Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

On 1 Samuel 12:5-6

the Lord is witness against you, and his anointed is witness - that, by their own acknowledgment, he had given them no cause to weary of the divine government by judges, and that, therefore, the blame of desiring a change of government rested with themselves. This was only insinuated, and they did not fully perceive his drift.

John Gill

On 1 Samuel 12:6

And Samuel said unto the people,.... Having cleared and established his own character, he proceeds to lay before the people some of the great things God had done for them formerly, and quite down to the present time, the more to aggravate their ingratitude in rejecting God as their King:

it is the Lord that advanced Moses and Aaron; raised them from a low estate, the one in a foreign country in Midian, the other in bondage in Egypt, to be deliverers, guides, and governors of his people Israel. Kimchi thinks this refers to what goes before, and that the sense is, that God, that raised Moses and Aaron to great honour and dignity, was a witness between him and the people; in which he is followed by some Christian interpreters. Ben Gersom makes mention of the same, but rather approves of the connection of the words with what follows, as does Abarbinel, and is doubtless most correct; the Targum is,"who hath done mighty things by the hands of Moses and Aaron:"

and that brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt; when they were in bondage there, and that by the means of Moses and Aaron, by whose hands he wrought signs and wonders and inflicted plagues on the Egyptians, which made them willing at last to let Israel go.

Keil & Delitzsch

On 1 Samuel 12:1-6

The time and place of the following address are not given. But it is evident from the connection with the preceding chapter implied in the expression ויּאמר, and still more from the introduction (Sa1 12:1, Sa1 12:2) and the entire contents of the address, that it was delivered on the renewal of the monarchy at Gilgal.

Sa1 12:1-2

Samuel starts with the fact, that he had given the people a king in accordance with their own desire, who would now walk before them. הנּה with the participle expresses what is happening, and will happen still. לפני התהלּך must not be restricted to going at the head in war, but signifies the general direction and government of the nation, which had been in the hands of Samuel as judge before the election of Saul as king. "And I have grown old and grey (שׂבתּי from שׂיב); and my sons, behold, they are with you." With this allusion to his sons, Samuel simply intended to confirm what he had said about his own age. By the further remark, "and I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day," he prepares the way for the following appeal to the people to bear witness concerning his conduct in office.

Sa1 12:3

"Bear witness against me before the Lord," i.e., looking up to the Lord, the omnipotent and righteous God-king, "and before His anointed," the visible administrator of His divine government, whether I have committed any injustice in my office of judge, by appropriating another's property, or by oppression and violence (רצץ, to pound or crush in pieces, when used to denote an act of violence, is stronger than אשׁק, with which it is connected here and in many other passages, e.g., Deu 28:33; Amo 4:1), or by taking atonement money (כּפר, redemption or atonement money, is used, as in Exo 21:30 and Num 35:31, to denote a payment made by a man to redeem himself from capital punishment), "so that I had covered my eyes with it," viz., to exempt from punishment a man who was worthy of death. The בּו, which is construed with העלים, is the בּ instrumenti, and refers to כּפר; consequently it is not to be confounded with מן, "to hide from," which would be quite unsuitable here. The thought is not that the judge covers his eyes from the copher, that he may not see the bribe, but that he covers his eyes with the money offered him as a bribe, so as not to see and not to punish the crime committed.

Sa1 12:4

The people answered Samuel, that he had not done them any kind of injustice.

Sa1 12:5

To confirm this declaration on the part of the people, he then called Jehovah and His anointed as witnesses against the people, and they accepted these witnesses. כּל־ישׂראל is the subject to ויּאמר; and the Keri ויּאמרוּ, though more simple, is by no means necessary. Samuel said, "Jehovah be witness against you," because with the declaration which the people had made concerning Samuel's judicial labours they had condemned themselves, inasmuch as they had thereby acknowledged on oath that there was no ground for their dissatisfaction with Samuel's administration, and consequently no well-founded reason for their request for a king.

Sa1 12:6

But in order to bring the people to a still more thorough acknowledgment of their sin, Samuel strengthened still more their assent to his solemn appeal to God, as expressed in the words "He is witness," by saying, "Jehovah (i.e., yea, the witness is Jehovah), who made Moses and Aaron, and brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt." The context itself is sufficient to show that the expression "is witness" is understood; and there is no reason, therefore, to assume that the word has dropped out of the text through a copyist's error. עשׂה, to make, in a moral and historical sense, i.e., to make a person what he is to be; it has no connection, therefore, with his physical birth, but simply relates to his introduction upon the stage of history, like ποιεῖν, Heb 3:2. But if Jehovah, who redeemed Israel out of Egypt by the hands of Moses and Aaron, and exalted it into His own nation, was witness of the unselfishness and impartiality of Samuel's conduct in his office of judge, then Israel had grievously sinned by demanding a king. In the person of Samuel they had rejected Jehovah their God, who had given them their rulers (see Sa1 8:7). Samuel proves this still further to the people from the following history.

Matthew Henry

On 1 Samuel 12:6-15

Samuel, having sufficiently secured his own reputation, instead of upbraiding the people upon it with their unkindness to him, sets himself to instruct them, and keep them in the way of their duty, and then the change of the government would be the less damage to them.

