Summary: Bible - Book of 1 Samuel

The GIST

1 Samuel, a book of the Bible, tells how Israel became a kingdom. At its start the tribes are led by priests and judges, and the sanctuary at Shiloh is in the hands of a corrupt family. By its end Israel has had its first king, has watched him fail, and is waiting for the second. Three lives carry the story, each overlapping the next: Samuel, the last of the judges and the prophet who anoints kings; Saul, the tall and promising first king who loses his way; and David, the shepherd who will replace him.

In the Hebrew Bible, Samuel is a single book. The split into two comes from the ancient Greek translation that Christian Bibles follow. Jewish tradition holds that Samuel himself wrote it, with additions by the prophets Gad and Nathan. Modern scholars see it as part of a larger history of Israel, running from Joshua to Kings, put together between about 630 and 540 BCE from older independent sources.

What It Says

Hannah's prayer and Samuel's call (chapters 1 to 3). The book begins with a family quarrel. Elkanah has two wives. Peninnah has children, and Hannah, the wife he loves best, has none. At the sanctuary in Shiloh Hannah prays in such distress that the old priest Eli takes her for a drunk. She vows that if God gives her a son, "I will give him unto the LORD all the days of his life". Eli blesses her, and a son, Samuel, is born. When he is weaned she brings him back to the sanctuary: "For this child I prayed; and the LORD hath given me my petition which I asked of him". Her song of thanks celebrates a God who turns things upside down: "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes". It is a preview of the whole book.

Samuel grows up serving in the sanctuary while Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, abuse their office, and a holy man warns that Eli's house will be cut off. In those days, the text says, "the word of the LORD was precious", meaning rare. One night the boy hears a voice calling his name and runs to Eli three times, thinking the priest has called. Eli understands at last and tells him how to answer. The voice comes again, and Samuel says, "Speak; for thy servant heareth." The message confirms the judgment on Eli's family. Samuel grows up recognised by all Israel as a prophet.

The Ark lost and returned (chapters 4 to 7). Israel goes to war with the Philistines and carries the Ark of the Covenant into battle. The Israelites are defeated, the Ark is captured, and Eli's two sons are killed. When the news reaches Eli he falls from his seat, breaks his neck and dies. His daughter-in-law, dying in childbirth, names her son Ichabod: "The glory is departed from Israel".

The Ark proves a dangerous trophy. Set in the temple of the god Dagon, it is found the next morning with the idol fallen on its face before it, and the morning after with the idol's head and hands broken off. Plague follows the Ark from city to city until the Philistines send it home. Years later Samuel gathers Israel at Mizpah, the Philistines attack and are routed, and he sets up a stone called Ebenezer, saying, "Hitherto hath the LORD helped us."

Give us a king (chapters 8 to 12). When Samuel is old and his own sons prove corrupt, the elders come with a demand: "make us a king to judge us like all the nations." Samuel is hurt, and God's reply is striking: "they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them." Samuel warns them what kings do, but the people insist. They want a king to "go out before us, and fight our battles."

The man chosen is Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, "a choice young man", taller by a head than anyone else. He meets Samuel while out searching for his father's lost donkeys, is anointed privately, and is later presented to the nation, which shouts, "God save the king." He proves himself by rescuing the town of Jabesh Gilead from the Ammonite king Nahash, who had threatened to gouge out the right eye of every man in it. Samuel then gives a farewell address, defending his own record and warning the people to stay faithful. He will not stop caring for them: "God forbid that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you".

Saul's failure (chapters 13 to 15). Saul's reign is one long war, and he wins many battles. His undoing is disobedience. Facing the Philistines, he grows impatient and offers the sacrifice himself instead of waiting for Samuel, and is told that his kingdom will not last: "the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart". His son Jonathan, bold where his father is anxious, climbs into a Philistine outpost and starts a panic that wins the day, and then is nearly executed because he unknowingly broke a rash oath of his father's by tasting honey. The soldiers refuse to allow it.

The final break comes over the Amalekites. Ordered to destroy them completely, Saul spares their king, Agag, and the best of the livestock, explaining that the animals are for sacrifice. Samuel's answer is one of the great sentences of the prophets: "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." Then the sentence: "Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king."

