40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 9:1-25 (Episode 232)

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

We are introduced to the soon-to-be king Saul as he is on a hunt for his father's donkeys. Things are not going well but his servant has heard of a man of God in the area. Samuel has been waiting to tell this tall and handsome Benjaminite more than where the missing animals are. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Livestream Signup Chad Bird's New Book 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 while you're over there click on that here we still stand link take you over to the registration page for the live stream here we still stand conference which is the only here we still stand conference going on so if you want to join us online that's the way to do it you'll get a link sent to you at the appropriate time just click it it's all absolutely free so go over there sign up we'd love to hang out with you virtually also today is a glorious day because now you can get your hands well you can do the thing that you need to do to eventually get your hands on unveiling

mercy this is chad's new devotional book messing around in the hebrew now look if you're listening to this podcast we know you like to mess around in the hebrew already because you're listening to 40 minutes in the old testament this is 365 days of messing around in the in the old testament messing around with some hebrew words bite size you can just get a little dose of hebrew every day for a year i mean guys i'm just trying to to push this so chad doesn't have to do the embarrassing uncomfortable work of telling you how awesome this would be but let me just say that i mean how many people do you know that wouldn't think this is like the gift that you need to give them i mean this christmas everyone in your family should be getting unveiling mercy

365 days in the hebrew that's that's what that's what you're gonna need to do so christmas gifts solved for everyone you know it is available for pre-order right now i will put a link in the show notes uh buy one for you your mom your dad your cousin all that stuff it's a it was a lot of work it's 365 days so you gotta you gotta buy it you just gotta do it i'm not saying that's a good pitch yeah i mean i'm not trying to i'm not saying that if you don't buy this book that you won't go to heaven i'm not i'm not like i'm not saying that but i am saying why risk it right just do it oh yeah that's perfect i mean it is i will agree with you about one thing i mean christmas if you're like me i i hate buying gifts i'm i'm a terrible gift buyer so like if i find something

it's like you know what i'd be pretty good gift for these two or three people well that's what i gift it's a gift for all year i've just solved the problem for all these people who have trouble buying gifts there you go it's it's it is the perfect gift for uh for this it's dude it's a it's a big book for people who don't read a lot yeah because you get to read a little bit you have a whole year to read this book uh so the big it's a book that someone when they close it at the end of the year they'll be like i just read a huge book yeah you know it is the longest book i've written but it didn't feel like it because yeah it's all the devotions are short you get a verse you get uh you get the hebrew word you get a verse you get a couple paragraphs of reflection

meditation you get a prayer that's it yeah well it's link is in the show notes or just go over to amazon unveiling mercy um check it out uh pre-order is now available okay well today is the day we've been we've been leading up to this moment for quite some time we have heard this refrain all through judges when we were in there this is a time when israel had no king and this is about to change uh that it is time for god to give the people what they want and what they want is a king even though it's not what god wants here it comes yeah here here it comes here he comes We're going to find out who he is and, and this mission that he's on, he's out, he's searching for donkeys when he finds a kingdom, which is kind of strange. But yeah, you know, one of the, one of the fascinating things about this is I don't, I was just trying to look here and I'm pretty sure that, in fact, I'm 99% sure that the word king or the verb for to be a king is not found in chapter nine of first Samuel, which is kind of strange, you know, because there's all this talk of king.

In the previous chapter, we do have other words associated with it, like prince. We'll come to that in a minute. But we're leading up to the language of king, which is applied, of course, to Saul and to his successors. But yeah, we had the stage set for us. First, before we can anoint this guy king, we have to meet him. We have to know a little bit about him. Yeah, we got to have a background a little bit. yeah and uh i'll just tell you up front guys not to not to spoil everything but these guys are

gonna like choose a guy that is exactly sort of guy that you would think someone would choose that's how you end up with president the rock that's how this happens like and this is how like what is his what is he good is he is he good at politics is he i don't know he's the rock though he's a rock he's huge he's good looking that's our guy just look at the guy i mean he's got leader written all over him right that's the king this is the guy king king rock and especially if you look if you're after what they're after which is like we need like a warrior king he's gonna take us out in the battle i mean saul is like gonna check the boxes on that yeah i mean they're not they're not looking for a diplomat right they're not looking for somebody who's good with

