1 Samuel

What 1 Samuel is about

The book opens with a childless woman praying so intensely at the tabernacle that the priest assumes she is drunk. Hannah’s son, Samuel, becomes the last of the judges and the prophet who anoints Israel’s first two kings. That is a characteristic move for this book: national history keeps turning on people nobody was watching.

Israel asks for a king “like all the nations”. Samuel warns them what a king will cost — conscription, taxation, the loss of much they take for granted — and God tells him to give them one anyway. Saul looks the part: tall, capable, and initially humble. He unravels slowly, through a series of moments where he prefers appearances to obedience, until Samuel tells him plainly that God desires obedience more than sacrifice.

The second half of the book runs two stories side by side. David, anointed privately while Saul still reigns, kills Goliath, wins the army’s loyalty, and then spends years as a fugitive with the chance to kill Saul twice and refusing both times. Saul, meanwhile, deteriorates into paranoia. The book is a long, patient study in what power does to a person who has stopped listening.

Where it sits in the story

First Samuel begins the monarchy that runs through 2 Samuel and Kings to the exile. It also introduces David, whose family line the prophets keep returning to and whose name attaches to the Messiah in both Testaments — son of David is a claim about this book.

Why it is worth reading

For the sentence at the centre of it: the LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart. First Samuel spends thirty-one chapters demonstrating that, and it is one of the most readable narratives in the Old Testament while it does.