Saul Rejected as King
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But while inflicting judgment, God remembered mercy. The
Amalekites were to be destroyed, but the Kenites, who dwelt among
them, were spared. This people, though not wholly free from idolatry,
were worshipers of God and friendly to Israel.
King Saul Gets Another Chance
On receiving the commission against the Amalekites, Saul at once
proclaimed war. At the call to battle the men of Israel flocked to his
standard. The Israelites were not to receive either the honor of the
conquest or the spoils of their enemies; they were to engage in the war
solely as an act of obedience to God. God intended that all nations
should behold the doom of that people that had defied His sovereignty.
“Saul smote the Amalekites... . and took Agag the king... . But
Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of
the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good,
and would not utterly destroy them: but everything that was vile and
refuse, that they destroyed utterly.”
This victory served to rekindle the pride that was Saul’s greatest
peril. Ambitious to heighten the honor of his triumphal return, Saul
ventured to imitate the customs of the nations around him, and spared
Agag. The people reserved for themselves the finest of the flocks,
herds, and beasts of burden, excusing their sin on the ground that the
cattle were to be offered as sacrifice to the Lord. It was their purpose,
however, to use these merely as a substitute, to save their own cattle.
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Saul’s presumptuous disregard of the will of God proved that he
could not be trusted with royal power as the vicegerent of the Lord.
While Saul and his army were marching home in the flush of victory,
there was anguish in the home of Samuel. He had received a message
from the Lord: “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king:
for he is turned back from following Me, and hath not performed My
commandments.” The prophet wept and prayed all night for a reversal
of the terrible sentence.
God’s repentance is not like man’s repentance. Man’s repentance
implies a change of mind. God’s repentance implies a change of
circumstances and relations. Man may change his relation to God by
complying with the conditions upon which he may be brought into the
divine favor, or he may, by his own action, place himself outside the