Before Samuel says a word about Israel's sin, he opens himself to judgment: 3"Whose ox have I taken, or whose donkey have I taken?" He has led this nation from his youth, and the only honest answer is the truest kind of tribute: 4"You have not defrauded us or oppressed us." The man about to confront Israel for wanting a king like the nations has just shown, in decades of service, what leadership under the LORD looked like. Set against the taking king he warned them about in chapter 8, the contrast is sharp.
Then Samuel puts the nation on trial by telling its own story back to it. Egypt, the cry for help, Moses and Aaron. Forgetting, oppression, crying out again, deliverance again. The pattern repeats until it is almost hypnotic: forget, suffer, cry out, be rescued, forget. Then comes the break. When Nahash the Ammonite came against them, they said, 12"No, but a king shall reign over us," when the LORD was their king. Every earlier cycle ended with Israel crying out to the LORD. This time, facing the same kind of threat, they skipped straight to demanding a substitute.
Samuel confronts it and stays. 16"Stand still and see this great thing that the LORD will do." At wheat harvest, when rain in that land was almost unheard of, he calls for thunder and rain, and it comes. The sign shows that Samuel speaks for God and that the request for a king was serious enough to draw a covenant response.
The people's answer shows how deeply it lands: 19"Pray for your servants to the LORD your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil." Fear has produced honest confession. And Samuel's reply is why this chapter is among the most pastoral in the book: 20"Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil." He does not soften what they did. Yet in the next breath, 20"do not turn aside from following the LORD," and serve him with all their heart. The door back stands open right beside the verdict.
Then comes the sentence that gives the chapter its center. Samuel is aging, no longer the nation's judge, replaced by the king the people demanded. He could step back. Instead: 23"Far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you." Samuel treats prayer for Israel as a duty he would sin by dropping. His office as judge is ending, and he claims the office of intercessor for the rest of his life, holding the door open with prayer after his hand has left the throne.
That vow reaches beyond Samuel. Hebrews says of Christ that he "always lives to make intercession" for them (Hebrews 7:25). Samuel prayed faithfully for a people he could not force to obey. Christ intercedes for a people he has already redeemed, and he never stops.
Ask who you once prayed for more faithfully than you do now. Hear Samuel's sentence over that name: far be it from me to stop.
Prayer
Father, thank you for every Samuel who refused to stop praying for us when we deserved to be left to the consequences of our choices. Forgive us for turning aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver. Thank you above all for Christ, who always lives to intercede for us and has never once stopped. In Jesus' name, amen.