40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 14:36-15:9 (Episode 238)

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Saul doubles down on his foolish oath, putting Jonathan in jeopardy. The people get their king out of his promise. Samuel gives Saul a mission from God, but Saul's misplaced piety gets in the way again. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conferences 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. We are back from Here We Still Stand. Of course, if you're an avid listener, the episode you listened to right before this episode was the live episode from Here We Still Stand.

Hopefully you got to watch that episode live wherever it was that you were watching it. It was streaming in a lot of places. So hopefully you got to be a part of that. If you want to watch that episode or just any of the stuff that we did at the Here We Still Stand live conference, the easiest way to do it is to go to youtube and go to the 1517 youtube page watch the whole thing

you can scroll through and find uh particular things that you're looking for so a ton of content there and if you've never been to the to the 1517 youtube channel now's a good time to go and subscribe to that uh if you did miss it and you're bummed you don't have to have missed it you just will have missed it live you can go back and still watch all that content so we're going to leave it leave it up there so go over to 1517 on youtube and subscribe to that and uh and you know watch uh watch the here we still stand conference chad uh it was it was good i got i got to we got to be in the flesh for a change yeah it was great i mean uh of course it wasn't wasn't as good as most years because we you know we didn't have all all our people there we were missing like we were

missing like 500 people yeah besides missing those 500 people uh no it was it was great because you know like like everybody else uh this year has kept us apart we usually get together the 1517 staff usually get together two or three times a year plus conferences and so it was a great chance for for us to spend uh two or three days together and reconnect and uh get to both watch some good content and to produce some live as well so yeah that's great yeah i mean i the the people that work uh you know for 15 17 had not all been together i don't think believe uh since christmas of yeah it was back it was last december yeah that was it so that's a that's a little that's a little bit of time to go by when you're when you're doing the stuff that we're doing that

did not be together at all i mean obviously we had a lot of zoom meetings and all of that sort of stuff but it was yeah it was good uh to see each other when we hadn't hadn't done so in you know 10 months yeah so we got to record the the lost episode we did yeah yes that monkey is off our back uh genesis 15 is in the books now when we we i'm sure we'll continue to get those emails as we get new listeners and they start over and they're like where's 15 and now we just point them way up in the in the archives so you got to go all the way up to episode two you know 200 and whatever it is and you can find that episode there but the we did manage to make it through the whole chapter though yeah we did yeah yeah i mean we could have easily i told somebody we

could have easily split that into about at least two yeah different episodes because i mean it really is a extremely uh deep text uh but yeah we we got through it and got through it well i didn't feel like we had to rush through it or anything so yeah well so if you're a long-time listener you can go back and and now you're you will be complete that's it yeah genesis is we finally We finally finished, technically, the first book of the Bible. It took a little while. Right. It took a minute.

Well, now we've got to pick up. Back in 1 Samuel 14, we left sort of right in the middle of a narrative here. Saul has become an altar builder, built his first altar, and he builds this altar, and things are going to get a little tense. Yeah, yeah. If you remember from early in the story, the soldiers of Saul informed Jonathan that he was in trouble because his dad had made everybody swear this vow that they would not eat until the end of the day when they had conquered the enemy. And of course, Jonathan did not know this. So he was sticking his staff down there and getting a little honey and refreshing himself.

so that's going to be the the rest of that particular story so we're in verse we're in chapter 14 verse 36 so Saul says let's go down after the Philistines by night and take spoil among them until the morning light and let us not leave a man of them so Saul's finished building his altar he's ready to go back to war and everybody's like hey sounds great to us they say, do whatever seems good to you. But the priest steps forward. Remember the priest that we encountered earlier in this chapter, this is a long chapter. This is the grandson of Eli. So the priest steps up and he's more or less saying, well, Saul, I'll tell you what, why don't we put the brakes on for a minute? Let's draw near to God first. So let's inquire of God and find out if