diplomacy you know who maybe has a degree knows a little bit about the law they're just looking for someone who knows what to do when a sword's in their hand okay so uh let's uh let's jump in here. We first find out a little bit about his family tree. That's the way this chapter opens, 1 Samuel 9. There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bakor, the son of Aphia, the son of a Benjamite, a mighty man of valor. That could also be translated a mighty man of wealth or a mighty man of influence uh there's a couple different ways that that particular hebrew word could be translated so we we first of all we got to deal with the fact that he is from this tribe the tribe of benjamin now i know that you've slept

probably multiple times unless you've been listening to 40 minutes like non-stop for the last couple of days, but you probably have slept several times since you heard about what happened to the tribe of Benjamin at the end of the book of Judges. You may remember when we were in those really, really dark chapters toward the end that a particular tribe, I wouldn't say rose to prominence, more like lowered itself to prominence. And that was the tribe of Benjamin because the horrible situation that happened in Gibeah with the gang rape and the murder and just that whole horrific mess, well, that happened in a town that belonged to the tribe of Benjamin, the same tribe that Saul is from. Now, not only that, Dan, but come to find out, we have to fast forward a little

bit to get to this, to the next chapter, but it turns out, guess where Saul's from? Saul isn't only from the tribe of Benjamin, but he happens to be from the exact same town where all of this happened at the end of Judges. So if you know that, going in, you might be thinking, hmm, I don't know. It seemed like a kind of a strange place to choose a king from. So your doubts may be rising as to his fitness, just simply based upon the tribe that he's from and the town that he's wrong but you know you do need to withhold your judgment just because a guy comes from a bad place at least a place that has bad connotations doesn't mean that you know he's gonna end up being a a bad guy you mean like nazareth yeah that's exactly what i was thinking yeah can anything

good come out of nazareth can anything good come out of gibia well you know we'll see we'll see we're gonna give we're gonna give saul a uh the uh how do i put it we're gonna put the best construction on Saul. We're going to see how he does. Now I will say this as kind of a, if we want to go back a little bit with regard to the tribe of Benjamin. And I think that we should, because this actually becomes significant. So let's think about Benjamin just for a minute. Benjamin, of course, was one of the sons of Jacob. So you got to go all the way back to the book of Genesis for this. And if you remember, Jacob had two wives, two co-wives, and he had sons with every single one of these. And Benjamin was, along with Joseph, these were the two sons that Jacob had with his

beloved wife, Rachel, right? So we had Jacob and Rachel. She was the chosen one. She was the loved one. And she had two sons. She had Joseph first, and then she had Benjamin. If you remember the story of that, that's in Genesis chapter 35. She died while giving birth to Benjamin. So because of that, he was the youngest of Jacob's sons. Now, this is significant because if you go back to Genesis 35, I'm turning there now, so this is the context for this. This is actually one of these connections that you have to draw between the various books of Scripture. You call this intertextuality. This is the way the Bible interprets itself. These are the connections that you see from text to text. So this is Genesis 35, way back before everything we're

covering now. But God appears to Jacob at Paddan Aram, and he blesses him. He says, your name shall no longer be Jacob, Israel shall be your name. And then he goes on to say, be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and listen to this, and kings shall come forth from you all right so that's genesis 35 verse 11 now you skip down just a few more verses and lo and behold guess what happens benjamin is born so rachel goes into labor and it's severe labor she dies as the child is born she names him ben oni but jacob changes his name to Benjamin. So, just about five or six verses after God tells Jacob, kings shall come forth from you, Benjamin is born. Now, I think that is not just a coincidence. I think that is

the background for why the very first king of Israel is from the tribe of Benjamin. So, that's the genesis first samuel connection here there's kind of a there's a there's a twist that happens here so genesis 35 which we just read talks about kings coming forth benjamin is born so it kind of makes sense oh yeah so the king is going to be from benjamin but what what happens as the story of genesis unfolds is that judah the other brother judah basically pledges his life in exchange for Benjamin. He puts himself forward as the one who will basically take the fall if anything happens to Benjamin. So Judah changes kind of his behavior. Early in the story of Genesis, he's not that great of a guy. He's the one who has the idea to sell Joseph into slavery, for instance. But as the

