1 Samuel 12:20 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Samuel 12:20
And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: ye have done all this wickedness: yet turn not aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart;
to work (in any sense) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine plural
LORD
יְהוָ֖הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
heart
לְבַבְכֶֽםle.vav.Khem
H3824
the heart (as the most interior organ) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Deuteronomy 11:16 Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;
Joshua 23:6 Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to t…
Psalms 101:3 I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
Psalms 125:5 As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the LORD shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity: but peace shall be upon Isra…
Exodus 20:19-20 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
Deuteronomy 31:29 For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will bef…
Jeremiah 3:1 They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be…
1 Peter 3:16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversat…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 12:16–end
Two things Samuel here aims at: -
I. To convince the people of their sin in desiring a king. They were now rejoicing before God in and with their king (Sa1 11:15), and offering to God the sacrifices of praise, which they hoped God would accept; and this perhaps made them think that there was no harm in their asking a king, but really they had done well in it. Therefore Samuel here charges it upon them as their sin, as wickedness, great wickedness in the sight of the Lord. Note, Though we meet with prosperity and success in a way of sin, yet we must not therefore think the more favourably of it. They have a king, and if they conduct themselves well their king may be a very great blessing to…
HE TERRIFIES THEM WITH THUNDER IN HARVEST-TIME. (Sa1 12:17-25)
Is it not wheat harvest to-day?--That season in Palestine occurs at the end of June or beginning of July, when it seldom or never rains, and the sky is serene and cloudless. There could not, therefore, have been a stronger or more appropriate proof of a divine mission than the phenomenon of rain and thunder happening, without any prognostics of its approach, upon the prediction of a person professing himself to be a prophet of the Lord, and giving it as an attestation of his words being true. The people regarded it as a miraculous display of divine power, and, panic-struck, implored the prophet to pray for them. Promising to do…
Ye have done all this wickedness - That is, although ye have done all this wickedness: what was past God would pass by, provided they would be obedient in future.
John Gill on 1 Samuel 12:20
And Samuel said unto the people, fear not,.... Being destroyed by the tempest:
ye have done all this wickedness; in asking a king; that is, though they were guilty of so heinous a sin, yet there were grace and mercy with God, and they should not despair of it, so be it that they did not depart from him, but cordially served him; the Targum is,"ye have been the cause of all this evil;''the storm of thunder and rain; and though they had, he would not have them despond or indulge slavish fear:
yet turn not aside from following the Lord; the worship of the Lord, as the Targum; provided they did not depart from the Lord, and forsake his worship, word, and ordinances, they need not fear utter ru…
The Church Fathers
"And Samuel said: Do not fear. You have done all this evil. Nevertheless, do not turn aside from following the Lord. And serve the Lord with all your heart." 11. The mind of the penitent is then rightly directed if it fears the divine judgments and trusts in the mercy of almighty God. Fear without hope indeed casts one headlong into despair, but when it is joined with hope, it works the salvation of the mind. Therefore the excellent teacher must watch with the utmost zeal to terrify the one who sins, and to lead the one who has been terrified back to the hope of pardon: so that through fear he may cease to sin, and through hope of obtaining forgiveness, he may seek the harbor of divine mercy. Samuel, therefore, raising his terrified subjects to the virtue of hope, says: "You have done all this evil; yet do not turn aside from following the Lord." As if to say: If you cease to sin, you can more quickly arrive at obtaining pardon for what you have committed. Do not therefore turn aside from following the Lord. Concerning the praise of the just, it is promised: "For you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways" (Luke 1:76). Hence Elijah says: "The Lord lives, in whose sight I stand" (1 Kings 17:1). Hence the Psalmist says: "Let the just exult in the sight of God" (Psalm 68:4). To stand in the sight of the Lord, or before the Lord, is to presume upon the love of the Creator by the testimony of a good conscience. Those indeed stand in His sight who, by the merit of great action, are secure in the heavenly grace of their Creator. But sinners, when they commit evil, flee from the face of the Lord; yet when they resolve to return through penance, they are, as it were, behind the Lord's back: because they neither wish to depart further, and yet cannot presume upon God as friends. Hence it is that the sinful woman is said to have stood behind Him, so that she might deserve to kiss the Lord's feet (Luke 7:38). Behind Him also stood that woman who touched the hem of His garment and deserved to be healed of her flow of blood (Matthew 9:20). She stands behind indeed out of shame for her sin, but she touches through the power of hope. Because, therefore, we must always blush for the iniquities we have committed, and avoid those things in which we are confounded, Samuel commands sinners not to turn aside from following the Lord. But because it is not…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Decision · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Kings · Sin of Israel in seeking — Sin of Israel in seeking
Reproof · When from God: Should be accompanied by exhortation to repentance — When from God: Should be accompanied by exhortation to repentance
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Samuel thereupon announced to them first of all, that the Lord would not forsake His people for His great name's sake, if they would only serve Him with uprightness. In order, however, to give no encouragement to any false trust in the covenant faithfulness of the Lord, after the comforting words, "Fear not," he told them again very decidedly that they had done wrong, but that now they were not to turn away from the Lord, but to serve Him with all their heart, and not go after vain idols. To strengthen this admonition, he repeats the תּסוּרוּ לא in Sa1 12:21, with the explanation, that in turning from the Lord they would fall away to idols, which could not bring them either help or deliveran…
The people asked Samuel to intercede for them (see also 7:8) rather than praying themselves probably because they were out of fellowship with God (note the use of your God rather than “our God”). • added to our sins: The sins included idol worship (12:21; see study note on 8:8).
Rashi on 1 Samuel 12:17
Is today not the [season of the] wheat harvest? And rain is a sign of a curse,11 Maseches Ta’anis 12b. and the Holy One, Blessed is He, is reluctant to visit punishment unnecessarily. Nonetheless, I have power, and I shall call to 'ה, and He will make it thunder and rain.
Then you will know and see. That it was unnecessary for you to ask for a king and to show disrespect towards me.
