21 and don't turn aside; for [then would you go] after vain things which can't profit nor deliver, for they are vain.
"What value does the engraved image have, that its maker has engraved it; the molten image, even the teacher of lies, that he who fashions its form trusts in it, to make mute idols?
Yahweh, my strength, and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of affliction, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, [even] vanity and things in which there is no profit.
Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one.
Are there any among the vanities of the nations that can cause rain? or can the sky give showers? Aren't you he, Yahweh our God? therefore we will wait for you; for you have made all these things.
Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations: they have no knowledge who carry the wood of their engraved image, and pray to a god that can't save.
But they are together brutish and foolish: the instruction of idols! it is but a stock.
Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;
For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
Those who fashion an engraved image are all of them vanity; and the things that they delight in shall not profit; and their own witnesses don't see, nor know: that they may be disappointed. Who has fashioned a god, or molten an image that is profitable for nothing?
Behold, all of them, their works are vanity [and] nothing; their molten images are wind and confusion.
Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they don't speak; They have eyes, but they don't see; They have ears, but they don't hear; They have noses, but they don't smell; They have hands, but they don't feel; They have feet, but they don't walk; Neither do they speak through their throat. Those who make them will be like them; Yes, everyone who trusts in them.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 1 Samuel 12
Commentary on 1 Samuel 12 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 12
We left the general assembly of the states together, in the close of the foregoing chapter; in this chapter we have Samuel's speech to them, when he resigned the government into the hands of Saul, in which,
1Sa 12:1-5
Here,
1Sa 12:6-15
Samuel, having sufficiently secured his own reputation, instead of upbraiding the people upon it with their unkindness to him, sets himself to instruct them, and keep them in the way of their duty, and then the change of the government would be the less damage to them.
1Sa 12:16-25
Two things Samuel here aims at:-