1 Samuel 7:9 - meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Samuel 7:9
And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the LORD: and Samuel cried unto the LORD for Israel; and the LORD heard him.
to take (in the widest variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
a
אֶחָ֔ד'e.Chad
H259
properly · noun, common feminine singular absolute
sucking
חָלָב֙cha.Lav
H2461
milk (as the richness of kine) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
lamb
טְלֵ֤הte.Leh
H2924
a lamb · noun, common masculine singular construct
offered
וַיַּעֲלֵ֧הוּvai.ya.'a.le.hu
H5927
to ascend · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
offering
עוֹלָ֛הo.Lah
H5930
a step or (collectively · noun, common feminine singular absolute
wholly
כָּלִ֖ילka.Lil
H3632
complete · adjective, masculine singular absolute
LORD
לַֽיהוָ֑הla.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
Samuel
שְׁמוּאֵ֤לshe.mu.'El
H8050
Shemuel · proper noun, a man's name
cried
וַיִּזְעַ֨קvai.yiz.'Ak
H2199
to shriek (from anguish or danger) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
LORD
יְהוָה֙Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵ֔לYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
LORD
יְהוָֽהYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
heard
וַֽיַּעֲנֵ֖הוּvai.ya.'a.Ne.hu
H6030
properly · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
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
Jeremiah 15:1 Then said the LORD unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight,…
Psalms 99:6 Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name; they called upon the LORD, and he answered them.
1 Samuel 7:17 And his return was to Ramah; for there was his house; and there he judged Israel; and there he built an altar unto the LORD.
Psalms 50:15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
1 Samuel 16:2 And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrific…
James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availet…
Judges 6:28 And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down, and the grove was cut down that was by it,…
1 Samuel 6:14-15 And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Beth-shemite, and stood there, where there was a great stone: and they clave the wood of the c…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 7:7-12
Here, I. The Philistines invade Israel (Sa1 7:7), taking umbrage from that general meeting for repentance and prayer as if it had been a rendezvous for war, and, if so, they thought it prudent to keep the war out of their own country. They had no just cause for this suspicion; but those that seek to do mischief to others will be forward to imagine that others design mischief to them. Now see here, 1. How evil sometimes seems to come out of good. The religious meeting of the Israelites at Mizpeh brought trouble upon them from the Philistines, which perhaps tempted them to wish they had staid at home and to blame Samuel for calling them together. But we may be in God's way and yet meet with di…
WHILE SAMUEL PRAYS, THE PHILISTINES ARE DISCOMFITED. (Sa1 7:7-14)
when the Philistines heard, &c.--The character and importance of the national convention at Mizpeh were fully appreciated by the Philistines. They discerned in it the rising spirit of religious patriotism among the Israelites that was prepared to throw off the yoke of their domination. Anxious to crush it at the first, they made a sudden incursion while the Israelites were in the midst of their solemn celebration. Unprepared for resistance, they besought Samuel to supplicate the divine interposition to save them from their enemies. The prophet's prayers and sacrifice were answered by such a tremendous storm of thunder and lig…
Samuel took a sucking lamb - This sucking lamb must have been eight days under its mother before it could be offered, as the law says, Lev 22:27.
Though Samuel was not a priest, yet he offered this sacrifice; or he might have ordered Eleazar to offer it, and still be said to have done it himself: Qui facit per alterum, facit per se; "He who procures a thing to be done, may be said to do it himself." His not sacrificing at the tabernacle was justified by the necessity of the case; neither tabernacle nor ark was at hand.
The Church Fathers
But Samuel took one suckling lamb, etc. The Lord took the innocent one, whom He had clothed in human form for the salvation of the world, and offered Him as a whole burnt offering on the altar of the cross to the Father. And it is rightly said that He offered a whole burnt offering, that is, wholly consumed, as one conceived without iniquity, born, and living in the flesh without sin, making all that He did through humanity worthy of the fire of the Holy Spirit of God. And the Lord prayed to the Father for His faithful, that their faith might not fail (Luke XXII). He prayed also for those who persecuted Him, that they might be forgiven the great sin of perfidy which they committed unknowingly (Luke XXIII). And the Father heard Him, strengthening the faith of those who almost lost it, and calling those who completely lacked faith to belief.