this is actually what he wants us to do. So verse 37, that's what Saul does. He inquires of God and he asks a question. It's kind of a, you know, a yes or no question. Shall I go down after the Philistines? And then he has another question. Will you give them into the hand of Israel? But it says he did not answer him on that day. Now, I wish I knew more about how this all worked. you know if if they were if they were using these uh these lots the urim and fumim then how do you get a no answer how do you get no answer at all yeah i mean i don't really know how that works we don't we don't we don't have too many details about how the casting of lots actually work but typically you get some answer but you get no answer in this situation it's

interesting. So the no answer in Saul's mind means something's wrong. Yeah, yeah. Something must not be right. So Saul's got to get to the bottom of this, right? So we're going to have a little day in court, if you will. We're going to find out who the guilty party is. So Saul goes on to say that all the chiefs of the people need to come near him, and he's going to conduct a little investigation. We're going to find out how this sin has happened today. and then he goes on with this uh this is verse 39 uh talk about you know wanting to eat your words later he says as the lord lives who delivers israel though it is in jonathan my son he shall surely die so in other words he's saying listen whoever's guilty i don't care if it's my own son

he's he's gonna have to pay the penalty now of course we all know it was jonathan saul does not know it was jonathan we know that saul's conclusion is going to be uh the sin that is committed here is the eating which is a dumb thing to do in the first place as we established now does has jonathan actually committed any sin here i don't think so he didn't know anything about this oath god didn't say make this oath i don't think so but certainly in saul's mind he's like i think somebody ate something yep exactly what he thinks yeah uh it was it was doubly dumb right i mean just it was a ridiculous oath to begin with and it was also ridiculous because yeah let's let's make sure that our soldiers are as weak as possible when they go out to fight you know no

general ever no general ever wanted that for his uh for his for his soldiers you also like when you're making this statement like you need to make sure everybody's there i mean i know jonathan snuck off and everything like that but uh it's hard to hold guys responsible for doing things that they didn't know that they weren't supposed to do especially something that like you would never assume you weren't supposed to do right right yeah and i think uh i can't quote chapter and verse on this but i think it's it's pretty certain that even if it was a vow that was you know not stupid you know a real a valid vow if someone doesn't hear it they're not obligated to keep it i mean if you're you're unaware of this then there's no way you can actually break it

because it was never binding upon you to to begin with oh so anyway um he goes on verse 40 well let me finish verse 39 because this is an interesting way that it ends after saul says that it says not one of all the people answered him probably because most of them are thinking oh great now what's going to happen because a lot of them knew what what jonathan had done yeah that's he makes this statement as a i'm going to show you how committed i am obviously not thinking of course this is not a statement you make if you think there's any chance that it is jonathan uh this is a statement you make to make the people believe that you are real serious about what you're saying And the people seem to, they're like, Ooh, probably not a good idea.

So, uh, here's how he's going to, he's always going to do this. So verse 40 says that he tells all the people, so you're going to be on one side. And then Jonathan, my son, and I will be on, we'll be on the other side. This seems, well, first of all, this seems kind of strange to me. I don't know why he separated them out this way. so but you got like one huge group of soldiers and you got this two-person group of soldiers so saul and jonathan are standing over here all the other people on the other side and the people say to saul uh okay do do whatever seems good to you yeah i mean i think they think that they

they assume that he's gonna get to the bottom of this like i'm gonna put jonathan over here with me they're like yeah you do that you do that we'll see what we'll see what happens okay so verse 41 is uh it's one of these examples we've seen it before where the the texts that have come down to us are not all identical so if you're if you're going to translate directly from the hebrew the hebrew text that we have which is called the the masoretic text that's what most english bibles are based off of so if you're gonna go with the hebrew here you're gonna have a real short verse i'll read it to you therefore saul said to the lord the god of israel give a perfect lot and jonathan and saul were taken but the people escaped okay so that's what that's new

