Meditate

10. Saul Made King

¹Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head, and kissed him; he said, “The Lord has anointed you ruler over his people Israel. You shall reign over the people of the Lord and you will save them from the hand of their enemies all around. Now this shall be the sign to you that the Lord has anointed you ruler over his heritage:²When you depart from me today you will meet two men by Rachel’s tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah; they will say to you, ‘The donkeys that you went to seek are found, and now your father has stopped worrying about them and is worrying about you, saying: What shall I do about my son?’³Then you shall go on from there further and come to the oak of Tabor; three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you there, one carrying three kids, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine.⁴They will greet you and give you two loaves of bread, which you shall accept from them.⁵After that you shall come to Gibeath-elohim, at the place where the Philistine garrison is; there, as you come to the town, you will meet a band of prophets coming down from the shrine with harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre playing in front of them; they will be in a prophetic frenzy.⁶Then the spirit of the Lord will possess you, and you will be in a prophetic frenzy along with them and be turned into a different person.⁷Now when these signs meet you, do whatever you see fit to do, for God is with you.⁸And you shall go down to Gilgal ahead of me; then I will come down to you to present burnt offerings and offer sacrifices of well-being. Seven days you shall wait, until I come to you and show you what you shall do.”

Saul Prophesies

⁹ As he turned away to leave Samuel, God gave him another heart; and all these signs were fulfilled that day.¹⁰When they were going from there to Gibeah, a band of prophets met him; and the spirit of God possessed him, and he fell into a prophetic frenzy along with them.¹¹When all who knew him before saw how he prophesied with the prophets, the people said to one another, “What has come over the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?”¹²A man of the place answered, “And who is their father?” Therefore it became a proverb, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”¹³When his prophetic frenzy had ended, he went home.

¹⁴ Saul’s uncle said to him and to the boy, “Where did you go?” And he replied, “To seek the donkeys; and when we saw they were not to be found, we went to Samuel.”¹⁵Saul’s uncle said, “Tell me what Samuel said to you.”¹⁶Saul said to his uncle, “He told us that the donkeys had been found.” But about the matter of the kingship, of which Samuel had spoken, he did not tell him anything.

Saul Proclaimed King

¹⁷ Samuel summoned the people to the Lord at Mizpah¹⁸and said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you.’¹⁹But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses; and you have said, ‘No! but set a king over us.’ Now therefore present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by your clans.”

²⁰ Then Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot.²¹He brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its families, and the family of the Matrites was taken by lot. Finally he brought the family of the Matrites near man by man, and Saul the son of Kish was taken by lot. But when they sought him, he could not be found.²²So they inquired again of the Lord, “Did the man come here?” and the Lord said, “See, he has hidden himself among the baggage.”²³Then they ran and brought him from there. When he took his stand among the people, he was head and shoulders taller than any of them.²⁴Samuel said to all the people, “Do you see the one whom the Lord has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people.” And all the people shouted, “Long live the king!”

²⁵ Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship; and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people back to their homes.²⁶Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went warriors whose hearts God had touched.²⁷But some worthless fellows said, “How can this man save us?” They despised him and brought him no present. But he held his peace.

Now Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead.

4. Unity in the Body of Christ

The Old Life and the New

¹⁷ Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds.¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.¹⁹They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.²⁰That is not the way you learned Christ!²¹For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus.²²You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,²³and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,²⁴and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

74. Psalm 74

Psalm 74

Plea for Help in Time of National Humiliation

A Maskil of Asaph.

1

O God, why do you cast us off forever?

Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?

2

Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago,

which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage.

Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell.

3

Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins;

the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.

4

Your foes have roared within your holy place;

they set up their emblems there.

5

At the upper entrance they hacked

the wooden trellis with axes.

6

And then, with hatchets and hammers,

they smashed all its carved work.

7

They set your sanctuary on fire;

they desecrated the dwelling place of your name,

bringing it to the ground.

8

They said to themselves, “We will utterly subdue them”;

they burned all the meeting places of God in the land.

9

We do not see our emblems;

there is no longer any prophet,

and there is no one among us who knows how long.

10

How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?

Is the enemy to revile your name forever?

11

Why do you hold back your hand;

why do you keep your hand in your bosom?

12

Yet God my King is from of old,

working salvation in the earth.

13

You divided the sea by your might;

you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.

14

You crushed the heads of Leviathan;

you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

15

You cut openings for springs and torrents;

you dried up ever-flowing streams.

16

Yours is the day, yours also the night;

you established the luminaries and the sun.

17

You have fixed all the bounds of the earth;

you made summer and winter.

18

Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs,

and an impious people reviles your name.

19

Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild animals;

do not forget the life of your poor forever.

20

Have regard for your covenant,

for the dark places of the land are full of the haunts of violence.

21

Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame;

let the poor and needy praise your name.

22

Rise up, O God, plead your cause;

remember how the impious scoff at you all day long.

23

Do not forget the clamor of your foes,

the uproar of your adversaries that goes up continually.