---
title: "Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible -  1 Samuel 12"
description: "CHAPTER 12   :-. SAMUEL
TESTIFIES HIS INTEGRITY. 1-4. Samuel said unto all
Israel—This public address was made after the solemn
re-instalment of Saul, and"
image: "/images/missing.jpg"
url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/commentaries/commentary-critical-and-explanatory-on-the-whole-bible/1-samuel/12"
---

CHAPTER 12

. SAMUEL
TESTIFIES HIS INTEGRITY.

**1-4. Samuel said unto all
Israel**—This public address was made after the solemn
re-instalment of Saul, and before the convention at Gilgal separated.
Samuel, having challenged a review of his public life, received a
unanimous testimony to the unsullied honor of his personal character,
as well as the justice and integrity of his public administration.

**5. the Lord is witness against you,
and his anointed is witness**—that, by their own acknowledgment,
he had given them no cause to weary of the divine government by
judges, and that, therefore, the blame of desiring a change of
government rested with themselves. This was only insinuated, and they
did not fully perceive his drift.
. HE REPROVES
THE PEOPLE FOR
INGRATITUDE.

**7-16. Now therefore stand still,
that I may reason with you**—The burden of this faithful and
uncompromising address was to show them, that though they had
obtained the change of government they had so importunely desired,
their conduct was highly displeasing to their heavenly King;
nevertheless, if they remained faithful to Him and to the principles
of the theocracy, they might be delivered from many of the evils to
which the new state of things would expose them. And in confirmation
of those statements, no less than in evidence of the divine
displeasure, a remarkable phenomenon, on the invocation of the
prophet, and of which he gave due premonition, took place.

**11. Bedan**—The *Septuagint*
reads "Barak"; and for "Samuel" some versions
read "Samson," which seems more natural than that the
prophet should mention himself to the total omission of the greatest
of the judges. (Compare ).
. HE TERRIFIES
THEM WITH THUNDER
IN HARVEST-TIME.

**7-16. Now therefore stand still,
that I may reason with you**—The burden of this faithful and
uncompromising address was to show them, that though they had
obtained the change of government they had so importunely desired,
their conduct was highly displeasing to their heavenly King;
nevertheless, if they remained faithful to Him and to the principles
of the theocracy, they might be delivered from many of the evils to
which the new state of things would expose them. And in confirmation
of those statements, no less than in evidence of the divine
displeasure, a remarkable phenomenon, on the invocation of the
prophet, and of which he gave due premonition, took place.

**17-25. Is it not wheat harvest
to-day?**—That season in Palestine occurs at the end of June or
beginning of July, when it seldom or never rains, and the sky is
serene and cloudless. There could not, therefore, have been a
stronger or more appropriate proof of a divine mission than the
phenomenon of rain and thunder happening, without any prognostics of
its approach, upon the prediction of a person professing himself to
be a prophet of the Lord, and giving it as an attestation of his
words being true. The people regarded it as a miraculous display of
divine power, and, panic-struck, implored the prophet to pray for
them. Promising to do so, he dispelled their fears. The conduct of
Samuel, in this whole affair of the king's appointment, shows him to
have been a great and good man who sank all private and personal
considerations in disinterested zeal for his country's good and whose
last words in public were to warn the people, and their king, of the
danger of apostasy and disobedience to God.

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