american standard pretty pretty short i mean i it makes sense but if we're translating from the septuagint the septuagint which is the greek translation they have a much more expansive text that they were either translating from or possibly expanding to make it make more sense. So here's how the ESV, for instance, reads. Therefore, Saul said, O Lord God of Israel, why have you not answered your servant this day? If this guilt is in me or in Jonathan, my son, O Lord God of Israel, give Urim. But if this guilt is in your people Israel, give Thummim. and Jonathan and Saul were taken but the people escaped so it really doesn't matter I mean in the end it's pretty obvious what's going on here you have some sort of division already already

established where you have Jonathan and Saul on one side the people on the other they they draw the lots you know the the two lots were kept in the breastplate of the priest used to make these kind of decisions to determine the divine will so you know they they cast the lots and the lots fall to jonathan and to saul we were joking before we started the podcast you know this is kind of weird right a weird way to a weird way to determine god's will uh but yeah there were there were a lot of different ways that ancient peoples determined the will of their gods uh we were joking about how they'd watch the flight of birds or you know they'd check out the liver of sacrificial animals they could look at the clouds there's even some sort of means by which they would like pour molten

metal into water and whatever shape it came up with was supposed to be indicative of the divine will so pretty a lot of kind of crazy ways that supposedly you could determine the divine will but for for god and for the israelites it was pretty straightforward you know if it's this lot it's yes if it's this lot it's no or if it's these lots it's that direction if it's these lots it's the other direction so anyway and it seems like what what's yeah what saul's doing here is uh he's taking the leadership him and jonathan and then and then dividing it among and separating them from the people he's like we're going to find out if this is a leadership problem or people problem and he seems probably i mean he has to be kind of surprised when this

happens if yeah i mean if he has a large degree of faith in this um in this method he's got to be surprised when it falls to him and him and jonathan this is not this is not what he's expecting this seems like a move that you make to first show the people look the reason that God's not answering has nothing to do with the leadership it has to do with the people right right yeah yeah so and right away it's like well this was he knows this oh this was not a great idea yeah yeah and then uh I guess just to finally complete the action I mean it's pretty obvious now unless Saul is just outright lying who the guilty party is but he goes on and he says okay well it's down to me and my son, cast lots between me and Jonathan. And of course, Jonathan was taken.

So you got to wonder what's going through Saul's mind at this point. I guess you don't have to wonder a whole lot because he does speak. And what he says is pretty startling. So verse 43, he says to Jonathan, tell me what you've done. So Jonathan told him, he said, I indeed tasted a little honey with the end of my staff that was it was in my that was in my hand here i am i must die now i don't know exactly how to read that because you can read that of course with all kinds of different tones of voice right oh i read this with one tone of voice like the tone of voice that i would say it in i'd be like what'd you do back well let's see uh i dipped my stick and some honey and uh then i ate that so uh definitely gonna have to kill me i we're on the

same page here actually i think that's probably exactly the the tone of voice that that he used because if you look at what he said earlier in the story when he was informed by his soldiers that his dad had made them all swear this vow he said this is verse 29 jonathan says well my father has troubled the land in other words he should never have said that he just made trouble for all of us look i tasted a little bit of the honey and all of a sudden my eyes have brightened so in other words this was stupid my dad should never have said this all he's doing is causing problems for for all of us so i yeah when when he responds to his dad it's got to be just like dripping with with sarcasm like yeah yeah i ate it and here i am standing right in front of you so

i guess you're just gonna have to kill me and and saul oh saul says may god do this to me and more also for you shall surely die jonathan and when it says surely hebrew has a way it has a verbal form called an infinitive absolute which sort of looks like you're just repeating the verb so it's like you shall you shall dyingly die or you shall die die yeah so you shall surely you shall surely die jonathan yeah and you think that probably that the reason jonathan also is like yeah all right uh it is that the people are obviously still there like they're watching this go down and uh and so jonathan is like yeah i ate that i ate some honey uh by the way i never hear about your oath in the first place but i ate some honey here i am guess this is the day i die

