Eli, who trembled for the Ark of G.o.d, sat outside the city gate, by the wayside watching. He was nearly a hundred years old, and his eyes were dim, but when a messenger came with the bad news, he fell backward in his seat and died. His heart was broken.
Where was Samuel? Perhaps he was praying in the temple for the return of the Ark of the Covenant.
Wherever the Ark went among the Philistines, there went also trouble and death. When they put it in the temple of their fish-G.o.d Dagon, the great idol fell down before it and was broken. And when it was taken to another city, the people were smitten with sickness, until at last the Philistines said:
"Send away the Ark of the G.o.d of Israel, and let it go to its own place."
After seven months they sent it with gifts of gold to the Israelites.
They placed it on a new cart drawn by two cows, and the cows, guided by the Lord alone, took a straight way into the land of Israel. How glad the people were when they looked up from their reaping in the fields, and saw the Ark coming safely back to them. The Philistines watched it from afar to see if it would be guided of G.o.d to its own place or not and then they returned to their city.
Samuel gathered the people to the Lord after this, and though they had sinned greatly, and had gone after the G.o.ds of the heathen around them, they repented and returned to the faith of their fathers, and were faithful all the days of Samuel. He went from year to year on a journey to three cities of Israel, and judged the people in those places, but his home was in Ramah, the city where he was born, and where Hannah had brought him up for the Lord.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MAKING OF A KING.
When Samuel was old he made his sons judges in his place, but they were not holy men like their father.
They loved money, and would judge unjustly, if money were given to them as a bribe. So the people came to Samuel at Ramah and said,
"Give us a king to judge us."
And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord told him to do as the people had asked him to do, for they had not rejected him as judge, but the Lord as their King, and now they must learn what kind of a king would reign over them. So Samuel told them what they must be ready to do for their King, for a king was often a hard master, and ruled his people cruelly, taking the best of their fields, and their harvests, and their flocks for themselves, and the finest of their sons and daughters to be his servants; but they said,
"We will have a king over us, that we may be like other nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles."
When Samuel told these things to the Lord he said, "Make them a king,"
and Samuel sent the people to their own cities.
Samuel did not choose a king for the people himself, but he waited for the Lord to send him the man He had chosen, and the Lord said to him as he went to a city called Zeph, to hold a sacrifice,
"To-morrow about this time I will send thee a man from the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel."
On the next day as Samuel came out to go up to the hill of sacrifice he met a tall, n.o.ble looking young man, who, with his servant, was looking for the lost a.s.ses of his father, Kish, the Benjaminite. He had come far, and had heard that Samuel, the seer was in that place, and he hoped he would tell him where to go for the a.s.ses that were lost.
Samuel knew from the Lord that this was the man G.o.d had chosen, so he told him to go up with him to the sacrifice, and the next day he would let him go.
He told him that he need not be troubled about the a.s.ses, for they were found, but the desire of Israel was set upon him. Saul, for that was his name, did not understand him until he was invited to feast with thirty of the chief men, and Samuel had talked with him upon the house-top. Early the next morning they both rose and went out of the city, and while Saul sent his servant on before, Samuel anointed Saul with oil, and kissed him saying, that the Lord had anointed him to be Captain over his inheritance.
As a sign that the Lord had done it, he told Saul three things that would happen to him on the way home, and charged him to go to Gilgal, where he would meet him and sacrifice to the Lord for seven days. As Saul turned to leave the prophet, G.o.d gave him another heart, and all the signs came to pa.s.s that day.
At Mizpah Samuel called all the tribes together, that the man who was to be their king, might be chosen in their sight, and when Saul, the son of Kish, the Benjaminite was chosen he could not be found; he had hidden from the people; but when they brought him out before them, he was taller than any of the people from his shoulders up, and looked a king indeed. For the first time in all their history they cried,
"G.o.d save the King!"
Then Saul went home, and there went with him a body of men whose hearts G.o.d had touched, while Samuel wrote in a book the order of the kingdom and laid it up before the Lord.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SHEPHERD BOY OF BETHLEHEM.
After Saul had been king of Israel for a few years, Samuel was deeply troubled about him, for he had hoped that he would be as truly a king as he looked, but he had a strange and wilful spirit that led him to turn away from the counsel of the Lord and follow his own way.
Samuel had been grieved again and again by Saul"s rashness, until at last he said to him when he had taken the spoil of the enemy to sacrifice to the Lord,
"To obey is better than sacrifice; because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being king," and he went to his house and mourned over Saul, for he had loved him.
At last the Lord told Samuel to cease from mourning for Saul, for He had rejected him, but to fill his horn with oil, and go to Bethlehem where Jesse lived, for He had chosen one of the sons of Jesse to be king in place of Saul.
Samuel went to Bethlehem leading a heifer, as the Lord had told him to do, that he might hold a sacrifice. He told the elders of the city to make ready for the sacrifice, and when he had found the house of Jesse, he called him and his sons. Jesse was the grandson of Ruth and Boaz, and owned the fields, no doubt, where Ruth gleaned. When Samuel saw Eliab, the son of Jesse, he said:
"Surely the Lord"s anointed is before Him," but the Lord said:
"Look not on his countenance or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him, for the Lord seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."
Then Jesse called Abinidab, but Samuel said:
"The Lord hath not chosen this." Then he made Shammah to pa.s.s before him, but Samuel said:
"Neither hath the Lord chosen this."
Jesse made seven of his sons to pa.s.s before Samuel, but Samuel said:
"The Lord hath not chosen these."
"Are here all thy children?" said Samuel.
"There remaineth yet the youngest, and he keepeth the sheep," Jesse replied. Then Samuel said:
"Send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till he come hither."
So Jesse sent out into the sheepfolds on the hillsides outside the city to bring the lad David in. What did the boy think when he found his father and his brothers waiting, with the old prophet in the midst?
What did it mean that the eye of the seer was set upon him, as were the eyes of all in the house?
[Ill.u.s.tration: The young shepherd boy]
Samuel saw a n.o.ble youth, "ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to." He had been told that he must not look on the outward appearance "for the Lord seeth not as man seeth," and so he waited a little until the Lord said:
"Arise, anoint him, for this is he." Then he took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren, and the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward, and Samuel went back to his house in Ramah.
It may be that his father and his brothers did not understand that the boy had been called to be king over Israel, but a new spirit of wisdom, and love, and strength came upon David, and though he went back to his father"s flocks with no thought of being greater than his brothers, he went with a new song in his heart which he sang to the little harp he had made while watching the sheep. Long after when he was King of Israel, he made in memory of these days the beautiful Psalm to be sung in the temple beginning,