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[88]
Hereupon Samuel, when such a testimony had been given him by them
all, said, "Since you grant that you are not able to lay any ill thing
to my charge hitherto, come on now, and do you hearken while I speak with
great freedom to you. You have been guilty of great impiety against God,
in asking you a king. It behoves you to remember that our grandfather Jacob
came down into Egypt, by reason of a famine, with seventy souls only of
our family, and that their posterity multiplied there to many ten thousands,
whom the Egyptians brought into slavery and hard oppression; that God himself,
upon the prayers of our fathers, sent Moses and Aaron, who were brethren,
and gave them power to deliver the multitude out of their distress, and
this without a king. These brought us into this very land which you now
possess: and when you enjoyed these advantages from God, you betrayed his
worship and religion; nay, moreover, when you were brought under the hands
of your enemies, he delivered you, first by rendering you superior to the
Assyrians and their forces, he then made you to overcome the Ammonites
and the Moabites, and last of all the Philistines; and these things have
been achieved under the conduct of Jephtha and Gideon. What madness therefore
possessed you to fly from God, and to desire to be under a king? - yet
have I ordained him for king whom he chose for you. However, that I may
make it plain to you that God is angry and displeased at your choice of
kingly government, I will so dispose him that he shall declare this very
plainly to you by strange signals; for what none of you ever saw here before,
I mean a winter storm in the midst of harvest, 1
I will entreat of God, and will make it visible to you." Now, as soon
as he had said this, God gave such great signals by thunder and lightning,
and the descent of hail, as attested the truth of all that the prophet
had said, insomuch that they were amazed and terrified, and confessed they
had sinned, and had fallen into that sin through ignorance; and besought
the prophet, as one that was a tender and gentle father to them, to render
God so merciful as to forgive this their sin, which they had added to those
other offenses whereby they had affronted him and transgressed against
him. So he promised them that he would beseech God, and persuade him to
forgive them these their sins. However, he advised them to be righteous,
and to be good, and ever to remember the miseries that had befallen them
on account of their departure from virtue: as also to remember the strange
signs God had shown them, and the body of laws that Moses had given them,
if they had any desire of being preserved and made happy with their king.
But he said, that if they should grow careless of these things, great judgments
would come from God upon them, and upon their king. And when Samuel had
thus prophesied to the Hebrews, he dismissed them to their own homes, having
confirmed the kingdom to Saul the second time.
2
1 Mr. Reland observes here, and proves elsewhere in his note on Antiq. B. III. ch. 1. sect. 6, that although thunder and lightning with us usually happen in summer, yet in Palestine and Syria they are chiefly confined to winter. Josephus takes notice of the same thing again, War, B. IV. ch. 4. sect. 5.
2 HOW THE PHILISTINES MADE ANOTHER EXPEDITION AGAINST THE HEBREWS AND WERE BEATEN.
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