obviously it's it's like a ludicrous thing and he's got to think like there's is this like yeah i guess you're a dad i guess you just have to kill me in front of all the people even though i was the hero of the story right right and uh and saul though also kind of i think probably feels like i sort of have to kill you in front of all these people because i that's what i said i would do like literally even if it was you right right it's kind of a king harry birthday situation right i made this vow i made this promise in front of all these people and so uh you know i guess i've got to stick with with what i said well we'll see we'll see what the people have to say response to this they're having nothing to do with it uh verse 45 so the people said to saul must jonathan die

or shall jonathan die who has brought about this great deliverance in israel far from it as the lord lives there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground because he has worked with god this day so the people rescued or literally ransomed jonathan and he did not die hey i i can't i well of course it's speculation here but you can't tell me saul was not relieved yeah he didn't get his way in this situation i feel like this was like an easy thing to for the people it talks all out of like i'm sure he had to like feign a little bit of protest but you know they're like wait we're not going to really kill the guy that just did this right i mean that's not what you do well like i said listen listen he i mean we don't have the whole

thing but surely some somebody went and made an argument similar to this he didn't hear the oath therefore it wasn't binding on him so this you don't have to you you have a way out and then saul's like oh that's a good point yeah i thought of that yeah i guess i guess since i mean but if he had heard it i mean i he i would kill him but you're right since he didn't hear it we're gonna we'll we'll this uh not we'll not go through with this today yeah yeah i mean it's pretty easy to say face in the in this situation yeah so i mean in some ways it's sort of a it's a win-win situation in the sense that saul can still come out looking like yeah he was very serious and pious in all of this and then the people can come out looking very you know compassionate and

thankful for for the war hero so yeah in the end it works out well but the uh if there's a we don't usually do morals to the story here but one moral to the story here is don't make stupid oats yeah Just let your yes be yes and let your no be no. I think somebody important once said that. Yeah, and never say, I'll kill anyone, even in the name of someone really important to you. Yeah, that's another good truth to draw out of this. So that really wraps up the narrative of this chapter,

but we do have a few verses that sum up a little bit about who Saul is, his family, some of the things he did. It almost gives the impression that we're going to tell you a few things about Saul because everything after this is going to go downhill precipitously. So this is what we have. This is 47 through 52. So anyway, verse 46 first, it says, Saul went up for pursuing the Philistines, and the Philistines went to their own place.

So that wraps up that story. Verse 47. Now, when Saul had taken over or had taken the kingdom over Israel, he fought against all his enemies on every side against Moab, the sons of Ammon, Edom, kings of Zobah, Philistines, and wherever he turned, he inflicted punishment. so first of all one little comment about this it's kind of a strange way to phrase that verse 47 right when he had taken the kingdom over israel it almost makes it sound as if it's not something he received right it's like something he had to sort of acquire or you know exert his force to to receive and so i i can't help but wonder if when the author was pitting this like he chose he chose that particular word which is an active active verb to kind of communicate something about about Saul it wasn't just him receiving this but he was as it were trying to claim ownership of this kingdom in some way but anyway he takes the kingdom he fought he fights against

all these people he verse 48 he acts valiantly defeats the Amalekites sort of we'll hear more about that in the next chapter. He delivers Israel from all those who plunder them. So that's kind of a summation of his military victories. And then we hear more about his family. So we've heard plenty about Jonathan, but he also has a son by the name of Ishvi and Malakishua. And then he has daughters and their names are given here. The name of the oldest is Merav and the name of the younger is Michal. We will hear more about her when we get to the story of David. We haven't met Saul's wife yet, but verse 50 says that her name is Ahinoam. And then, interestingly, we find out that the captain of his army, whose name is Abner, is also Saul's uncle. Now, Abner is going to play a big

