![]() ![]() So the result of the thunder-burst was twofold-they ‘feared Jehovah and Samuel,’ and they confessed their sin in desiring a king. Again, God sent the tempest therefore God ruled the elemental powers, and wielded them so as to affect Israel, and therefore it had been folly and sin to wish for another defender. Samuel announced the storm, he asked God to send it, it came at his word therefore he was approved of God and was His messenger therefore his words about the desire for a king were God’s words. It seems a long leap logically from hearing the thunder and seeing the rain rushing down on the harvest field, to recognising the sin of asking for a king. It is when we ask ‘anything according to His will’ that we know that ‘He heareth us,’ and are entitled to predict to others the sure answer. We know little of the mental processes by which a prophet could discriminate between his own thinkings and God’s speech, but such discrimination was possible, or there could have been no ring of confidence in the prophet’s ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ Not even a ‘Samuel among them that call upon His name’ had a right to assume that every asking would certainly have an answer. Why was he thus certain? Because he recognised that the impulse to proffer the sign came from God. We note that he volunteered the sign, and, what is still more remarkable, that he is sure that God will send it in answer to his prayer. ![]() Samuel was speaking during the wheat harvest, which falls about the beginning of June. Usually there is no rain in Palestine from about the end of April till October. The first point is the sign which Samuel gave. This chapter deals with both the cessation and the continuance, giving at first his dignified, and somewhat pained, vindication of his integrity, and then passing on to show him exercising his prophetic function in exhortation, miracle, and authoritative declaration of Jehovah’s will. Samuel’s office as judge necessarily ended when Saul was made king, but his office of prophet continued.
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