story goes on in Genesis, he emerges as someone who's actually acting in a selfless sort of way. He's putting himself forward as the one who will take the place of Benjamin. He will stand in the of him. He will take the punishment if that's what must be done. So Judah then, after the birth of Benjamin, Judah emerges as the leader. So first Benjamin is the focus, and then Judah becomes the focus. Then you get to Genesis 49, and which of the tribes does Jacob pinpoint as the one who will hold the ruling scepter, the king's scepter? It's not Benjamin, but it's Judah. Now, amazingly, this becomes the exact same pattern that we see replicated in first samuel so first who's the king well he's the guy from the tribe of benjamin but then who replaces him the man from the tribe

of judah david replaces him so you have this same kind of initial expectation replaced by a change later on in focus so what happened in genesis is going to happen here in first samuel as well it's almost as if almost as if all of this is divinely orchestrated yeah almost yeah almost almost just like like that all right well that's a lot to say about just benjamin but i think it's important it's important background for the way this story unfolds so he he comes from this particular family pedigree and uh we hear his name now in verse two this guy kish kish in hebrew had a son whose name was saul shaul in hebrew we talked about him when sammy was born. So Shaul, the name Saul or Shaul in Hebrew comes from the verb to ask. So the people

asked for a king, right? They Sha'ald for a king. So they're going to get Sha'ul. They're going to get the one that was asked for. So he's basically the response to their demand for a king. And he's described as a handsome, handsome young man. In the Hebrew, that's just good, tov. But tov can have these connotations of someone being attractive so like we say someone is good looking right tobe looking handsome he's handsome guy not only handsome uh but he was like more handsome than anybody else and get this from his shoulders and up he was taller than any of the people i don't know if that's something dan you can identify with tall and handsome absolutely i thought this text might resonate with you yeah i mean for those of you who've never seen dan dan

stands like head and shoulders higher than anybody around yeah at least the tall part i can i can totally uh i can totally relate to that go for the handsome too tall and handsome yeah so but what's interesting here uh is that there's there's a there's a little bit of a subtlety with the word taller though so the word tall is gavuak and it does mean high or tall but it also has in some context the connotation of being haughty being kind of kind of prideful uh so i i suspect there's already kind of a little hint here you know as to well is he simply taller or is he also you know a little bit a little bit haughty too now so he's tall and handsome and knows it that's it that's precisely it now what's amazing to me anyway is as the story unfolds is when you

first encounter saul he kind of strikes you as just sort of a simple guy like you know he doesn't appear haughty at all i mean quite the opposite he seems like he's just you know he's he's a humble humble guy who's out looking for lost donkeys that's it you know he's not looking for anything else but we'll see you know i i've mentioned this before we've talked about this before that anytime and i and i will say that anytime that a physical description is given of a biblical character it's going to be significant in some way not might be a minor way it might be a major way but the bible is extremely reticent about giving us any description of even the main characters i mean we don't know was moses short tall i mean what we don't have any kind of description i can't

wait to see what all these guys look like because you know that some of these guys weird you've got to be like you know like what are you gonna do when you roll up be like what kind of a guy was moses and it's like this dude's like danny devito and you're like what like no one no wonder pharaoh wasn't listening to this guy right who would listen to him i thought brad pitt was walking in there telling you to let his people go it's this like what yeah it'd be like no charlton heston it's a danny devito instead yeah there's no there's no way that you know if you look at all the people that have played biblical characters like i don't think moses probably looked like charlton heston i don't think noah looked like

russell crowe moses didn't look like christian bale you know right right don't think i don't think that's probably the case but saul might have looked like the rock saul might have looked like the rock he was a big dude handsome tall so uh here's how we first meet him and i've mentioned this a couple times now. Saul's father has some donkeys, and for some reason, these donkeys got lost. Now, what do we know about donkeys? We have discussed this before, too, back in the book of Judges. Usually, when we have donkeys mentioned, it's in connection with somebody who has some power, who has some authority, who has some influence. And, you know, we're told at the beginning that uh saul's father kish or kish is a guy who has some influence he's a man of wealth

