9 Give ear now to their voice: but make a serious protest to them, and give them a picture of the sort of king who will be their ruler.
And he said, This is the sort of king who will be your ruler: he will take your sons and make them his servants, his horsemen, and drivers of his war-carriages, and they will go running before his war-carriages; And he will make them captains of thousands and of fifties; some he will put to work ploughing and cutting his grain and making his instruments of war and building his war-carriages. Your daughters he will take to be makers of perfumes and cooks and bread-makers. He will take your fields and your vine-gardens and your olive-gardens, all the best of them, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of the fruit of your vines and give it to his servants. He will take your men-servants and your servant-girls, and the best of your oxen and your asses and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep: and you will be his servants. Then you will be crying out because of your king whom you have taken for yourselves; but the Lord will not give you an answer in that day.
Then Samuel gave the people the laws of the kingdom, writing them in a book which he put in a safe place before the Lord. And Samuel sent all the people away, every man to his house.
When I say to the evil-doer, Death will certainly be your fate; and you give him no word of it and say nothing to make clear to the evil-doer the danger of his evil way, so that he may be safe; that same evil man will come to death in his evil-doing; but I will make you responsible for his blood.
And the priests' way with the people was this: when any man made an offering, the priest's servant came while the flesh was being cooked, having in his hand a meat-hook with three teeth;
All through the life of Saul there was bitter war against the Philistines; and whenever Saul saw any strong man or any good fighting man, he kept him near himself.
And for the ruler there is to be a part on one side and on the other side of the holy offering and of the property of the town, in front of the holy offering and in front of the property of the town on the west of it and on the east: measured in the same line as one of the parts of the land, from its limit on the west to its limit on the east of the land. And this will be his heritage in Israel: and my rulers will no longer be cruel masters to my people; but they will give the land as a heritage to the children of Israel by their tribes.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 1 Samuel 8
Commentary on 1 Samuel 8 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 8
Things went so very well with Israel, in the chapter before, under Samuel's administration, that, methinks, it is a pity to find him so quickly, as we do in this chapter, old, and going off, and things working towards a revolution. But so it is; Israel's good days seldom continue long. We have here,
Thus hard is it for people to know when they are well off.
1Sa 8:1-3
Two sad things we find here, but not strange things:-
1Sa 8:4-22
We have here the starting of a matter perfectly new and surprising, which was the setting up of kingly government in Israel. Perhaps the thing had been often talked of among them by those that were given to change and affected that which looked great. But we do not find that it was ever till now publicly proposed and debated. Abimelech was little better than a titular king, though he is said to reign over Israel (Judges 9:22), and perhaps his fall had for a great while rendered the title of king odious in Israel, as that of Tarquinius did among the Romans; but, if it had, by this time the odium was worn off, and some bold steps are here taken towards so great a revolution as that amounted to. Here is,