《The People ’s Bible – 1 Samuel》(Joseph Parker)
Commentator
Joseph Parker (9 April 1830 - 28 November 1902) was an English Congregational minister.
Parker's preaching differed widely from his contemporaries like Spurgeon and Alexander Maclaren. He did not follow outlines or list his points, but spoke extemporaneously, inspired by his view of the spirit and attitude behind his Scripture text. He expressed himself frankly, with conviction and passion. His transcriber commented that he was at his best when he strayed furthest from his loose outlines.
He did not often delve into detailed textual or critical debates. His preaching was neither systematic theology nor expository commentary, but sound more like his personal meditations. Writers of the time describe his delivery as energetic, theatrical and impressive, attracting at various times famous people and politicians such as William Gladstone.
Parker's chief legacy is not his theology but his gift for oratory. Alexander Whyte commented on Parker: "He is by far the ablest man now standing in the English-speaking pulpit. He stands in the pulpit of Thomas Goodwin, the Atlas of Independency. And Dr. Parker is a true and worthy successor to this great Apostolic Puritan." Among his biographers, Margaret Bywater called him "the most outstanding preacher of his time," and Angus Watson wrote that "no one had ever spoken like him."
Another writer and pastor, Ian Maclaren, offered the following tribute: "Dr. Parker occupies a lonely place among the preachers of our day. His position among preachers is the same as that of a poet among ordinary men of letters."
00 Introduction
Prayer
Almighty God, thou comfortest those that be bowed down. Thou liftest up those whose souls cleave unto the dust. The Lord is very pitiful and kind, and truly his mercy endureth for ever. It comes to us before the light of the morning, it remains with us when the sun has gone down, it is our guardian by night, it doth beset us behind and before and defend us from all evil. We desire, therefore, humbly to recognise thy mercy in the whole course of our life; we would see it everywhere giving strength and beauty, and meaning and pathos, to all the affairs of our daily history. Help us evermore to know that our power is in thy mercy; that we have no strength but in thy strength; that out of thy fulness alone can we receive grace upon grace. May we be released from all worldly memories, from all tormenting anxieties. May our souls be led away into the light! May our spirits be blessed with unspeakable peace! Ever teach us how to pray. May the desires of our heart be pure; may our purposes before God be simple, and may our whole supplication rise from the Saviour"s cross, that even in our prayers we may know the mystery of self-sacrifice. What we pray, we pray in the Mediator"s name; there is one God and one Mediator between God and Prayer of Manasseh , the Man Christ Jesus, through whom, the Child of Bethlehem, the Man of sorrows, the mighty and only Redeemer of our souls, we offer every desire of our hearts. Forgive our sins. Cleanse our thoughts by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Establish thy counsels in our hearts that they may be repronounced in our daily life; and may our whole course be elevated and sanctified by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Now what wait we for, but for the opening of heaven, that we may receive the blessing we have no room to contain, that we may be satisfied with the peace which passeth understanding! Unto the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, whom we adore as Three Persons in one God, be the kingdom and the power and the glory, world without end. Amen.
Selected Notes
The Books of Samuel.—These two books were anciently reckoned as one, the present division being derived from the Septuagint and Vulgate. In those versions they are called the first and second Books of Kings, as they form part of the history of the Kings of Israel and Judah.
The question of the authorship of the books is not free from difficulty; but the decided preponderance of evidence is in favour of the ancient view, that Samuel wrote1Samuel1-24and that the rest was written by Nathan and Gad ( 1 Chronicles 29:29). The authenticity of the history found in the Books of Samuel rests on sufficient grounds. Portions of them are quoted in the New Testament ( 2 Samuel 7:14 in Hebrews 1:5; 1 Samuel 13:14 in Acts 13:22). References to them occur in other sections of Scripture, especially in the Psalm , to which they often afford historic illustrations.
The contents of the Books of Samuel belong to an interesting period of Jewish history. The preceding Book of Judges refers to the affairs of the republic as they were administered after the conquest, when the nation was all but a congeries of independent cantons, sometimes partially united for a season under an extraordinary dictator. As, however, the form of government was changed, and remained monarchical till the overthrow of the kingdom, it was of national importance to note the time, method, and means of the alteration. This change happening under the regency of the wisest and best of their sages, his life became a topic of interest. The first Book of Samuel gives an account of his birth and early call to the duties of a seer under Eli"s pontificate; describes the low and degraded condition of the people, oppressed by foreign enemies; proceeds to narrate the inauguration of Samuel as judge; his prosperous regency; the degeneracy of his sons; the clamour for a change in the civil constitution; the installation of Saul; his rash and reckless character; and his neglect of, or opposition to, the theocratic elements of the government. The historian goes on to relate God"s choice of David as king; his aberrations from the path of duty; the unnatural rebellion of his son Absalom and its suppression; his carrying into effect a military census of his dominions, and the divine punishment which this act incurred. The second Book of Samuel, while it relates the last words of David, yet stops short of his death. As David was the real founder of the monarchy and reorganiser of the religious worship; the great hero, legislator, and poet of his country; as his dynasty maintained itself on the throne of Judah till the Babylonian captivity—it is not a matter of wonder that the description of his life and government occupies so large a portion of early Jewish history. The Books of Samuel thus consist of three interlaced biographies—those of Samuel, Saul, and David.