a man of influence that's kind of important to you because i think in our in modern context if you're like and there was this guy whose father had lost his donkeys and sent his son looking for his donkeys this is not something that you associate in modern times with like this guy must be like this must be a powerful guy yeah that's not what you think at all i mean you will be like donk so this guy like owns donkeys like it's it doesn't come it doesn't come across the same way uh yeah so it's good to insert it like when someone when someone's got a bunch of donkeys that means they got a bunch of money that would seem like okay so this guy's just like a simple farmer somewhere or something no that's not what this means yeah yeah be like he lost a bunch of

bentleys right yes i had all these cars and i don't know where they went so you got to go find him so he's out looking for uh like looking for those donkeys and he takes a servant along with him his dad sends him out on this uh this donkey hunt and he goes quite a ways he goes through the hill country of ephraim he goes to the land of shalasha doesn't find him there he goes through there then through the next area anyway he he's not finding these donkeys anywhere i don't know if they like tracking them or how they're doing this maybe there's asking people but these donkeys donkeys are nowhere to be found. Well, they finally come to this place called the land of Zuth. And Saul says to the servant buddy who's with him, yeah, we got to go back. Look, we've

been gone long enough to where my dad is not going to be concerned about the donkeys anymore. He's going to be concerned about us. You know, we've been gone too long. So I guess we just have to give up on the donkeys and go home. But thankfully, the servant who's with him has a better idea. He says, look, Saul, there's a man of God in this city, and this man is held in honor, and everything that he says comes true. So let's go there, and maybe he can tell us about the journey that we're on, and he can tell us basically where the donkeys are. So thank God this service was with Saul, right?

I mean, he was about to head home. He was about to give up on the chase. But for some reason, Saul does not know about this man of God, by the way, is Samuel. For some reason, even though Samuel's fame spread all over the country, everybody knew he was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord. Somehow Saul doesn't know this. This is another evidence that he's kind of he's a little naive, like he just doesn't he doesn't kind of put things together. He's just looking for the donkeys, man. That's all he's all he's interested in.

He seems like to like to make the servants like, look, I know it's all chill if you go home without these donkeys. Because you are this guy's son, after all. I'd really prefer to go back with the donkey. Yeah. Sermon's probably like, he's got a little selfish interest going on here. Yeah. You're not going to get disowned over this donkey business. I'd prefer not to get fired.

Right. Yeah. Well, the next verse, I find humorous. Because Saul says, yeah, but if we go, how are we going to pay this guy? He says, if we go, what shall we bring the man? We don't have any bread in our sacks. I guess they didn't bring enough food along with them. There's no, we don't have any bread.

We don't have any present to give this guy. So what are we going to do? Now, keep in mind, Saul comes from a wealthy family. I don't know if he just like, you know, forgot to bring his wallet with him, but he has no money, but his servant says, I got you covered. Look, I've got a fourth of a shuckle of silver here in my pocket. so we'll give that money to this man of god as a honorarium right i guess that was just the custom you go you go see the man of god man of god by the way is basically synonymous with with a prophet

that's used multiple times in the old testament yeah so an ish elohim man of god is basically not what we you know today we might call a really pious guy like oh he's a real man of god it's not what it means in the old testament man of god means prophet so god's own man the one he speaks through so the servant you know he saves today once more he first of all says let's go see the prophet saul's broke he says i got you covered i got this fourth of a shekel of silver it'll take care of us and then we have this parentheses in verse nine which helps us to understand a change in terminology it says that in times past in israel when someone went to inquire of god they would say hey let's go and talk to the seer the row at the one and it it's

really formed from the verb to see so just like seer see seer so the one who is the seer is the one who sees the will of god or perhaps even sees the word of the lord who tells him what response to give so in times past it was called a seer but now he's called a prophet a nabi so a change of terminology. So that's kind of just parentheses added there. I mean, it actually is in parentheses in your English Bibles to clarify what was going on here. So they go see the seer, see the prophet, see the man of God. Saul said to his servant, all right, good idea. Let's go. So they go into the city where the man of God was. Now they're going up to the city. They're going up the slope of the city and they meet these young women who are coming out to the well, the city's well to draw

of water. And they figure, hey, let's ask the girls. Surely they know. They say, is the seer here? Is he in town? And these girls say, yes, he is. In fact, he's ahead of you. If you hurry up, he's come to the city today because the people have a sacrifice on the high place that's going on. And he needs to be there for that. Now, just pause there for a second. This is kind of strange Because when you hear the word high place in the Old Testament, I mean, if you're fairly knowledgeable about the Old Testament, you have a very negative connotation attached to that particular phraseology. A high place, Bama in Hebrew, is a place that is associated throughout the book of Kings, 1 and 2 Kings, with idolatry. If you were to do that, I might be wrong about this. I think I'm right about this.

