1 Samuel

Looking for a Leader

John Woodhouse, R. Kent Hughes

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781433548840
• eBook ISBN: 9781433548871
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The Old Testament book of 1 Samuel records the story of three important leaders in Israel's history: Samuel, Saul, and David. The lives of these flawed men showcase God's gracious response to ancient Israel's leadership crisis, offering valuable lessons related to why leaders fail, the impact this failure can have on God's people, and what it means to model godly leadership—even today.

In this accessible commentary, John Woodhouse shows how 1 Samuel reveals the importance of true leadership and the character of the godly leader. More significantly, this volume points forward to Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of God's promises to his people and the only perfect leader the world has ever known.

Those who preach and teach God's Word will find this an invaluable resource as they seek to help others embrace 1 Samuel's timely message.

Part of the Preaching the Word series.

PART ONE Samuel: The Leader God Provided

1 SAMUEL 1–7

1 The Leadership Crisis

1 SAMUEL 1:1, 2

Leadership is as important in today’s world as it has been in every society in every age. Some would go further and speak of a contemporary crisis of leadership. There is now widespread cynicism expressed, especially in the media, toward those in leadership. Confidence in our elected leaders is at a low ebb.

Of course, leadership is a much bigger subject than politics. Leadership also matters in the world of business, sports, entertainment, fashion. Indeed leadership is something that touches our lives at every level and in every sphere. All of us choose leaders and reject leaders. That is to say, we allow some people to influence us, and we reject the influence of others. This happens in many different ways — as we choose a career, as we learn, as we make important decisions, as we make life choices, as we develop our values. We do not do these things in isolation from external influences. On the contrary, our lives are shaped by the influence of different people whose example or ideas or vision or teaching or values we follow. These are our real leaders, although it is possible that we do not always think of them, and they do not necessarily think of themselves, as leaders. By definition leaders are those who are followed!

It is interesting to reflect for a moment on the leaders who have shaped your life. Who are the leaders who are now shaping your life? Some will be obvious. Some we might hardly realize.

I recently browsed the shelves of a local bookshop and noticed the number and variety of books on leadership. There is considerable interest in the subject. There is a popular Christian journal called Leadership. Mind you, most of the material I have seen is about how to be a leader rather than how to choose which leaders you will follow — which is surely the more important question.

However, all of us do both. On the one hand, whether we are high-flying achievers who think of ourselves as leaders or more humble human beings who see ourselves as small players in the game of life, all of us exercise influence (I am calling it leadership) somewhere. It may be over your children or within your family, a circle of friends, a neighborhood. To some degree and in some respect and in some areas of our lives, we are all leaders.

What kind of leader are you? What kind of leaders should we be? How do you work that out?

On the other hand, the more important thing is that we all follow leaders. No matter how high up the status tree you may think you have climbed (or think you will climb), there is always someone higher. Furthermore we all choose to follow leaders, the leaders we decide to trust, the leaders we allow to influence us.

What kind of leaders do we follow? What kind of leaders should we follow? How do we work that out?

If we could answer such questions with confidence and had the wisdom to put our answers into practice, it would make a real difference in how well we lived.

I have begun this exposition of the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel with these thoughts because the book of 1 Samuel is about leadership. Mind you, what we will learn from this part of the Bible is very different from anything you will find in your local bookshop in the “Leadership” section. Much in these pages will take us by surprise.

ISRAEL’S LEADERSHIP CRISIS

In 1 Samuel we find the story (which continues into 2 Samuel) of three great leaders of the nation of Israel, through a period when Israel experienced a massive leadership crisis that led to an historic change in the character of the nation’s leadership.

The three leaders were:¹ Samuel (whose story begins in 1 Samuel 1), Saul (the first king of Israel, who will first appear in 1 Samuel 9 and whose death occurs at the end of 1 Samuel), and David (Israel’s second and greatest king who will enter the story in 1 Samuel 16 but will not become king until the early chapters of 2 Samuel).

Let us briefly set the scene. The book of 1 Samuel takes us back more than 3,000 years. The date was about 1050 B.C. It was a time when the question of leadership was very much in the air in the small and relatively young nation of Israel.

There had been about 200 years of extraordinary social upheaval, verging at times on anarchy. These were the 200 years after the Israelites had come into the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. The era is often referred to as the period of the judges. Much of it is recounted in the book of Judges, which concludes with this summary: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).² In other words, there was no established and permanent political authority in the land. Anarchy reigned. There was a crisis of leadership in Israel. Or so it seemed.

What kind of leadership did this troubled society need?

