People of the Bible

Samuel

Leaders of Israel · Around 1050 BC (traditional) · Appears in 1 Samuel 1 to 25

Samuel is the last of the judges and the first of the great prophets, the man who anointed Israel's first two kings, Saul and David. Given to God by his mother Hannah before his birth, he heard God's voice as a child and served him faithfully all his life, guiding Israel through the change from judges to kings.

And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth.1 Samuel 3:10 (KJV)

Born of prayer, given to God

Samuel's life began in his mother's tears. Hannah was barren and deeply grieved, mocked by her husband's other wife, and year after year she wept before the LORD. At the tabernacle in Shiloh she prayed so fervently, her lips moving without sound, that the priest Eli thought she was drunk, and she poured out her sorrow and vowed that if God gave her a son she would give him back to the LORD all his life. God remembered her, and she bore Samuel, whose name means asked of God.

True to her vow, when the boy was weaned Hannah brought him to Shiloh and left him there to serve the LORD under Eli, and she sang a song of praise exalting the God who lifts up the poor from the dust and sets them among princes. Samuel grew up in the house of God, a small child ministering before the LORD, wearing a little linen ephod his mother made and brought to him year by year. He was, from the very start, a life set apart, an answered prayer given wholly back to the God who answered it.

Speak, for thy servant heareth

In those days the word of the LORD was rare, and there was no widespread vision. One night as the boy Samuel lay near the ark, a voice called his name. Three times he ran to Eli, thinking the old priest had called him, until Eli understood that the LORD was calling the child and told him to answer, Speak, LORD, for thy servant heareth. When the voice came again, Samuel answered so, and God gave him a hard first message, a word of judgment against Eli's house for the sins of his corrupt sons.

From that night the LORD was with Samuel and let none of his words fall to the ground, and all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the LORD. The boy who first learned to listen became the man through whom God would speak to a nation. His whole ministry grew from that childhood posture of readiness, a servant who heard and obeyed before he ever led.

Judge of Israel and reluctant kingmaker

Samuel judged Israel through dangerous years. When the Philistines oppressed the people, he called them to put away their foreign gods and gathered them to repent and pray, and God gave a great deliverance, and Samuel set up a stone he named Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us. He went year by year on a circuit through the land, judging the people and calling them back to God, a man of unbending integrity who could challenge the whole nation to name any bribe he had ever taken or any man he had wronged, and none could.

In his old age the people demanded a king to be like the other nations, and it grieved Samuel deeply, for he felt it as a rejection of God's own rule. But God told him to heed their voice and warn them what a king would cost, and Samuel anointed Saul, a tall and promising young man. When Saul disobeyed God and was rejected, Samuel, mourning, went secretly to Bethlehem at God's command and anointed the youngest son of Jesse, the shepherd boy David, on whom the Spirit of the LORD then rushed. To the end Samuel spoke God's truth to kings without flattery, and when he died all Israel gathered to mourn him.

To obey is better than sacrifice

The hardest task of Samuel's life was confronting the king he had anointed. When Saul disobeyed a clear command of God and then tried to justify himself by claiming he had spared the best of the animals to sacrifice to the LORD, Samuel answered with words that pierce to the heart of true religion: Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

Samuel told Saul that because he had rejected the word of the LORD, the LORD had rejected him from being king, and as Saul clutched at the prophet's robe and it tore, Samuel said the kingdom would likewise be torn from him and given to a better man. It grieved Samuel deeply, and he mourned for Saul, yet he did not soften the truth. He teaches that God desires the obedient heart above every outward offering, a truth the prophets after him would repeat and the Lord Jesus himself would affirm.

His character and significance

Samuel is marked by lifelong faithfulness and transparent integrity, from the boy who said, Speak, for thy servant heareth, to the old judge who lived so honestly that no one could accuse him of any wrong. He was a man of prayer above all, so devoted to interceding for the people that he called it sin against the LORD to cease praying for them, and a man of courage who told hard truths to the powerful. He held the offices of prophet, priest, and judge, and used them all to keep the worship of the true God at the center of Israel's life.

He stands at a hinge of Israel's history, closing the turbulent age of the judges and opening the age of the kings. He anointed the first king, Saul, and the greatest, David, from whose line the Messiah would come, and so the whole monarchy of Israel, and the hope that grew from it, began through his obedient hand. The two books that bear his name trace the rise of the kingdom he set in motion.

Where Samuel points to Christ

Samuel was the kingmaker who anointed David and pointed Israel toward the throne on which, in the end, the Son of David would sit forever. Every king he anointed was a step toward the true and final King. His mother Hannah's song, praising the God who casts down the mighty and exalts the lowly, is echoed centuries later in Mary's Magnificat at the coming of Jesus, so that the birth of Samuel foreshadows in its music the birth of Christ.

Samuel held together the offices of prophet, priest, and judge, three callings that would only ever be perfectly united in one person. Jesus is the Prophet who speaks God's final word, the Priest who offers the one true sacrifice, and the King and Judge of all the earth. Samuel served each office faithfully for a season and then died; Christ fulfills them all and lives forever, the one to whom every anointing Samuel ever poured out was pointing.

A note on the sources: everything above is drawn from the biblical text itself. Where a detail comes from later tradition rather than Scripture, it is named as tradition. Dates for the earliest figures are traditional and approximate, and Scripture does not always give them. The aim is to tell each life honestly, and to let it do what the whole Bible does, point to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Related: David · Joshua · All the people of the Bible