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The Israelites seem to have asked for a king from an unthankful caprice and waywardness. The ill conduct of Samuel's sons was the occasion, an "evil heart of unbelief" was the cause. To punish them, God gave them a king "after their own heart." There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence of hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural man. Samuel had too much of primitive simplicity about him to please the Israelites; they felt they were behind the world, and clamoured to be put on a level with the heathen. Saul had much to recommend him to minds thus greedy of the dust of the earth. He was brave, daring, resolute; gifted, too, with strength of body as well as of mind. Both his virtues and his faults were such as became an Eastern monarch, and were adapted to secure the fear and submission of his subjects. Samuel's conduct in the national emergency is far above human praise. Personally qualified Saul was for a time a prosperous king. But from the beginning the prophet's voice is raised both against the people and king in warnings and rebukes, which are omens of his destined destruction, according to the text. Here, then, a question may be raised — Why was Saul thus marked for vengeance from the beginning? The question leads to a deeper inspection of his character. The first duty of every man is the fear of God — a reverence for His Word, a love of Him, and a desire to obey Him. Now Saul lacked "his one thing." He was never under the abiding influence of religion, however he might be at times moved and softened. What nature made him, that he remained, without improvement; with virtues which had no value, because they required no effort, and implied the influence of no principle. There was a deadness to all considerations not connected with the present world. It is his habit to treat prophet and priest with a coldness, to say the least, which seems to argue some great internal defect. We have no reason to believe, from the after history, that the Divine gift at his anointing left any religious effect on his mind. The immediate occasion of his rejection was his failing under a specific trial of his obedience, as set before him at the very time he was anointed. There was no professed or intentional irreverence in Saul's conduct. He outwardly respected the Mosaic ritual. But he was indifferent, and cared for none of these things. From the time of Saul's disobedience in the matter of Amalek, Samuel came no more to see Saul, whose season of probation was over. He finishes his bad history by an open act of apostasy from the God of Israel. He consulted the sorceress at Endor. Unbelief and wilfulness are the wretched characteristics of Saul's history — an ear deaf to the plainest commands, a heart hardened against the most gracious influences.

(J. H. Newman, B. D.)

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KJV: I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath.

WEB: I have given you a king in my anger, and have taken him away in my wrath.