i'm guessing if you looked up if you did a search uh on high place or high places in your in the old testament a very large percentages of those passages would be talking about those places being torn down yeah that's precisely right in fact we've already encountered that right when the israelites enter the the land of canaan they're told demolish the altars tear down the high places you know, burn the, the, uh, the Asherah poles, all this kind of stuff. These were to be destroyed. So Obama, we really, honestly, uh, we, we don't, this is actually one of my, uh, I think I wrote about this in one of my devotions for unveiling mercy. We don't know exactly what that, how that should best be translated because here's the problem. Sometimes high places were in low places

that were in a Valley. So when you, when you hear a high place, don't automatically think, oh, it was like the nearest hill or something like that. We really don't know. I mean, it was probably just kind of a technical term for a worship site. I mean, yeah, sometimes it could have been on a literally high place, like a mountain or a hill, but sometimes it wasn't. It just was a place where worship was conducted. And here, I'm assuming that this worship is legitimate. I mean, Samuel's there. He's a prophet of Yahweh, so there's no idolatry associated with this one it just it's it's a strange word for us to hear in a positive sort of way that's my that's my point so they go they go up to the high the girls say he's going to be you know at the high

place so when you uh when you enter the city they say you'll find him before he goes up to the high place to eat evidently that the people won't eat until he comes you know i've encountered this before back when i served as a pastor and there's a potluck nobody eats until the pastor shows up Yeah, because you've got to pray over the food. Dude. There's no eating until pastor prays. Let me tell you something, people. If you know a pastor or just someone who's supposed to know things about God well,

don't always ask them to pray. I have been asked to pray so many times in my life. And that's not that I mind praying, but I just feel like other people should have an opportunity. I don't have access to God that you guys don't have. I don't know what it is, Chad. I mean, this is a total disaster. Food tastes better when the pastor prays for you.

Well, here's the thing. It's a real reason. There's two reasons to ask someone to pray that I can think of. I don't really like either of them. So one is that you think, well, this person's prayer is going to get heard more than some other prayer, which of course is wrong. The second is this person is obviously going to be offended if we don't ask him to say the prayer. Also wrong. This is also wrong.

And if that's true, like, then he really needs to be, you really shouldn't ask him. I could not agree more. That's precisely right. I mean, Chad, do you still get asked to pray all the time? Yes, quite frequently. I do. I do. Yeah.

Anyway, total aside, just a thing. Total aside, yeah. But I just, yeah, it is worth pointing out that this is a very old tradition. Because evidently back in Samuel's day, it was the same thing. people would not eat until he came because he had to bless the sacrifice and then everybody would eat so this this is the girls telling uh saul and his traveling companion how things worked in their city so they they go on up they go to the city uh they come to the city and lo and behold now for the first time in this chapter we actually encounter the name of this man of god this seer

this prophet. Of course, it's our friend Samuel, but his name does not occur in this chapter until verse 14. So they come out, they're coming into the city, and look, behold, Samuel was coming out toward them to go up to the high place. And now we have a transition. This is not in parentheses, but it's almost like a parentheses. It says, a day before Saul arrives, so he's here, we'll say, on a whatever, a Friday. It's on Thursday. The Lord had revealed something to Samuel. The Lord had told him about this time tomorrow, I'm going to send you this guy. He's from the land of Benjamin. And I want you to anoint him to mashach. That's where we get our word mashach, which comes in English as Messiah. So you are to Messiah him, anoint him to be prince over my people Israel,