I. He reminds them of the great goodness of God to them and to their fathers, gives them an abstract of the history of their nation, that, by the consideration of the great things God had done for them, they might be for ever engaged to love him and serve him. "Come," says he (Sa1 12:7), "stand still, stand in token of reverence when God is speaking to you, stand still in token of attention and composedness of mind, and give me leave to reason with you." Religion has reason on its side, Isa 1:18. The work of ministers is to reason with people, not only to exhort and direct, but to persuade, to convince men's judgments, and so to gain their wills and affections. Let reason rule men, and they will be good. He reasons of the righteous acts of the Lord, that is, "both the benefits he hath bestowed upon you, in performance of his promises, and the punishments he has inflicted on you for your sins." His favours are called his righteous acts (Jdg 5:11), because in them he is just to his own honour. He not only puts them in mind of what God had done for them in their days, but of what he had done of old, in the days of their fathers, because the present age had the benefit of God's former favours. We may suppose that his discourse was much larger than as here related. 1. he reminds them of their deliverance out of Egypt. Into that house of bondage Jacob and his family came down poor and little; when they were oppressed they cried unto God, who advanced Moses and Aaron, from mean beginnings, to be their deliverers, and the founders of their state and settlement in Canaan, Sa1 12:6, Sa1 12:8. 2. He reminds them of the miseries and calamities which their fathers brought themselves into by forgetting God and serving other gods, Sa1 12:9. They enslaved themselves, for they were sold as criminals and captives into the hand of oppressors. They exposed themselves to the desolation of war, and their neighbours fought against them. 3. He reminds them of their fathers' repentance and humiliation before God for their idolatries: They said, We have sinned, Sa1 12:10. Let not them imitate the sins of their fathers, for what they had done amiss they had many a time wished undone again. In the day of their distress they had sought unto God, and had promised to serve him; let their children then reckon that good at all times which they found good in bad times. 4. He reminds them of the glorious deliverances God had wrought for them, the victories he had blessed them with, and their happy settlements, many a time, after days of trouble and distress, Sa1 12:11. He specifies some of their judges, Gideon and Jephthah, great conquerors in their time; among the rest he mentions Bedan, whom we read not of any where else: he might be some eminent person, that was instrumental of salvation to them, though not recorded in the book of Judges, such a one as Shamgar, of whom it is said that he delivered Israel, but not that he judged them, Jdg 3:31. Perhaps this Bedan guarded and delivered them on one side, at the same time when some other of the judges appeared and acted for them on another side. Some think it was the same with Jair (so the learned Mr. Poole), others the same with Samson, who was Ben Dan, a son of Dan, of that tribe, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him Be-Dan, inn Dan, in the camp of Can. Samuel mentions himself, not to his own praise, but to the honour of God, who had made him an instrument of subduing the Philistines. 5. At last he puts them in mind of God's late favour to the present generation, in gratifying them with a king, when they would prescribe to God by such a one to save them out of the hand of Nahash king of Ammon, Sa1 12:12, Sa1 12:13. Now it appears that this was the immediate occasion of their desiring a king: Nahash threatened them; they desired Samuel to nominate a general; he told them that God was commander-in-chief in all their wars and they needed no other, that what was wanting in them should be made up by his power: The Lord is your king. But they insisted on it, Nay, but a king shall reign over us. "And now," said he, "you have a king, a king of your own asking - let that be spoken to your shame; but a king of God's making - let that be spoken to his honour and the glory of his grace." God did not cast them off, even when they in effect cast him off.

II. He shows them that they are now upon their good behaviour, they and their king. Let them not think that they had now cut themselves off from all dependence upon God, and that now, having a king of their own, the making of their own fortunes (as men foolishly call it) was in their own hands; no, still their judgment must proceed from the Lord. He tells them plainly,

1. That their obedience to God would certainly be their happiness, Sa1 12:14. If they would not revolt from God to idols, nor rebel against him by breaking his commandments, but would persevere in their allegiance to him, would fear his wrath, serve his interests, and obey his will, then they and their king should certainly be happy; but observe how the promise is expressed: Then you shall continue following the Lord your God; that is, (1.) "You shall continue in the way of your duty to God, which will be your honour and comfort." Note, To those that are sincere in their religion God will give grace to persevere in it: those that follow God faithfully will be divinely strengthened to continue following him. And observe, Following God is a work that is its own wages. It is the matter of a promise as well as of a precept. (2.) "You shall continue under the divine guidance and protection:" You shall be after the Lord, so it is in the original, that is, "he will go before you to lead and prosper you, and make your way plain. The Lord is with you while you are with him."

2. That their disobedience would as certainly be their ruin (Sa1 12:15): "If you rebel, think not that your having a king will secure you against God's judgments, and that having in this instance made yourselves like the nations you may sin at as cheap a rate as they can. No, the hand of the Lord will be against you, as it was against your fathers when they offended him, in the days of the judges." We mistake if we think that we can evade God's justice by shaking off his dominion. If God shall not rule us, yet he will judge us.

Tyndale Study Notes

On 1 Samuel 12:6-8

12:6-25 In 12:1-5, Samuel put himself on trial and was found innocent. In 12:6-25, he put the nation on trial and found it guilty.

12:6 Moses and Aaron were not self-made leaders but were appointed by God as leaders.

Tyndale Open Study Notes · CC BY-SA 4.0