Christ in 1 Samuel

Hannah is the first in a long line of barren women to whom God gives a son for the sake of His unfolding plan - Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, and finally the virgin Mary. Samuel is the answer to a single woman’s prayer; Jesus is the answer to a whole creation’s.

Hannah’s song - "the bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength… he raiseth up the poor out of the dust" - is the Magnificat before Mary sings it. The Christ Connection of 1 Samuel 2 is that the gospel always upends the expected order: the lowly lifted, the proud scattered.

The book’s opening note hangs over the whole chapter: the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision (v. 1) - a season of silence, a famine of hearing the word (Amos 8:11-12). Into that silence the LORD calls a child by name in the night, and the boy, taught by Eli, gives the answer that has become the prayer of every listening servant: Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth (v. 9). That posture - the opened ear, the readiness to hear and to do - f…

The darkest chapter of pre-Davidic Israel turns on a deadly mistake about what saves. Beaten in battle, the elders ask the right question - Wherefore hath the LORD smitten us to day before the Philistines? - but reach for the wrong answer: Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the LORD… that, when it cometh among us, it may save us (v. 3). They carry the ark like a charm while living in unrepented corruption, the very sacrilege of Hophni and Phinehas that the man…

The Philistines have taken the ark of God in battle and carry it home in triumph, setting it in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod as a trophy laid at the feet of their god. But the next morning they find Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD (v. 3); they set him up again, and the morning after he lies fallen once more, this time broken - the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon w…

Beth-shemesh asks the question the whole Old Testament keeps circling: “Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God?” (1 Sam 6:20). The men who looked inside the ark could not stand. The blood sprinkled on its cover (Lev 16:14-15) was the shadow; the blood of Jesus is the substance, opening a new and living way through the veil of His flesh (Heb 10:19-20). The cover came off the ark at Beth-shemesh and men died. It came off at the cross, and the door is open.

After twenty years of lament with the ark resting in a house at Kirjath-jearim, Samuel calls Israel to return unto the LORD with all your hearts… and serve him only (v. 3) - the turning from idols to the living and true God that the gospel still presses: ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thess. 1:9). Israel puts away Baalim and Ashtaroth, gathers at Mizpeh, and confesses, We have sinned against the LORD (v. 6) - and into the moment of g…

At the heart of 1 Samuel 8 stands one of the most piercing lines the Old Testament puts in the mouth of God. Israel demands a king - make us a king to judge us like all the nations (v. 5) - and when the request grieves Samuel and he prays, the LORD answers: they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them (v. 7). The deepest thing the chapter names is not a constitutional change but a refusal of God’s own kingship - the craving for…

Christ Connection - The Prophet Told a Day Before

Notice the direction the knowing flows. Saul thinks he is the one doing the searching, but the search has already been answered before it began. The prophet was told a day before. The seeker is the last to know he is expected. That is the texture of grace running ahead of you: long before you go looking for God, God has set the meeting, briefed the messenger, kept the appointment. When the right time had fully come, He sent forth His Son to a people who did not yet know th…

Christ Connection - The Anointed One

Saul’s anointing wears off. That is the quiet ache under this whole story. The oil sets him apart, the Spirit comes, and then over the years it all drains away. Jesus is the Anointed One whose anointing never drains. “Christ” is not a surname; it means the same thing Samuel’s oil meant - chosen, consecrated, set apart by God for a work only He can finish. And the startling part is that He does not keep it to Himself. The same Spirit that rested on Israel’s first king He po…

1 Samuel 11 is Saul’s finest hour, and it is shaped throughout like the work of a deliverer. A cruel enemy - Nahash, whose name means serpent - besieges Jabesh-gilead and offers peace only at the price of every right eye, a reproach upon all Israel (v. 2). Into a people weeping and helpless the rescue comes from an unlooked-for place: the Spirit of God came upon Saul… and his anger was kindled greatly (v. 6), and the man fresh from the field becomes the saviour of a…

Christ Connection - The King We Asked For

Look at what a king is for. Every king in this chapter takes - an ox, a son, a field, a war. Samuel has just spent five verses proving he took nothing, and it stands out precisely because it is so unkingly. Then comes One who is named king from a cross, who tells Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), and who founds that kingdom not by gathering tribute but by pouring out His own blood. The pattern of the chapter holds: deliverers came when Israel cried out…

Christ Connection - The True Priest-King

In Israel the crown and the altar were kept deliberately apart. A king who could command armies could not command a sacrifice; the priesthood was a separate calling with its own line, a wall built to keep one man from holding both. Saul reached over that wall and grabbed what was not his - and lost the throne for it. The strange thing is that the very union Saul tried to seize by force, Jesus actually holds. He is King and High Priest at once, after the order of Melchizede…

Christ Connection - The Faithful Companion

When Jesus was betrayed, Peter cut off the ear of a servant. When Jesus was arrested, Peter denied even knowing Him. But there was one voice in the night that mattered - the voice of an angel, of witnesses, of those who knew what truth was. The armorbearer speaks a simple word of loyalty: "I am with thee according to thy heart." This is the kind of presence Christ brings - not a judge standing over you asking what you deserve, but a companion saying: Whatever is in thy hea…

Christ Connection - Obedience unto Death

Seven centuries later, the prophet Hosea will echo Samuel’s words: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6). Jesus will quote this in Matthew 9:13. And then, when Jesus came, He embodied this principle in perfection. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus could see the cost of what He was asked to do. He could have asked the Father to let the cup pass. But instead He said: "Not my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 2…

First Samuel 16 is where the great Son-of-David line begins, and it begins with a word that overturns every human measure of greatness. Samuel, sent to Bethlehem to anoint a king from among Jesse’s sons, stops at the tall and handsome firstborn - Surely the LORD’s anointed is before him (v. 6) - and is corrected by the LORD Himself: the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart (v. 7). The verb is yireh la-lev…

David refuses Saul’s armor and walks into the valley with five smooth stones and the name of the Lord of hosts. The greater David walked into a darker valley with no weapons at all and won by what looked like weakness. Goliath is every taunting voice that has ever tried to silence God’s people; Christ has answered him at the cross.