17. But good pastors also confer upon their afflicted subjects not only the aids of prayers, but also of sacrifices. Whence it is added: 'And Samuel took a suckling lamb, and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord, and Samuel cried out.' What is the cry of Samuel, if not the great power of desire in the supplication of the priest? Whence to Moses, silent on his lips, yet desiring the salvation of his subject people with fervent devotion, it is said by the Lord: 'Why do you cry out to me' (Exod. XIV, 15)? But who is the suckling lamb, if not the one whom his forerunner pointed out, saying: 'Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world' (John I, 29)? And he is called suckling, because in his innocence true humanity is proclaimed. But one lamb is offered, because apart from him, no one is found who might take away the sins of the world. And indeed he offered the lamb whole. For the wholeness of the lamb pertains to the soundness of the catholic profession. For it is as though one divides the lamb, who is separated from the rule of faith by the sword of error. The lamb, therefore, is so called on account of innocence; suckling, on account of the assumption of our nature; one, on account of the singularity of his power; whole, on account of the most firm soundness of our faith. 18. But if anyone wishes to refer these things not to him, but to his imitator, he may do so. For we offer a lamb when, through the good of chastity and innocence, we are conformed to our Redeemer; and when we are fed by the teaching of our innocent Fathers, we suck as it were at the breasts by which we are nourished unto eternal life. We also offer one lamb if, after the beginnings of religious conversion, we are polluted by no stain of wickedness. For he offers one lamb who does not flow away from the purpose of innocence to the stains of a polluted life, from which he would have to return through the repetition of good works. To offer a whole lamb is also to prepare for eternal life not only continence of the flesh but integrity of the mind. He by no means offers a whole lamb to the Lord who consecrates his flesh to God through continence but does not restrain the secrets of his mind from the wantonness of impure thoughts. For he steals away, as it were, a part of the lamb from the sacrifice, who does not join purity of heart to continence of body.…
Dictionary and topics
David — Beloved, the eighth and youngest son of Jesse, a citizen of Bethlehem. His father seems to have been a man in humble life. His mother’s name is not recorded. Some think she was the Nahash of 2 Sam.…
Eben-ezer — Stone of help, the memorial stone set up by Samuel to commemorate the divine assistance to Israel in their great battle against the Philistines, whom they totally routed (1 Sam. 7:7-12) at Aphek, in…
Lamb — (1.) Heb. kebes, a male lamb from the first to the third year. Offered daily at the morning and the evening sacrifice (Ex. 29:38-42), on the Sabbath day (Num. 28:9), at the feast of the New Moon…
Mizpah — Or Miz’peh, watch-tower; the look-out. (1.) A place in Gilead, so named by Laban, who overtook Jacob at this spot (Gen. 31:49) on his return to Palestine from Padan-aram. Here Jacob and Laban set up…
Prayer — Is converse with God; the intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to him. Prayer may be oral or mental, occasional or constant, ejaculatory or…
Samuel — Heard of God. The peculiar circumstances connected with his birth are recorded in 1 Sam. 1:20. Hannah, one of the two wives of Elkanah, who came up to Shiloh to worship before the Lord, earnestly…
Burnt Offering, The · Was offered: Before going to war — Was offered: Before going to war
Lamb, The · Offered in sacrifice: While sucking — Offered in sacrifice: While sucking
Philistines · Miraculously routed at Mizpeh — Miraculously routed at Mizpeh
Prayer, Answers To · Exemplified: Samuel — Exemplified: Samuel
Priests · On special occasions persons not of Aaron’s family acted as
John Gill on 1 Samuel 7:9
And Samuel took a sucking lamb,.... Which it might be, and yet more than eight days old, for under that it might not be sacrificed, Exodus 22:30.
and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord; the whole of it was burnt, skin and all, whereas the skin was the priest's in other burnt offerings; and this is remarked (m) as one of the three things in which it differed from other offerings; the word being feminine, the Jews gather from hence, as Jarchi notes, that females might be offered at a private altar:
and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; not only offered a sacrifice for them, but prayed for them:
and the Lord heard him; and answered him, either by causing fire to come d…
Victory obtained over the Philistines through Samuel's prayer. - Sa1 7:5, Sa1 7:6. When Israel had turned to the Lord with all its heart, and had put away all its idols, Samuel gathered together all the people at Mizpeh, to prepare them for fighting against the Philistines by a solemn day for penitence and prayer. For it is very evident that the object of calling all the people to Mizpeh was that the religious act performed there might serve as a consecration for battle, not only from the circumstance that, according to Sa1 7:7, when the Philistines heard of the meeting, they drew near to make war upon Israel, but also from the contents of Sa1 7:5 : "Samuel said (sc., to the heads or represe…
The whole burnt offering was probably for forgiveness of sin (see Lev 1:1-4). • The Lord answered with a forceful thunderclap (1 Sam 7:10).
Rashi on 1 Samuel 7:9
And offered it all as a burnt offering. The כְּתִיב is 'וַיַעֲלֶהָ' because it was a female.8Although the קְרִי is in the male form. From here our Rabbis deduced that a female animal is acceptable as a burnt offering on a private altar.9
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
— On special occasions persons not of Aaron’s family acted as
Samuel · The Philistines — The Philistines
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).