and he shall deliver my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have regarded my people because their cry has come to me. Now, this is one of these situations where you would expect God to tell Samuel, you shall anoint him to be king over my people Israel. But it's not. The word for king is melech. The word that's translated here is prince is nagid. It's used in a lot of different contexts. And it's not really, I don't want you to get the idea that it's like somehow lower than a king, because it turns out David himself is referred to as a nagid multiple times, even though David was clearly a king. So one commentator that I'm reading as we go along with this suggested that this would be translated, it sounds kind of funny when you say it, but he

suggested this be translated something like highness, which just sounds extremely British to me. So he said it'd be something like that. It's a term of respect that designates a leader. So prince, you know, we have certain connotations connected with the word prince, and we usually think of a prince as someone who's below a king. Not so. This should be, not this particular prince, not this Naguid. So he's going to be basically, maybe we should just try and say it is leader. That's probably the best way to do this. He shall be leader over my people Israel. And God clarifies what he is to do as the leader. He's going to deliver my people from the hand of the Philistines, because God has regarded his people and heard their cry. So God is, as we

talked about in the last episode, God is accommodating the request of his people for a king, just like he accommodates other things. He accommodates the temple. When David wants to build a temple and Solomon ends up doing it, there is, when you read through the scriptures, there is this sense of God basically, in many situations, kind of going along with his people, right? Yeah, they they make some stupid decisions they make some uh some bad innovations and god seems to just be able to adapt to use that for i mean sometimes for some extremely impressive uh goals of his like the whole temple for instance yeah it kind of seems to me chad that on one hand saul seems like an obvious choice right because i think he's you know big tall handsome dude that uh is a good

warrior all the things like a bunch of things that you know that the people are like yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure love it um but uh what is also true is that like i mean god is the one that ultimately picks him now he picks someone that the people will be in it if he had picked david at this point i for sure people would have been like no what no way no way it happened put that kid back out there with the sheep yeah we don't need him that is not the guy so i think there's a couple of things going on here one is that god is is choosing somebody that he knows the people that he's choosing the type of person that the people are desiring and two it seems that this sort of doing this bent like this judo you know stand coming in for benjamin uh move that

was already done i mean it seems like this is not just like oh this is like kind of cool they did this but this was like very intentional i mean so intentionally he's like i'm gonna choose a benjamite and i'm gonna like replace him with a guy from judah like that's what i'm gonna do yeah yeah absolutely yeah that i mean that does seem to be i mean it's just like it's too easy almost like like saul is like too easy a choice right it's like yeah it's just not the way that god usually works you know god is typically picking someone that you wouldn't expect him to pick but you see you see saul and you're like oh yeah that guy's like an obvious choice yeah yeah so yeah i mean part of it yes this this sort of reversal thing that god did before you're gonna

do again but it seems that part of this too is god saying you know before i go get my guy You're not going to accept this guy You're not going to accept my guy So what I'm going to have to do Is choose the guy That you're going to have A unanimous applause for Then I'm going to replace that guy

Yeah, right You know This crossed my mind It's kind of the opposite when you get to the New Testament Because Saul Slash Paul He becomes the preeminent Really, I mean, he becomes the preeminent apostle.

It's pretty hard to argue otherwise afterward, right? So you have the regular apostles, the Davids, if you will, and then you have Saul after that, who rises to power. And I know this is a debate. This is a controversial thing. I've argued this with many people, but Paul was God's guy, so much so that I think even when they were like, we got to replace Judas, God was like, I didn't tell you to do that.

Just wait a little bit. I've got somebody in mind already. You've got someone in mind. Trust me, he's not on your ballot. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm going to pick somebody that you would never, ever have suspected. He's studying the feet of Gamaliel right now, in fact. Yes, yes.

So I am of the opinion that the apostles jumped the gun on that, replacing the disciples. I mean, after all, Jesus did tell them. i know this is total aside but we're talking about kings and replacing stuff go jerusalem don't do anything until the spirit comes and they're like by anything do you mean add an apostle like i don't know about you chad that seems like a thing uh seems like a pretty pretty major decision to me seems like something you might want to wait for the holy spirit to be involved in right nah just draw lots that's all you need let's roll some dice like what we do

