“announce” or to
“foretell.” Their message was
always Jehovah’s commands to the
people. Thus they became the heralds at
once of patriotism, national unity and
religion. Samuel was neither prophet nor
judge in the technical sense; but he
organized prophetic bands, and this
organization lasted until the time of
Elijah and Elisha.
The true
prophet had a peculiar place in the
nation. He was the national conscience,
and the kings feared him as man fears
that something that invariably appears
with the pointing finger of accusation,
when he has been guilty of selfishness,
sensuality, or oppression. The prophet
stood between the people and the king,
for the rights of Jehovah’s people.
The idea of a theocracy was never lost to
the Hebrews, and the national king was
only a vice-regent of the righteous
Jehovah, and the prophets reminded the
kings of this, to their great
discomfiture.
Thus Samuel
unwillingly becomes a king-maker; but as
he is above all things a prophet, the
rise of the prophetic order at the same
time as the monarchy, is the national
consequence of this insight. “An
institution is the lengthened shadow of a
man’s consciousness,” and
this prophetic order, lasting for
centuries, has given to the human race a
great literature, whose influence on the
character of the human family it is
impossible to compute.
Samuel with
the establishment of the monarchy, at the
installation of Saul as king, would fain
retire; and here in the presence of all
Israel said: “Behold, I have
hearkened to your voice in all that ye
said unto me, and have made a king over
you; I am old and grayheaded; and,
behold, my sons are with you; and I have
walked before you from my youth unto this
day. Here I am; witness against me before
the Lord, and before his anointed: whose
ox have I taken? or whose ass have I
taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom
have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I
taken a ransom to blind mine eyes withal?
and I will restore it to you.” And
they said: “Thou has not defrauded
us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou
taken aught of any man’s
hand.” And Samuel said: “The
Lord is witness this day, that ye have
not found aught in my hand.” And
they said: “He is
witness.”
A great seer
cannot retire, he is a light that cannot
be hid under a bushel. Saul walks not
after the ways of the Lord, and Samuel is
appointed to find a king after
Jehovah’s own heart. So he finds
and anoints a shepherd lad, who was
“ruddy, and withal of a beautiful
countenance, and goodly to look
upon.” This choice of
Samuel’s marks the zenith of the
national power, but from his other order,
is founded that which supplants the Son
of Man by the Son of God.
Samuel goes
the way of all flesh, but the Spirit of a
prophet can never die. Undoubtedly the
greatest gifts of God to the children of
men are its seers. To these we owe that
power which separates man from the brute
and makes him akin to the angels. These
great supermen stand out in history as
beacon lights, nor can their light ever
fail, for it has entered the
consciousness of the race and makes it
what it is.
Woven into
the fabric of our being is Samuel, with
his incorruptible honesty, his clear
vision, his large, tolerant charity, that
like unto God lets us make our own
mistakes, and then correct them. How
otherwise can we come into his vision of
the invisible Theocracy, where we need no
visible ruler, and no man can say to us,
“Knowest thou God, for all shall
know Him.”
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