role when we go through the rest of second Samuel and even into, uh, even into King. So Abner is going to, uh, going to come up quite a bit, uh, as first of all, an antagonist to David. And then later actually one who, who goes over to, to David's side, which will, will be his demise. But, uh, yeah, Abner. So all this time, it's kind of good to keep in mind that Abner was the uncle of Saul. And then we've already met his father, Kish. We're told about Kish. And then it wraps up with verse 52. Now the war against the Philistines was severe all the days of Saul. And when Saul saw any mighty man or any valiant man, he attached him to his staff or he attached him to himself. In other words, he sees a guy who's a

he's a good fighter he's a good soldier he's a brave fellow he's like hey you know come join my come join my uh my smaller group of bodyguards if you will or my smaller manned army that i keep ready at hand yeah so he's got he's got like his uh he's building up his uh his rangers yeah yeah that's it he's got a special group yeah he's got a special special group of soldiers so and you know as david did too of course david had a his uh mighty men of valor among whom was uriah but a lot of others too and these were you know probably his his closest most trusted soldiers those who were very good at what they did and so he gathers them around himself just like most most kings do yeah we have we have good reason to think that those uh those guys were

uh pretty legit yeah yeah i suspect that they were uh definitely the the cream of the crop and that is uh that's verse four that's chapter uh chapter 14 so long chapter 52 verses uh but we we got it covered interesting story now verse uh chapter chapter 15 is uh kind of the you might call it the the nail in the coffin of saul as far as his uh any chance any chance that his that his uh his kingship might be redeemed any chance that he actually might have a a possible future as the king over israel is demolished in this chapter for good but it's like no no chance whatsoever after chapter 15 isn't it weird how uh this king thing with saul in some ways like in it never fully happened this guy is the king but not the king yeah yeah that's a great way to put

it a great way to put it yeah i was i was thinking about that this morning uh it's it's sort of like a biblical pattern right i mean it's like you god will put forward uh the first choice but the first choice is always a bad choice yeah kind of deal you know it's like you know what i'm gonna give Adam, but he's not really the Adam that you're going to want, right? You're going to want a second Adam. I'm going to give you a king, but he's not really the king that you want. I'm going to give you another king. I'm going to give you David. And you could sort of say the same thing about Cain, right? Eve thought that Cain was the promised seed. And it's like, no, no, that is definitely not going to be the one that you need. You need somebody else. So there is this kind of

a one-step-forward, one-step-back approach that God tends to take. And so Saul is almost like a, oh, you wanted a king? Well, I'm going to give you a king as punishment. So your first king is going to be a really total flop, and you're going to learn your lesson right away that trying to force my hand into giving you a king so you can be like the Gentiles is going to backfire on you. Yeah, I think what's interesting with these characters in the Bible

is that um you know every once in a while you'll get a character that seems altogether bad and every once in a while every great once in a while you'll get a character like jonathan who seems like basically altogether good that's not most of the time though because even even in the case of saul saul is a guy that is going to be you know rejected by the lord and they and he is going to turn out to not be great but at the same time it's pretty hard not to have a little bit of sympathy for saul who never sought this or signed up for this in the first place and in a lot of ways like has a like he he's ill-suited in a lot of ways for this job and it and that would be something that you could malign him for if it was a job that he had gone and tried to get yeah this

is true this is true yeah i mean they're we've already encountered some of these episodes early on where well some of the episodes he comes out as just a real a hero right i mean his first military campaign uh he kicked butt i mean he did he did a great job everybody was happy he ends up sparing the people who had talked trash about him so if if all we knew of saul was that one chapter would be like man this guy you know he's he's a good he's a good dude it doesn't isn't saul like seem like he is he does seem very naive but he also seems like a guy that's always trying to do the right thing the wrong way that's a good way to put it that's a great way to put it yeah yeah it's like he well you see that in in the case here i mean he's building altars he's making vows