We must, of course, remember that Israel was then different from any other nation in the history of the world. Israel was God’s chosen people. They had become a nation because of God’s promise to their ancestor, Abraham. The promise was that God himself would make them into a great nation and that through them he would bring blessing to the whole world (Genesis 12:1-3).

So the leadership question had a particular spin to it in those days at the end of the book of Judges and the beginning of 1 Samuel. What kind of leader did Israel, God’s own people, need? Through the period of the judges God had again and again raised up a leader (a “judge”) according to the need of the moment. But could that unpredictable arrangement be permanent? Could Israel survive lurching from crisis to crisis, as they had for the last two centuries? As we will see, threats from other peoples, especially the Philistines, were growing. We will also see that internal instability, even corruption in the nation’s leadership, was threatening Israel’s life. What was the solution for this special people whom God had made his own? What kind of leadership could provide stability and security to Israel? That is the question in the air as 1 Samuel begins.

Already we should realize that the Bible will introduce an important element to the leadership question: What does God have to do with leader-ship? As we follow the unfolding leadership crisis in Israel, we cannot avoid introducing this new element into the questions of our leadership crisis: what difference does God make to the kind of leader I should be and (more importantly) the kind of leaders I should follow?

The book of 1 Samuel is going to tell us the extraordinary story of the leadership crisis in Israel at the end of the second millennium B.C. In ways that will surprise us, it will point us to God’s astonishing answer to Israel’s predicament. We will see that God’s answer for Israel turns out to be his answer for the whole world and for each of us individually.

However, we must not jump ahead too quickly. In order to appreciate the important things that God has caused to be “written down for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:11)³ in 1 Samuel, we must listen carefully and patiently to precisely what is written and consider its significance in the context of the whole Bible.

We will begin with the opening paragraph, where we are introduced to a particular family that will play a very important role in the story 1 Samuel has to tell.

“A CERTAIN MAN” (v. 1)

The first few words of 1 Samuel are like the beginnings of a number of Old Testament books. There are names of people and places that seem to the modern reader to be quite obscure. These unfamiliar details do not exactly grab our attention. However, although the writer of an Old Testament book may not have treated his opening sentence in the way of modern authors, there is good reason for us to assume that the first few lines of a book are worth our careful attention.

In the case of 1 Samuel this expectation is rewarded in a surprising and paradoxical way. Remembering that the immediate background to 1 Samuel is the end of the book of Judges, we know that there were grave matters of national importance in the air: no king in Israel, everyone doing what was right in his own eyes. The book opens with details about “a certain man” from the hill country of Ephraim:

There was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephrathite. (v. 1)

Why are we introduced to this man, Elkanah? The details given to us about him are, to say the least, perplexing.

His Town, His Family, His Connections

Ramathaim-zophim⁴ (or Ramah for short, see v. 19) is not a town of great importance in the Old Testament story so far. It was at this time a relatively obscure town in the hills of Ephraim.⁵ There is no obvious reason that we should be interested in “a certain man of Ramah.”

Neither are the family connections of Elkanah striking in any way. Jeroham (his father), Elihu (his grandfather), Tohu (his great-grandfather), and his great-great-grandfather Zuph are all relatively “insignificant and obscure people.”⁶ The information in verse 1 tells us only that this man was, as we might say, a “nobody” in Israel.⁷ Why, in these critical days, are we being introduced to this insignificant character?

Elkanah himself (or perhaps his great-great-grandfather) is described as an “Ephrathite.” This could mean that he had family connections with Bethlehem (also known as Ephrathah).⁸

We know, of course, that Bethlehem Ephrathah would eventually become very famous indeed. In the course of this book we will meet another Ephrathite who will make Bethlehem famous for all time. David was “the son of an Ephrathite” (1 Samuel 17:12), and Bethlehem is the town where his story began (1 Samuel 16:1-13). But he is still half a book away! About three centuries later, a prophet would say:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,
from ancient days. (Micah 5:2)

That very prophecy was fulfilled in the birth of Jesus (see the citation of Micah 5:2 in Matthew 2:6).

Once again we are jumping ahead too quickly! There is much for us to learn by following the path that begins here with the obscure Elkanah the Ephrathite. At the time of 1 Samuel 1:1 a connection with Bethlehem was no claim to fame.

His Important Unimportance

The very obscurity of the names and places in the opening sentence of the book is what should strike us. Their importance lies ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Word to Those Who Preach the Word
• Preface
• Part One Samuel: The Leader God Provided
• Part Two Saul: The Leader the People Asked for
• Part Three David: The Leader “According to God’s Own Heart”
• Notes
• About the Book Jacket