we're kind of bored we can't do anything until the holy spirit arrives so what do you say we like roll dice and choose an apostle seems like a good choice it's a very it's a very disciple move yeah so i'm sure if somebody wants to hear more of your arguments there they can just go to you guys covered acts right yeah oh yeah it's in there yeah you can hear my my full-blown argument for this all right cool cool all right so what happens here so uh saul i mean samuel's excuse me. Samuel saw Saul and the Lord said to him, that's your guy. That's the man of whom I spoke to you. This one shall, and we have a little translation issue. My translation has this one shall rule over my people. And ESV has, this is the one who will restrain my people. It's very

different, you know. So I looked it up. The verb is atzar. If it does mean rule, this is the only place in the Old Testament where it would have that meaning. Most of the time it means, like the ESV has it, restrain, hold back, rein in, you might say. So it's a very different kind of connotation. So this is the guy. He's going to be the nagid. He's going to be the leader of the prince. And he's the one who's going to kind of hold back, restrain, reign in my people. Now, yeah, that could be one of the duties of a ruler, but it is an interesting choice of interesting choice of words. So Saul approaches Samuel and Saul is still clueless. He's like, hey, could you tell me where the seer's house is? And Samuel says, you're looking at the seer. I am the seer.

I'm the guy you're seeing the seer right now you're seeing the seer right now he says go up to the high place and I want you I want you to eat with me today almost sounds like Jesus and uh and Zacchaeus right I'm gonna I'm gonna have a meal at your house today so you're gonna eat with me today and in the morning this is this is some strange language I'm gonna tell you everything that's on your mind by this point Saul is probably thinking whoa that's what what is going on yeah also just in case also so i was like wait a minute i obviously don't know who the seer is so anybody could say that they were the seer and i wouldn't know now you're telling me that i had to come spend the night at your house but then sam was gonna drop some knowledge on him right

here he's like okay yeah you're definitely the seer yeah yeah he's like oh by the way you know those donkeys that you've been looking for for days uh they're they're fine yeah that's that's what you know they've already been found and that's when you know you're dealing with the seer like they no mention of donkeys before this yeah i didn't say anything about donkeys how'd you know that and then he has this this is the way he closes it out as and for whom is all that is desirable in israel is it not for you and for all your father's household that that's some kind of odd language there so you know what is it what's he talking about well saul evidently understands the implications of that like he's the one whom israel is going to desire to be a

ruler because here's how Saul responds to this. It's very Gideon-like. He says, me? Listen, I'm a Benjamite. I'm like from the smallest of the tribes of Israel and my family's the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin. So why are you talking to me like this? Why are you speaking to me in this way? So he doesn't answer him right away. He doesn't like give him a response that's going to actually answer that kind of question. But he goes on to say this. the story goes on to say this so samuel takes saul and his servant he brings him into this hall he puts him at the head of the table there's 30 other guys there it's a big feast so saul keeps moving up right he goes into the city now he goes up and now he's up to the head of the table

pretty soon he's gonna be on a roof samuel tells the cook hey you know what that that special portion that leg portion with all the meat on it that i told you to set aside bring it so the cook brings it out. He puts this big leg of meat on the table in front of Saul. Samuel says, I saved this for you and I've kept it for the appointed time. So he eats this delicious cut of meat. And then that night he brings him back to his place and he has him stay on the roof of his house. So we have to stop there because we're up to 40 minutes, but this is all setting up for what's going to happen next. It's kind of a strange chapter break here, but we're going to find out next time what Saul is going to do to what Samuel is going to do to let Saul know that

he is actually the one that the Lord has chosen. But this is a great sermon. This is one of those where you're like, as one commentator put it, it's like a guy who's like looking for a penny and finds buried treasure. He's on a donkey hunt and he finds a kingdom instead. So pretty fascinating chapter pretty fascinating just kind of a literary lead-in to let us know about yeah what kind of guy saul is and how samuel is going to bring him into this new vocation of uh being the ruler of israel yeah well right on yeah it's a fascinating story and uh this episode uh will be forever known as the rock on a donkey hunt which is i think it's probably one of the best titles that we've done so that's perfect that's good yeah join us next week as we find out uh how this

anointing king action goes down also you gotta pre-order that unveiling mercy that 365 day devotional uh through the hebrew language you gotta you gotta get that pre-order it it is available now link i will put in the show notes or you can just go to amazon and uh type in your search bar and you will be able to pre-order it chad i'll see you next week all right see you then We'll be right back.