that all sounds like very very pious you know very religious thing to do he wants to make sure hey you know we should probably consult god before we we do this or that so like he wants to do the right thing but he never does it the right way you know he always messes it up in some way yeah he seems like he he messes up certain things trying to do the right thing and i think that this is this sort of speaks to the embitterment of saul that where i mean at some point he has to be like man i can't win for trying man i mean this is this is just this is this is this all sucks yeah i i don't know how he wouldn't have ended up that way i mean given everything that's happened so far given what's about to happen and then uh you know the obvious mental issues that

he begins to have you can you can just kind of see his life bit by bit begin to crumble around him and we're already seeing some some uh some friction here between him and his son we're going to see more of that as as we go on so he is a he is a sympathetic figure i mean at times yeah he can come across as a jerk but there's a lot of situations where it's like man it's hard not it's hard not to feel for him because like you said it wasn't like he you know sent in his resume really want to be the king of israel he wasn't on the campaign trail yeah i was looking for donkeys yeah looking for donkeys ends up with a job that he doesn't want okay well uh we've got uh we got a few minutes left so let's let's see how far we can get into chapter 15 samuel reappears right

isn't it kind of strange how samuel's like he'll be like all over the place and then boom he's gone and then he's back all over the place so he just like you know yo-yos in and out of this this narrative but he's back he's back so Samuel said to Saul the Lord sent me to anoint you as king over his people over Israel now therefore listen to the words of the Lord so that kind of sounds ominous you know yeah anytime it begins that way it's like oh especially if you're Saul you're like oh great what's coming now thus says the lord of hosts typical prophetic introduction right here's what the lord of hosts says i will punish amalek for what he did to israel how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming while he was coming up from egypt now go and

strike amalek and utterly destroy all that he has and do not spare him but put to death both man and woman, child, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. We got to go way back to understand this. I mean, like all the way back to the book of Exodus. It's kind of a, it's a strange story in many ways because, you know, a lot of time has passed. Yeah. Several centuries have passed since all of this happened, but God has not forgotten. In fact, we have in both the book of Exodus And in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 25, God, I mean, he's perfectly clear that he is going to demolish, annihilate, blot out Amalek and Amalek's memory from under heaven because of what they did to the Israelites. If you remember the story, this is in Exodus 17 or 18. Anyway, the Israelites, of course, they're fresh in the wilderness.

Hadn't been very long. They've crossed the Red Sea and haven't even made it to Mount Sinai yet. So, you know, this is pretty early on. This is like, we'll say, a month or two after they left Egypt. And the Amalekites attack them, but they don't attack them in any sort of brave way. They're like wolves who are picking out the weakest of the flock who are at the very back of the herd. So the Amalekites, like wolves, swoop in and they're attacking the weakest members. They're attacking from the rear.

And so they're acting cowardly. They're acting with bloodthirsty, wolf-like intent. And because of that, God says, I'm going to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. And then he repeats that, Moses repeats that in Deuteronomy chapter 25. So this is, I mean, this is, we could have seen this coming because it was promised way back then, but it does seem like it was a long time to actually put this into effect. But that's what's going to happen. Amalek is going to be blotted out. That's what's supposed to happen anyway.

And this is another case where, as we saw multiple times in Joshua, where you have the penalty of harem, right? that utterly destroy or as some translations have it devote to destruction so this is the same thing that happened to the city of jericho same thing that happened to multiple cities when the israelites were conquering the holy land yeah yeah when he says i'm gonna blot it blot you guys out he means like the animals everything yeah yeah this is a this is a Complete annihilation. I remember I was listening to a Jewish scholar talking about some subject.

I can't remember what it was. And in the midst of his discourse, he made reference to Hitler. Not by name, but made reference to him. And then he said, he used this Hebrew phrase. He said, Yimak Shmo. Something like that. I might not have got it exactly right. Yimak Shmo.

