24 Saul Rejected as King

While First Samuel chapter 15 is one of the saddest chapters in the book, it is also the defining moment in it as well. It’s the moment, when the Lord makes it clear that He was rejecting Saul as the leader of His people.

While the chapter shows the moment when God ultimately rejected Saul as Israel’s leader, things had been building to that point for quite a while.

Yet, we must remember, that it had never been the Lord’s desire to that Israel have a flesh and blood as did the other nations. It was always His desire, that He be the ruler of His people. However, as we saw earlier in the book, they rejected Him as King. Therefore, when the Lord gave them Saul as king, God didn’t give them the best possible monarch, but a very flawed individual, to show them just how foolish their desire had been.

1 Vengeance on the Amalekites

When the Israelites left Egypt, and wandered in the desert for forty years, they were confronted by many hostilities. However, no one treated them any more wickedly than the Amalekites. The irony is that the Amalekites were descended from Esau, Jacob’s twin brother.

During Israel’s wilderness wanderings, the Amalekites ambushed them, but did so by attacking the more vulnerable rear flank of the ill-prepared and basically unarmed people.

Moses prayed and the Lord answered, giving Israel a miraculous victory over the Amalekite army.

Despite the victory, the Lord swore that there would be perpetual war with the Amalekites:

Exodus 17:16

All of that, is one of the reasons why God would have Saul’s army mount an attack against the Amalekite army.

2 Instructions for Saul

Centuries before, the Lord made a covenant promise to His people that He would not only be for them, but would be against those who were against them:

Genesis 12:3

Here in First Samuel, the Lord told this specific time, to not only have Israel exact vengeance upon Amalek, but to test Saul himself:

1 Samuel 15:1-3

For the first time in quite a while, we find the elderly Samuel addressing Saul. This shows that even though Saul had oftentimes attempted to assume the role, Samuel was still the nation’s spiritual leader.

God’s message to Saul was absolutely clear, that he was to completely destroy the Amalekites.

The same Hebrew word for destroy <heherim> was used frequently throughout the chapter, therefore, it was abundantly clear what the Lord’s attentions were. Yet, we’ll see later in the chapter, that Saul would act as if he was unclear about God’s directions. Of course, that would simply be Saul’s defense for his own disobedience.

In verse two of the text, Samuel even provided Saul with the reason why the Lord desired the destruction of the Amalekites.

But we should also remember that God had given the Amalekites 400 years to repent, yet they had not done so.

The Lord had a twofold purpose for this judgment:

• God would be true to His Word to avenge the Amalekites’ treatment of His people.
• This would be a test of whether Saul would change his behavior, and act obediently.

Even though the Lord could have used other means to judge the Amalekites, He chose to use this method, to in essence, render two judgments, one upon the Amalekites, and the other upon Saul.

This incident paints a clear picture of how the Lord doesn’t allow for our interpretation, or preference when it comes to His Word. It’s simply our responsibility to receive and bey His commands.

3 Saul Prepares for Battle

Even though Saul left much to be desired as a king, or even as a leader in general, he was still had several successes of the battlefield. That was shown at the end of the previous chapter, where it spoke of Saul “harassing” his enemies, which showed that Israel frequently went on the offensive against their enemies.

Therefore, Saul eagerly gathered a large army to go against the Amalekites:

1 Samuel 15:4-6

Saul was able to amass an army of two hundred-thousand foot-soldiers. In addition, there were ten thousand from the tribe of Judah.

Bible commentators often present two possible reasons why the men of Judah were counted separately:

• These were men of great courage, and excellent fighters
• It was a special commendation for Judah, because of their service to Saul. It should be noted that the tribe of Judah was located in close proximity to that of Benjamin, from which Saul came.

Once the army was assembled, Saul had a portion wait strategically in a valley near the city of Amalek.

He then advised the Kenites to detach themselves from the Amalekites, so that they wouldn’t become inadvertent casualties of war.

Even though the Kenites were related to the Amalekites, they had showed kindness to the Israelites has they wandered in the wilderness.

A second thing of note was that Moses’ father-in-law Jethro was a Kenite, which is a possible reason why they extended Israel kindness.