Person

Samuel

Prophet, the last of the judges, and the man who anointed Israel's first two kings. Samuel stands at the hinge between the era of the judges and the monarchy. He was dedicated to the LORD before birth by his mother Hannah, called by name as a boy at Shiloh, judged Israel from Ramah for the rest of his life, anointed Saul and then David, and confronted Saul over the war against Amalek in 1 Samuel 15. Scripture remembers him alongside Moses as a great intercessor, and Peter names him as the first of the line of prophets who "told of these days" (Acts 3:24, ASV).

For apologetics he matters in three places: the test of a true prophet, the command against Amalek that came through him, and the scene at Endor where Saul sought him after his death.

Life at a glance

• Birth and dedication (1 Samuel 1). Son of Elkanah of Ramathaim-zophim in the hill country of Ephraim and of Hannah, who had been barren. She "called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of Jehovah" (1 Samuel 1:20, ASV), and gave him to serve at the sanctuary at Shiloh under the priest Eli (1 Samuel 1:27-28).
• Hannah's song (1 Samuel 2), the hymn of reversal that Mary's Magnificat echoes.
• The call (1 Samuel 3). At a time when "the word of Jehovah was precious in those days; there was no frequent vision" (1 Samuel 3:1, ASV), the LORD calls the boy by name four times; Samuel answers, "Speak; for thy servant heareth" (1 Samuel 3:10, ASV). His first message is judgment on Eli's house.
• Recognized as prophet. "Jehovah was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan even to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of Jehovah" (1 Samuel 3:19-20, ASV).
• Judge (1 Samuel 7). After the Philistines capture and return the ark, Samuel calls Israel to put away foreign gods (1 Samuel 7:3), leads them at Mizpah, and rides a yearly circuit to Bethel, Gilgal and Mizpah. "Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life" (1 Samuel 7:15, ASV).
• The demand for a king (1 Samuel 8). With Samuel old and his sons corrupt, the elders ask for "a king to judge us like all the nations" (1 Samuel 8:5, ASV). The LORD tells him, "they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me" (1 Samuel 8:7, ASV). Samuel warns them what a king will take, then grants the request.
• Anoints Saul (1 Samuel 10:1) and hands over leadership in a farewell speech that invites anyone to accuse him of fraud or bribery (1 Samuel 12:3).
• Rebukes Saul twice. First for offering sacrifice instead of waiting (1 Samuel 13:13-14), then for sparing Agag and the best of the Amalekite livestock (1 Samuel 15).
• Anoints David (1 Samuel 16) at Bethlehem: "man looketh on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7, ASV). He later shelters David from Saul at Naioth in Ramah.
• Death. All Israel mourns him and buries him at Ramah (1 Samuel 25:1; 28:3).

On his tribe. 1 Samuel 1:1 calls Elkanah an Ephraimite; 1 Chronicles 6:33-34 lists Samuel in the line of Kohath, a Levite family. The usual harmonization is that Levites had no tribal territory and lived in towns among the other tribes, so "Ephraimite" names where the family lived. Some critical scholars read the Chronicles genealogy as a later attempt to give Samuel priestly standing. Either way, Samuel acts as priestly mediator, offering sacrifice and interceding.

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Kingmaker and critic of kings

Samuel is the first prophet to stand beside a king and speak against him. That pattern runs through the rest of the Old Testament: Nathan to David, Elijah to Ahab, Isaiah to Ahaz, Jeremiah to Zedekiah. The king rules, but under a word he does not control.

• The monarchy is permitted, not idealized. 1 Samuel 8 treats the demand as a rejection of the LORD's kingship, yet God grants it and later makes the Davidic throne the vehicle of the messianic promise.
• Obedience over ritual. Samuel's verdict on Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22-23 is one of the clearest statements in the Old Testament that worship cannot buy off disobedience: "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22, ASV).
• The heart over appearance. Saul was chosen as the tallest and most impressive man in Israel; David is chosen as the overlooked youngest son (1 Samuel 16:7).

Samuel and Amalek (1 Samuel 15)

Samuel delivers the command: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" (1 Samuel 15:3, ASV). The stated ground is what Amalek did to Israel on the way out of Egypt (15:2; Exodus 17:8-16; Deuteronomy 25:17-19). Saul warns the Kenites to leave first (1 Samuel 15:6), wins the battle, but spares King Agag and the best animals (1 Samuel 15:8-9).

