The Pulpit Commentary — Joshua — Section 20

10) ; and t.lie Law itself expressly provided for the possibility of a, regal form of government (Deut. xvii. 14-20). But the spirit in which it was demnnded wea faulty. It implied that their im'isible King was unable to go out before them and fight their battles, to free them from the Philistines, and protect them against the Amorites (1 Sam. xii. 12) ; they must have a visible king. In other words, there· was no faith in their request; it was a desire not so mucb to know God's will as t-0 obtain their own. The very wording of their reiterated demand seems to show this," Nay, but we will haYe a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations ; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles" (1 Sam. ,'iii. 19, 20). The picture which Samuel faithfully drew of Oriental despotism, as it existed all around them, had an effect the exact opposite of which he had intended. "Nay, that is the very thing we want; the pomp to dazzle, and the strong hand to rule.'' Thus Samuel " stood between the dead and the living," between the dead past, with which a,ll his affections were buried, and the living future, in which hope had scarcely begun to shine. But God's command was enough for him, little as he might understand it. Had he been "seeking the living among the dead"? and were the people right, after all? Or was God "giving them a king in His anger,'' as He gaYe them flesh to eat in the wilderness? At any rate, the course of His prophet was clear : henceforth to devote his thought and care to the moulding of this new form of government, to directing the stream of the current which he was powerless to stem. There is something inexpressibly touching in Samuel's complete surrender of the connctions and aspirations of a lifetime. After growing gray in a devoted effort to make the system committed to him meet the needs of the people over whom he ruled, he was suddenly called upon to break with the past, and not only give up his own supremacy in the civil government, but himself inaugurate the system that was to supersede him. It was not merely as if what was nearest and dearest to him was slain before his eyes ; it was not merely as if, like Abraham, he was ordered to strike the fatal blow himself. He was called upon to do this and more ; to take a stranger to his bosom in the place of the ale.in, and to foster him as his own son. 'iVe shall measure the sacrifice of will better if we compare it with another ; and we shall at the same time measure the difference in power between the philosophy of a pious heathen and the faith of a pious Hebrew. When the un- welcome truth was forced upon Cato that the republic to which he had devoted his life was dead, his religion allowed him, and his philosophy counselled him, to die v.'ith the political system for which he had striven in vain. And so the last upholder of the old Roman republic committed suicide at Utica. It never occurred to hiJD that Heaven and his country still claimed services which it was no longer possible to render to a particular system; or that Heaven had better things in store for his country ~der a new regime. To tranRfer his energies to the side of Cresar in order to make the new regime as beneficial as possible would to Cato have been inconceivable. And this is precis<,Jy the kind of sacrifice, intensified by being a sacrifice of religious as well as of political conviction, that Samuel without a murmur made. 1:t would take ti.J..11n to work out, but it should be done. There is a bursting, as of heart- striogs, a wrench, as of one who is parting from what is dearer than life, in the simple utterance with which the discussion ends: "And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye every man unto his city" (eh, viii, 22). There was no power to say more.  JOSHUA TO ~EHEMIAR 11xiii