1 & 2 Samuel

Introduction:
As a daddy loves his son and wants the best for him, so did God love Israel and wanted the best for this chosen nation. Yet despite this love, despite God’s show of affection through all the miraculous signs we read of in the first five books, Israel wanted to be like their neighbors. Thus setting God aside as their King and asking for an earthly king was the transition from Judges to Kings in the book of 1 Samuel. Samuel emerges as the last judge.
At the request of the people, God adopts and adapts to the kingship, and he has Samuel anoint the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David. Saul has it all together physically: he’s tall, strong, well liked and he loves to work. He has a long reign of forty years, but in the end it turns out that his heart is not wholly devoted to God, which was really necessary for Israel that a king of Israel should point people towards, not away from God. The Lord rejects Saul and his lineage in favor of a little known shepherd boy who becomes the greatest King that Israel would ever have.
2 Samuel is the record of King David’s reign and the relationship of Israel to her sovereign God. It stresses the spiritual relationship of “a man after God’s own heart” with its ensuing blessings and resulting failures and punishment when the king turns away from God. It begins with David at the peak of his career and focuses on the events in David’s forty year reign as the king who united Judah and Israel and closes with the last days of David.
The author is of 1 Samuel is anonymous but it is possible Samuel wrote part of this book with other possible contributors being the prophets/historians Nathan and Gad who are also the possible writers of 2 Samuel as Samuel himself died in 1 Samuel.

Outline of 1 Samuel:
1. Decline of Judges (chapters 1 – 7)
2. Rise of Kings (chapters 8–31)

Outline of 2 Samuel:
1. David’s Triumphs (chapters 1 – 10)
2. David’s Transgression (chapter 11)
3. David’s Troubles (chapters 12 – 24)

Key Verses in 1 Samuel:
1 Samuel 8:6-7 “But when they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king’”.

1 Samuel 13:13-14 “’You acted foolishly,’ Samuel said. ‘You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command’”.

1 Samuel 15:22-23 “But Samuel replied: ‘Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king’”.

Key Verses in 2 Samuel:
2 Samuel 7:16 “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever”.
2 Samuel 19:4 “But the king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!” .
2 Samuel 22:2-4 “The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—from violent men you save me. I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies”.

Key Themes of Samuel:
Sovereign Control of God
The main theme of the books is the covenant with David. God is faithful to His promises and will help His people to accomplish His eternal purposes. God is sovereign in the affairs of His nation. Everything moves toward and is centered on the Davidic covenant. Human sin and bad judgment jeopardized the Davidic covenant, but God overrules it to accomplish His purposes.
The theme is developed around three characters Samuel, Saul and David. Samuel is the last of the judges of Israel (7:6, 15-17). Saul was the first king and the people’s choice; David is God’s choice. His reign as king is described in Second Samuel. How ironic that His people wanted a king, but not the King!
Obedience
The principle of how obedience brings blessings and disobedience brings judgment is illustrated in the life of David in 2 Samuel. Still, God will pursue His eternal purposes so he frequently overlooks man’s disobedience. For example, even though David commits adultery and murder to get Bathsheba, she is still selected as the wife who gives birth to Solomon, God’s chosen successor to David’s throne. The intrigue and murder in David’s family is overruled so that God’s chosen reigns on the throne after David’s death.

Value of reading the books of Samuel today:
When we look at the tragic story of Saul, we discover that good intentions, even done in the name of God, do not compensate for bad behavior. Here was a man who had it all—honor, authority, riches, good looks, and more. Yet he died in despair, terrified of his enemies and knowing he had failed his nation, his family, and his God. Saul made the mistake of thinking he could please God doing things in a way that God had not prescribed, which really translated to disobedience. Saul’s problem is one we all face—a problem of the heart. Jeremiah writes that the heart is deceptive beyond cure, who can understand its ways? Only repentance—turning back to God every time we sin—will align us to God’s purposes. That was the difference between Saul and David. Saul made mistakes, but did not know how to turn back to the right path. David was wiser. Are we any wiser today? May we learn from these two ancient kings.
God sees the heart and saw in David a man after His own heart (13:14). The humility and integrity of David, coupled with his bold faith in the Lord, sustained by his commitment to prayer sets a good example for all of us. David believed he could achieve anything in the name of the Lord, the Lord rewarded him. But also, anyone can fall. Even a man like David, who truly desired to follow God and who was richly blessed by God, failed to have restraint. David’s sin with Bathsheba should be a warning to all of us to guard our hearts, our eyes and our minds. Yet the final card that God is always holding out to us, is the card of grace, forgiveness. Do we have the humility to reach out and take that card every time we need it?