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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4a
Samuel relates to Saul what God had said unto him the night before,
which night Samuel spent in sorrowful prayer, because of Saul’s sins.
“When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head
of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel?”
He reminds Saul of the commands of God which he had wickedly
transgressed, and inquires, “Wherefore then didst thou not obey the
voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the
sight of the Lord.”
“And Saul said unto Samuel, yea, I have obeyed the voice of the
Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought
Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.
But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things,
which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord
thy God in Gilgal.”
Saul here uttered a falsehood. The people had obeyed his direc-
tions. But in order to shield himself, he was willing the people should
bear the sin of his disobedience.
“And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings
and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? 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 iniquity and idolatry.
Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected
thee from being king. And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned; for
I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words,
because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.”
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God did not wish his people to possess anything which belonged to
the Amalekites, for his curse rested upon them and their possessions.
He designed that they should have an end, and that his people should
not preserve anything for themselves which he had cursed. He also
wished the nations to see the end of that people who had defied him,
and to mark that they were destroyed by the very people they had de-
spised. They were not to destroy them to add to their own possessions,
or to get glory to themselves, but to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken
in regard to Amalek.
The Lord had said unto Moses, “Write this for a memorial in a
book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua; for I will utterly put out the
remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Remember what Amalek
did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; how