David chosen (chapters 16 and 17). Samuel is sent to Bethlehem, to the house of Jesse, to anoint a new king in secret. He is impressed by the eldest son and is corrected: "for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart." Seven sons pass by. The youngest, David, has to be fetched from the sheep. "Arise, anoint him: for this is he." The Spirit of the Lord comes on David from that day. Saul, meanwhile, is tormented by an evil spirit, and David is brought to court to play the harp for him. When he plays, "Saul was refreshed, and was well".

Then comes the valley where the two armies face each other and the Philistine champion Goliath of Gath, "whose height was six cubits and a span", challenges Israel to send a man against him. David, bringing food to his brothers, hears the taunts and volunteers. Saul objects that he is only a youth, and David answers that the Lord who saved him from the lion and the bear will save him from this Philistine. He cannot manage Saul's armour and goes out without it. To the giant he says, "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts". He adds a line that states the point of the story: "the battle is the LORD's". One stone from his sling sinks into Goliath's forehead, and David cuts off the giant's head with his own sword.

Saul's jealousy and David's flight (chapters 18 to 26). Victory makes David a hero and a target. Jonathan loves him "as his own soul". The women sing, "Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands", and "Saul eyed David from that day and forward." Twice Saul hurls a spear at him. He offers his daughter Michal as a wife for a bride price he hopes will get David killed, and David pays it double. When Saul sends men to seize him at home, Michal lowers him from a window and puts an idol in the bed.

Jonathan, the heir who stands to lose most, protects his friend. By the signal of arrows shot in a field he warns David that the king means to kill him, and the two part in tears with a covenant between them: "The LORD be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever."

David becomes an outlaw. He obtains holy bread and Goliath's sword from the priests at Nob, and Saul has those priests slaughtered for it. He pretends to be mad at the court of a Philistine king, hides in the cave of Adullam, and gathers a band of followers in the wilderness. Twice he has Saul at his mercy and refuses to strike. In a cave at En Gedi he only cuts off the corner of Saul's robe, saying, "The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD's anointed". Saul weeps and admits, "Thou art more righteous than I". Later David creeps into Saul's camp at night and takes the spear and water jug from beside the sleeping king's head. "I have played the fool", Saul says.

Between those two episodes Samuel dies, and David is saved from a crime of his own. Insulted by a rich man named Nabal, he sets out to kill the whole household and is met on the road by Nabal's wife, Abigail, with gifts and wise words. He blesses her for keeping him "from coming to shed blood". Nabal soon dies, and David marries her.

The end of Saul (chapters 27 to 31). Worn down, David takes refuge among the Philistines and serves King Achish while secretly raiding Israel's enemies. When the Philistines muster for a decisive battle, their commanders send him away, and he returns to find his town of Ziklag burned by Amalekite raiders and the families carried off. He pursues, recovers everything, and shares the spoil equally with the men who stayed behind.

Saul, facing the Philistine army and unable to get any answer from God, goes in disguise to a medium at Endor and asks her to call up Samuel. The dead prophet's words are bleak: "Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?" Saul and his sons will fall tomorrow. On Mount Gilboa it happens. Jonathan and his brothers are killed, and Saul, wounded by archers, falls on his own sword. The Philistines hang his body on the wall of Beth Shan, and the men of Jabesh Gilead, the town he once rescued, come by night to take it down and bury it.

Why It Matters

1 Samuel is the Bible's reflection on power. It records Israel's change from a loose league of tribes to a monarchy and is honest about the cost. The request for a king is treated as a rejection of God, yet God grants it and works through it. The book's recurring theme, announced in Hannah's song, is reversal: the barren woman bears, the boy hears what the priest cannot, the youngest son is chosen, the giant falls. What counts is the heart and obedience, not stature, armour or ritual.

It also sets the stage for everything that follows. David's anointing leads on to his reign in 2 Samuel and to the promise of an everlasting dynasty. The book is part of what scholars call a theological history of Israel, written to show God's law at work under the guidance of prophets, and Samuel's confrontations with Saul set the pattern for prophets facing kings.

Traditions differ over its origins, with Jewish tradition crediting Samuel, Gad and Nathan, and modern scholarship seeing a combination of texts of various ages.

Who Should Read It

Anyone who loves a great story should read it. It has a call in the night, a giant, a tormented king, a loyal friend and narrow escapes. It is also one of the best books ever written about leadership, about what happens when a gifted person is ruled by fear, and about the patience required to wait for a position instead of seizing it.