And I rewound it and listened to it again, looked it up. So it's like the strongest Hebrew curse that you could ever utter. It literally means, may his name be blotted out. And it's taken from verses like this, this idea that may the utter remembrance of this person or these people be completely annihilated from the human memory. So you can't get much of a stronger curse than that. Well, that's the commission. We'll see what Saul does. saw some of the people. He's got a bunch of them, 200,000 foot soldiers, 10,000 men of Judah. He

gets everybody together. And then he goes to the city of Amalek and he sets an ambush against the city. But before he does that, he's got to give certain people a chance to get out. So evidently there were some Kenites who were living amongst the Amalekites. And he says to them, get yourself out of there. He says, go depart from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them, where you showed kindness that's your that's your uh your favorite hebrew word there dan hesed that's it yeah you showed kindness to uh all the sons of israel when they came up from egypt so the kenites departed from among the amalekites yeah so this is one of those is one of those kind of things that makes you kind of like saul right yeah yeah sure right you're not

like gonna wipe out everybody even people that weren't really directly involved yeah and it's And if you're trying to ambush people, it's a little bit of a risky move to try to go warn certain people because who knows what they're going to do. But he's like, hey, I'm only here to do one thing. I'm not interested in collateral damage. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so it's kind of funny because Saul makes reference to what they did way back then, right? Yeah. So it's like this is still very much alive in the people's memory. So you Kenites, you were kind to the Israelites. Probably the Kenites are to be connected

It could be the Midianites or the people of Jethro. And of course, they showed great kindness to the Israelites. So that was probably what's being referred to. But either way, the idea is, okay, you were kind. You showed compassion to the people of Israel. And because of that, we're going to spare you. We don't want none of your blood to be shed. And they listened.

So they go out from among the Amalekites. So verse 7 says that Saul defeated the Amalekites from Habilah, as you go to Shur, which is east of Egypt, and he captured. He captured Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, and the oxen, and the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good and they were not willing to destroy them utterly but everything despised

and worthless that they utterly destroyed this doesn't sound like it was uh exactly what god had in mind no and we're going to find out that saul's explanation for this seems like another attempt to be pious in the wrong way yeah yeah exactly yeah as we'll as we'll hear uh as we're next time he's like oh well i mean i was they were all gonna die i mean i just was gonna we kept the sacrifice the sacrificable animals to sacrifice right yeah i mean yeah if they were like all the pigs we killed you know all the whatever else they might have had we killed those but look there's a lot of good animals here we could have some sacrifices i mean they're gonna die so either way we can we can make this happen yeah and well i mean we'll see we'll see next week how this goes

but i don't think there's a lot of reasons to believe that that's not what he was doing oh i don't think so either i don't think so either in fact i mean there he keeps the king alive right he keeps agog alive but we also i believe it was when they captured the city of i they captured the king and they later killed him they didn't like kill him immediately during the battle So maybe that was what Saul was planning to do with him as well. We just don't know. This is one of these cases where, man, I would like to sit down with Saul and say, so what was the plan? He's like, I'm going to sacrifice all of this guy's best stuff to our God, and then I'm going to make him watch.

And then I'm going to kill him. Yeah, I mean, this is one of these cases where we wish we knew more about his intent, because you could read this sympathetically to Saul and say, Yeah, I mean, maybe that was kind of what he had in mind. But as we will find out next time, that was not what he's going to hear from God. It's not what he's going to hear from the prophet Samuel when he shows up. And we're going to have a very heated discussion and a very bloody end to Agog, as we'll see next time. Yeah. All right. Well, next time we will get Samuel's response to misplaced piety. and uh and we'll see we'll see how that goes guys uh go over to the the youtube channel uh over at

1517 just go to youtube search 1517 and subscribe to that and you can watch all the here we still stand uh live stream even though it's not live uh you can still go back and watch it while you're you know searching around the internet it's still time to pre-order chad bird's new book unveiling mercy which is coming out very soon now i mean we're less than a month out so get that pre-order in so that you can uh you get that on your in your mailbox as soon as it drops all right chad i'll see you next week see you then