Samuel's response has three parts: he cries to the LORD all night (1 Samuel 15:11), he pronounces Saul's rejection as king, and he executes Agag himself at Gilgal (1 Samuel 15:32-33). The chapter ends with Samuel mourning for Saul (15:35).

This is the text behind the Amalekite genocide objection. The codex answers it at Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater, which grants the command as written and argues from intent, the escape clause, and the cost of the alternatives. A separate question is whether Samuel passed on God's words verbatim or in the stock idiom of ancient war reports; that question is set out, with the positions, at Prophetic Mediation and Wartime Rhetoric. See also Canaanite Conquest and Herem.

"God repented" and "God does not repent." The same chapter says "it repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king" (1 Samuel 15:11, ASV) and "the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent" (1 Samuel 15:29, ASV). A narrator who places both statements a few verses apart is not confused. Verse 29 denies that God changes his mind the way a man does, by being caught out or talked round; verse 11 describes God's real grief and his changed response to a changed Saul. The pairing is a standard text in debates over Divine Immutability and Open Theism, and parallels Numbers 23:19.

The medium at Endor (1 Samuel 28)

After Samuel's death, with the Philistines massed and God silent, Saul, who had himself expelled mediums from the land (1 Samuel 28:3), disguises himself and consults a woman "that hath a familiar spirit" at Endor. The Law forbade this outright (Deuteronomy 18:10-11; Leviticus 20:27).

The narrator says plainly that "the woman saw Samuel" and cried out; she sees "a god coming up out of the earth," an old man in a robe; and Samuel asks, "Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?" (1 Samuel 28:12-15, ASV). He repeats the verdict of 1 Samuel 15 and adds, "to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me" (1 Samuel 28:19, ASV). The next day Saul and his sons die on Mount Gilboa. The Chronicler names the consultation as one reason for Saul's death (1 Chronicles 10:13-14).

Three readings:

1. Samuel truly appeared, by God's action, not the medium's. The text calls him Samuel throughout, the woman's alarm suggests something she did not expect, and the message is a true prophecy fulfilled the next day. Justin Martyr used the scene as evidence that souls survive death: "the soul of Samuel was called up by the witch, as Saul demanded" (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 105, ANF 1, PDF p. 194).
2. A demon impersonated Samuel. Tertullian held that God would not let a prophet's soul be "dragged out" by a demon, and that the spirit at Endor only represented Samuel (Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul 57, ANF 3, PDF p. 191).
3. Deception by the medium. A naturalistic reading takes the whole scene as the woman's performance; it struggles with the narrator's own statements and the fulfilled prediction.

Whichever reading is taken, the passage does not license necromancy. It is told as the final act of a king who had stopped listening to God, and it ends in his death. For apologetics, the scene is mainly relevant to the Old Testament's belief in conscious existence after death.

In the codex's apologetic

• The prophetic office. Samuel is the first figure Israel recognizes as a prophet in the full sense, and he is recognized by the test the Law sets: his words do not "fall to the ground" (1 Samuel 3:19; compare Deuteronomy 18:18-22). See Biblical Prophecy.
• Prophet over king. Samuel's rebukes of Saul show that Israel's kings were answerable to a word outside their control, an unusual feature among ancient Near Eastern monarchies.
• The Amalekite objection runs through Samuel's mouth; see Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater and Prophetic Mediation and Wartime Rhetoric.
• Life after death. Endor is an Old Testament witness to the dead as still existing, read by Justin as evidence for the soul's survival.
• Intercessor. Later Scripture sets Samuel beside Moses as the great intercessors (Jeremiah 15:1; Psalm 99:6) and lists him among the heroes of faith (Hebrews 11:32).

See also

• David, the king Samuel anointed at Bethlehem
• Saul, the first king, whom Samuel anointed and later rejected
• Agag, the Amalekite king Samuel executed at Gilgal
• Goliath, David's first public victory, in the chapter after his anointing
• Moses, the prophet Samuel is paired with as intercessor
• Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater, the answer to the objection built on 1 Samuel 15
• Prophetic Mediation and Wartime Rhetoric, how the command came through Samuel
• Canaanite Conquest and Herem, the wider survey of the conquest texts
• Divine Immutability, on "God repented" in 1 Samuel 15
• Biblical Prophecy, the prophetic office he inaugurated
• 1 Samuel, the book hub