First Samuel 18 sets two hearts side by side under the same rising star, and reads like a prophecy written in advance. David has just killed Goliath; he is the anointed one not yet reigning, loved by the people and hated by the king without cause. The king’s son loves him first: the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul (v. 1) - qashar , bound, tied fast - and Jonathan seals it by stripping off everything that marked him a…

Christ Connection - The Protected Anointed

Jesus, like David, was anointed by God with the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:22). And like David, He was hunted by an unjust king. When Herod heard of the child born in Bethlehem, he sought to kill Him (Matt. 2:13). And God protected His Anointed by ways both human and divine - through the warning of the Magi, through Joseph’s flight, through the movement of His Spirit. David flees to Samuel at Ramah and finds protection. Jesus’ family flees to Egypt and finds protection. The Fathe…

1 Samuel 20 is the story of a covenant of self-giving love sworn between two men in the name of the LORD - and of the innocent, anointed one who, hunted though he had done no wrong, found himself only a step between… and death. David flees to Jonathan with the question of a man who cannot understand his own suffering: What have I done? what is mine iniquity? and what is my sin before thy father, that he seeketh my life? (v. 1). He is the man after God’s own heart, m…

Christ Connection - Have Ye Not Read What David Did

Of all the stories Jesus could have reached for, this is the one He chose. Pressed by the Pharisees because His disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath, He does not argue the fine print of the Law. He points back here: Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred… how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat… but only for the priests? (Matt. 12:3-4). The hungry son of David and the bread reserv…

Christ Connection - "With Me Thou Shalt Be in Safeguard"

Look at who Abiathar runs to. David’s lie at Nob got this man’s whole family killed, and Abiathar runs straight at him. Grief should have made David dangerous to be near. Instead David pulls him close and says the one thing that holds: he that seeketh my life seeketh thy life: but with me thou shalt be in safeguard . Notice the shape of that safety. David does not offer a better hiding place. He binds Abiathar’s life to his own and promises to carry the danger with him - t…

Christ Connection - The Friend Who Strengthens

Notice exactly what Jonathan strengthens. Not David’s hideout, not his odds, not his supplies. His hand in God . He gives David back his grip on the One he was already holding. That is a strange and specific gift, and it is the gift Jesus keeps giving His own. In the upper room He tells frightened men the same thing Jonathan tells David: I am going, but you will not be left comfortless. On the night before the cross He does not hand the disciples a plan; He hands them His…

First Samuel 24 puts a hunted man and his defenseless hunter alone in a cave, and turns on a single refusal. Saul has come with three thousand men to take David’s life; now Saul is in David’s hand, and David’s men name it as the very promise of God fulfilled. But David will not strike. He cuts only the skirt of Saul’s robe, and even that smites his heart - for to touch the LORD’S anointed , the mashiach marked by God for the throne, is a thing his conscience cannot bear: T…

Christ Connection - Vengeance Deferred

Jesus will teach His disciples: "Beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Rom. 12:19). David, centuries before Paul, learns this from a woman’s wisdom. He has been wronged. His anger is justified. But he releases the right to avenge himself and lets the Lord do the avenging. This is the path Jesus walks in Gethsemane: "Not my will, but thine be done." It is the path of the cross -…

Christ Connection - Entrusting Judgment to the Father

Jesus, at His arrest, was offered many ways to defend Himself. Peter drew a sword and struck the servant of the high priest. But Jesus said: "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword… Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26:52-53). He could have called down the very armies of heaven. Instead, He said to Peter: "The cup which…

1 Samuel 27 is one of the hardest chapters to read about the man after God’s own heart, and the narrator refuses to soften it. Worn down by years of flight, David reasons in his heart - not in prayer, not before the LORD - I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines (v. 1). This is the despair of a man who has twice been told he would be king (1 Sam. 16:13; 23:17) and has…

First Samuel 28 is the story of a man who would not hear God’s voice when it was freely offered, and who finds, at the end, that he can no longer get a word from Him by any lawful means. On the eve of the battle that will kill him, Saul sees the Philistine army and his heart greatly trembled (v. 5); he enquired of the LORD - sha’al , the very word at the root of his own name - but the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams nor by Urim, nor by prophets (v. 6). Every appoi…

First Samuel 29 catches God’s anointed in the worst place of his whole flight: marching out with the Philistine army against his own people, on the very day Saul will die at Jezreel. David has woven himself so deep into Achish’s trust that there is no clean way out, and Scripture does not let him pray or scheme his way free. Instead it shows a hidden hand working through the mouths of pagan princes. The princes of the Philistines were wroth… lest in the battle he be…

Christ Connection - Strength in Abandonment

There is a deeper Man who came to His own bottom with no one to strengthen Him. In Gethsemane the disciples slept, the crowd wanted Him dead, and the cup would not pass; on the cross even the sense of the Father’s nearness was stripped away. David reached for the Lord and found Him. Jesus reached and, for our sake, was met with silence, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He went to the place of total abandonment so that the next person standing in the ashes would…

First Samuel ends where the people’s demand for a king finally led: on the slopes of mount Gilboa, with Israel in flight and Saul and his sons dead. It is the close of a reign begun in self-will - a king the people asked for so they might be like all the nations (1 Sam. 8:5) - and ended in despair, the king sore wounded of the archers (v. 3) who falls upon his own sword rather than be taken. The prophet’s long word comes due: thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, and th…