Samuel was the first and only kingmaker; Saul and David were his handiwork. He was a priest, a soldier and a statesman of more than ordinary capacity and qualities, far superior to any of the judges that governed Israel during the last four centuries. He was stern and severe, but without blemish otherwise. He was, as far as we can learn from history, a relentless and cruel man towards his enemies. He was of immense will-power, resolute and energetic. He was honored to an extraordinary degree by the people for whom he accomplished so much. He left the nation at his death more firmly united than it had ever been—with an organized army, a stable government, and a well-filled treasury. It was Samuel that really raised the nation to the utmost hight that it ever attained, for he laid the foundation for Solomon’s glory, the zenith of Hebrew nationality.
It is he that closes the second period of national life, the people having attained under him its maximum standing as a nation, and the greatness which culminated in Solomon, and the only political unity as a nation that the Hebrews ever had.
A parallel may be drawn between the two periods. The Egyptian period: Four centuries or so pass without anything being done, until a man rises possessing the necessary qualifications to mold these people into a nation. The second period consists of a struggle with other nations, almost continuously, to exist. Necessities arise; men present themselves who seize the opportunity to fill up the want for the time being, until the coming of Samuel, the right man, at the right time, for the right place. He closes the second act of the Hebrews’ struggle for nationality by giving them a centralized form of government, and placing a king at their head to rule them.
All the transactions of his life were human, natural. His conduct was perfectly in harmony with the age he lived in. The nation as a whole had become a little more civilized, and had reached as high a point of intelligence as it ever attained—that is, as a nation.
Thus far we have not seen anything in their history that other nations had not to contend with. To attribute their acts, individually or as a nation, to any supernatural power, to God, Jehova, or the Lord, is preposterous. In their dealings, their fightings, their cruelty, their brutality, their superstition, and their ignorance, they were in no sense superior to any of the contemporaneous nations. They were no better in their conduct than their neighbors. The strongest had always the best of it; the conquered had to submit to slavery or be killed, women are captured and used, and the plunder is divided.
Notwithstanding the priestly rule of the Levites, the Hebrews are constantly relapsing into idolatry, brought back to the fold, and relapsing again.
The church was at this time used for all sorts of corrupt purposes. The Jehova that had been brought into the theological world with such an immense boom by Moses had expended a good deal of its original force.
The remembrance of that stupendous crisis of the Hebrew national existence was kept alive and the flames were fanned by priestly interest. The God after Moses, the Jehova, had shrunk into the Lord, and the ark was the representative of God. “The ark of God was taken,” … “when she heard tidings of the ark of God” ([1 Sam. iv], etc.). And the success or failure of the Hebrews depended on the man who led them. With a weak man as general or leader they were beaten, with a strong man they won.
Other nations meanwhile had sprung into life, and become powerful, without Jehova—without the God of the Hebrews. They had, however, idols and images, which seemed to behave with far greater propriety than the God of Israel. So well did these mythological deities manage their affairs, that they almost swallowed up the whole Hebrew race.
Samuel, having established a kingdom, and crowned two kings, Saul and David, dies, leaving these two competitors in the field.