The design of these books is not very different from that of the other historical treatises of the Old Testament. The Books of Kings are a history of the nation as a theocracy; those of Chronicles have special reference to the form and ministry of the religious worship, as bearing upon its Revelation -establishment after the return from Babylon. Samuel is more biographical, yet the theocratic element of the government is not overlooked. It is distinctly brought to view in the early chapters concerning Eli and his house, and the fortunes of the ark; in the passages which describe the change of the constitution; in the blessing which rested on the house of Obed-Edom; in the curse which fell on the Bethshemites, and Uzzah and Saul, for intrusive interference with holy things. The book shows clearly that God was a jealous God; that obedience to him secured felicity; that the nation sinned in seeking another king; that Saul"s special iniquity was his impious oblivion of his station as Jehovah"s vicegerent, for he contemned the prophets and slew the priesthood; and that David owed his prosperity to his careful culture of the central principle of the Hebrew Government.
01 Chapter 1
Verses 1-28
The Birth of Samuel
1 Samuel 1:20
HANNAH, the wife of Elkanah, besought the Lord for a man child. This draws our attention to the scope of human prayer. Men cannot pray by rule. We do but mock men when we say, You must pray for this and not for that. Such an exhortation may do for a man when his heart is not inflamed by the passion of godly desire; it may do for him in his coldest and most indifferent mental states. But when he is in his most vehement and determined moods, he cannot be fettered and limited by such exhortations. We need something more for our guidance than mere maxims. A maxim is too narrow for life. We need principles which can shrink into maxims and can expand into revelations as the exigencies of life may require. Sometimes we are cold and dull,—then a maxim will do: sometimes our strength rises to full flood,—then we need inspiration. You cannot conduct life in its highest phases and its intensest desires by any set of maxims. You can only control and elevate life by having principles which can shrink and expand,—adapt themselves when man"s moral temperature rises, when his strength rises, and suit themselves to all the varying phases and wants of his life. Tell Hannah that she ought not to pray for what God has not seen fit to give her, and she scorns your formal piety and your tabulated counsels. Why? She is not in a mood to receive that kind of instruction; there is a hunger in her heart; through her own love she sees far into the love of God; and by the eagerness of her desire she goes far away, with bleeding weary feet, from beaten paths and accepted roads, that she may bind God by the very importunateness of her love. That is not the kind of woman into whose ear you can drop a little formal maxim with any effect Your religion will be to her profanity, if you cannot address her in a higher tone—meet her just where her soul is. She is borne away by the passion of her desire; there is one dominating force in her nature that transfigures everything, that defies difficulties, that surmounts obstacles, and that waits with trembling nervous patience till God come. What is love if it be not fiery? What is prayer if it be not the heart on a blaze? Prayer is not mere articulation; prayer is not mere words. Prayers are battles; prayers are the thunders which call for God when he seems to be far away!
Yonder is a wild goat, living on stony hills and desert places. He has wandered a long way from pasture, from food of any kind. In the madness of his hunger he sees on farther edge, five hundred fathoms above the level, just one little tuft of grass—the only green thing within a circuit of miles. It is a dangerous place, but then he is in a dangerous condition. He climbs to it,—the rock almost trembles under him. A moment more, and, hundreds of fathoms below, he lies a bleeding mass. But impelled by hunger, he does what only the fierce courage of despair dare do. So it is with that keener hunger of human souls. We do sometimes pray for things that lie away from the line of ordinary devotion; we would not pray for them but for that over-mastering, irresistible, spiritual force that holds us in its mighty hand. If we were in coolness and sobriety of spirit and temper, we should be able to reason about it and to put things together and to draw inferences. Man is not fully man when he stands upon his feet; he touches the highest point of his manhood when he lifts the pinions of faith and hope, and goes off into the Unknown if haply he may find God! If you do not know what the hunger is you do not know what the prayer is. You cannot feel as Hannah did without you have been in great straits, and when for the time you have been the willing" victim of a glowing and grand desire. But is there not a limit? Yes, there is a limit, and it is sometimes well not to look at it in the light of a limit. It is true that we are shut up like the sea and watched like the whale, but that is no reason why we should shrivel into a pool or dwindle into a minnow. What is the limit of our prayer? This: "Not my will, but thine, be done!" Is that a limit?—it is glorious liberty! Not my will, but thine,—not a little will, but a great will,—not my thought, but thine,—not my love, but thine! Is that a limit? It is the lark rising from its field-nest into the boundless liberty of the firmament! Truly we do not limit ourselves when we exchange the creature for the Creator. When we take up our little thought and say, "Lord, this is what we want,—but not our will but thine be done," do we then throw away the greater for the less? It is a contrast, and only such a contrast as you find in the earth and heaven, in the blazing sun and the misty night.
Need we say that there are some things which are not fit subjects for prayer? that there are some things which do not lie directly in the devotional line? For example, no man is at liberty to pray for wealth, merely as such. "Lord, give me riches," would not be prayer; it would be profanity, it would be covetousness carried to the point of blasphemy. Wealth, as such, does not lie in the line of devotion, but far away from it, and can only be made incidental to it by certain moral considerations which the possessor of wealth may possibly know nothing at all about. Looked at in itself, Hannah"s prayer was selfish and poor in its spiritual tone; but the woman did not know what she was praying for altogether. It is so with us in our highest devotions. God inspires the prayer, and then answers it; dictates the language, and then satisfies the petition. So that persons who are asking for what may be called a little ordinary daily blessing, may, in reality, be asking for a gift the influence of which shall reach through ages, shall palpitate through eternity. Hannah says, Give me a man child! She knows not the destinies that are involved in that prayer. And that prayer is not her own. Her petition is but the echo of a higher voice. Herein is the mystery of prayer. There be cold, formal, rudimentary prayers; there be labial prayers—prayers that come from the lips only; and there be words which are revelations of Christ—subdued sighings of the soul, which God prompts and regulates, and which are sent for the trial of our patience and strength, that God may bring in upon our little petition a greater answer than our fancy ever dreamed, than our love ever dared expect!