The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Chronicles — Section 188

force. This would rather be due to the suggestions thickly, richly clustering round about it. Wheuce it grew, what it had intrinsically in it, and to what it was JJromising to grow, would assuredly be some of the first of the thought which we shonld thereupon think. And these deeper, less visible feeders of our own joy would prove the more lasting and the more significant account of the deep feeling wrought within us. The point of Scripture narrative at which we are now arrived reveals to us a whole nation in the crisis of its joy. There are peculiarities about that joy very possibly of a merely temporary character, but there are others that are good for study, as permanent in their nature and as having the efficacy of principles. Let us take note- I. OF SOME OF THE CAUSES OF THIS "JOY IN ISRAEL." The nearer causes are not doubtful. For: 1. The people were glad to have reached the termination of a period harassed by suspense. For some years now they had not lived under any certain satisfactory rule. If their armies had gone out best equipped and full of courage in their cause, they were still not confident that the cause was a safe one, a right one, one that would command the presence among them of the supreme Leader of their hosts, who taught their hands to war and their fingers to fight. And if they were awhile at peace at home, they had no guarantee that the time of peace wa8 one of growth and sound healthy prosperity. The family, the business establishment, is ever in uncertainty, and there is an absence of satisfaction if the parent or the master is all uncertain in habit, in character, in principle, 2. They were glad to have a king who was introduced to them under far different and far better auspices than ever their former king had been. Some years had now elapsed since Saul took office, and though he was anointed by Divine command, yet the distinct announcement was made of a deep disapproval in one sense on the part of the only real King. Under dark omens their visible monarchy opened upon Israel. And the thoughtful and deeper-seeing of the wise and good, the "Israelites indeed" among them, will have early wakened to the process that was going on, and to that fulfilment of Divine fore- bodings that was transpiring in the overcast periods of Saul's defection. But now part of their punishment had already fallen, and for a time they had reason to think that fairer things were before them. They with reason thought that the king of their own enthusiastic choice this day was also "the man after God's own heart." They knew he was not an untried man. They knew rather how tried he had been and also l,ow he had been tried, and how he had borne and acquitted himself in the trial, so as to command the growing honour, esteem, and love of all the people. How tremendous the difference and the consequences of the difference between a good leader, parent, teacher, master, ruler, and a bad or indifferent one I No man is so obscure, so stripped of all surroundings, as to be absolutely bereft of influence and" to live to himself" alone, but they whose very life-place and life-business are to "lead" or "shepherd" in any way are in the very opposite extreme of such a supposition, and the consequences of just what they are, what they say, what they do, are incalculable in momentousness and in responsibility. And an unwilling people show now that they had become very fully alive to this fact. 3. All Israel were glad because all Israel were now again one and at one in the matter of their king and leader. One tabernacle and one court, one palace, one king, one administration of justice, now again they ran call theirs. They do not feel the humiliation, the disgrace, the practical disadvantage of the contrary of these. One of the keenest reproaches which the enemies of Israel must have often flung in their face was their divided state under so much of Saul's nominal kingship and for a few years subsequently. II. OF SOME OF THE DEEPER ELEMENTS FIXING TlIE CIIARACTEn 011' TIDB JOY, One of these did no doubt at this time play a considerable part, though the people were largely unconscious of it. For: 1. Even the mistaken aspiration and that which was counted to them as a sin, to have a visible king, did for all that marlc an aspiration, and this also was counted to them and counted for good so far as ever they permitted it. The very language in which they originally worded their desire was remarkable, in this respect, though somewhat less so in that they quoted as some precedent the fashion of surrounding nations-no models for them. "Make us a king to judge 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. viii. 5-20). 'l'he large multitude of people in different tribes sharply outlined, and in families surprisingly registered, were ou, xu. 1-40.] THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 181