1 Samuel 11–12: Deliverance, Leadership, and Renewed Commitment

Summary

Nahash the Ammonite besieges Jabesh-gilead and offers a treaty on one condition: every man’s right eye is to be gouged out, to shame all Israel. The elders get seven days to find help. When the news reaches Gibeah, the people weep, but Saul, coming in from plowing, is filled with the Spirit of God and with anger. He cuts a yoke of oxen into pieces and sends them across Israel as a summons, and dread of the Lord unites the people. Saul divides them into three companies, attacks at the morning watch, and routs the Ammonites.

After the victory the people want to put Saul’s critics to death, but Saul refuses and gives the credit to the Lord. Samuel gathers everyone at Gilgal to renew the kingdom.

In chapter 12 Samuel gives his farewell address. He invites anyone to testify against his integrity, and the people affirm it. He recounts God’s saving acts and Israel’s repeated forgetting, and he reminds them that asking for a king rejected God as their king. If they fear, serve, and obey the Lord, it will go well. A sign of thunder and rain at wheat harvest leaves the people afraid, and Samuel tells them not to fear, not to turn to “empty things,” and to remember what God has done. He will keep praying for them and teaching them.