1 Samuel15:24–35

Cheerfully, or in chains? The one other verse that holds this word verbal / quotation — confirmed

The adverb describing how Agag came, מַעֲדַנֹּת (ma‘ăḏannōṯ, H4575), stands in only two verses in the whole Hebrew Bible. The other is Job 38:31, where God asks whether Job can loose the bands of Orion or bind the chains of the Pleiades. Pulpit takes that as decisive — “The very word, however, occurs in Job 38:31 , where the A.V. renders it bands , and this seems the right sense: ‘Agag came unto him in fetters.’” Ellicott allows the derivation but prefers “cheerfully”; Cambridge reports the Septuagint's “trembling” and the Vulgate's doubled “sleek and trembling” and declines to choose; Barnes calls it “very obscure.” ⚙ The Verifier confirms the lexeme is shared and rare; what it cannot do is tell us which sense the writer intended. Every English Bible here is making a decision the Hebrew does not force.

Job 38:31

basis: Verifier: shared rare Hebrew lexeme H4575 maʻădannâh (in 2 vv) — this unit and Job 38:31 are the only two occurrences in the canon; a genuine verbal link, though no quotation in either direction is claimed

“He will not deal falsely” — the six verses that hold shâqar verbal / quotation — confirmed

The verb Samuel uses for what God does not do, יְשַׁקֵּר (shâqar, H8266), is rare: six verses. Its company is instructive. Abimelech makes Abraham swear not to shâqar with him (Genesis 21:23); Israel is forbidden it in the holiness code (Leviticus 19:11); the psalmist protests that the nation has not shâqared in God's covenant though crushed (Psalm 44:17); Isaiah recalls God saying of His people “they will not deal falsely” (Isaiah 63:8); and in Psalm 89:33, in the middle of the oracle about David's throne, God swears that He will not shâqar in His faithfulness. ⚙ That last is the one to sit with. The same rare verb whose denial seals Saul's rejection is the verb whose denial secures the dynasty of the neighbour “better than thou.” One king loses a throne on God's unbreakable word; another receives one on the same word.

Psalm 89:33 · Isaiah 63:8 · Genesis 21:23 · Leviticus 19:11 · Psalm 44:17

basis: Verifier: shared rare Hebrew lexeme H8266 shâqar (in 6 vv) across all five listed verses — verbal link on a rare covenant verb; no quotation is claimed in either direction

The wing of the robe, torn and cut structural / thematic — confirmed

What Saul seizes is the כְּנַף (kânâph, H3671) of Samuel's מְעִיל (mᵉʻîyl, H4598), and it tears. Nine chapters later, in a cave at En-gedi, David cuts the kânâph of Saul's mᵉʻîyl and his heart smites him for it (1 Samuel 24:4–5). Cambridge notes the parallel at this verse (“Cp. 1 Samuel 24:4”), and Gill reports a rabbinic tradition that read the sign in exactly that direction — “he that cut off the skirt of his garment should reign in his stead” — while himself holding to the plain sense that Saul tore Samuel's. ⚙ The narrative symmetry is hard to miss: the king who tore a prophet's hem to keep a kingdom loses it; the man who cut a king's hem and repented of it receives one. But the tiering must stay honest — both nouns are moderately common, and no quotation is involved.

1 Samuel 24:4

basis: Verifier (pair check, 1 Samuel 15:27 ↔ 1 Samuel 24:4): shared Hebrew lexemes H4598 mᵉʻîyl (in 27 vv) and H3671 kânâph (in 85 vv) — a real verbal contact inside a shared narrative motif, but neither lexeme is rare enough to carry a verbal-quotation claim; Cambridge and Gill both record the cross-reference

Ahijah's ten pieces — a torn garment as a torn kingdom structural / thematic — confirmed

Both Gill and Cambridge send the reader from Samuel's torn hem to Ahijah the Shilonite, who tore his new garment into twelve pieces and gave ten to Jeroboam with the words “I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon.” Gill: “by a like sign was signified the rending of the ten tribes from the kingdom of Solomon in his son Rehoboam, 1 Kings 11:30 .” ⚙ The two scenes are not related by shared vocabulary in the Verifier's candidate list; they are related as a genre — the prophetic sign-act, in which a garment is destroyed so that a dynasty's fate can be seen rather than merely heard. The difference is worth holding: Ahijah tore deliberately, Samuel's robe tore by accident in another man's hand.

1 Kings 11:30-31

basis: Shared prophetic sign-act pattern (a garment rent to signify a kingdom rent), recorded by Gill and Cambridge as a cross-reference at this verse; the Verifier's candidate list for this unit did not surface a shared-lexeme basis, so the basis here is the pattern plus the commentators' citation, not a computed verbal link

“God is not a man, that he should lie” — Balaam's oracle beside Samuel's structural / thematic — confirmed

Cambridge notes that the words of v. 29 “closely resemble Numbers 23:19,” and K&D cites the same verse. The resemblance is real: Balaam declares that God is not ’îš that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent. ⚙ One honest qualification belongs on this link. The verb for “repent” is the same in both places — nâcham — but the verb for “lie” is not: Numbers 23:19 uses kâzab, while our verse uses the rarer shâqar. So the resemblance is a shared formula about the difference between God and man, not a quotation.

Numbers 23:19

basis: Verifier (pair check, 1 Samuel 15:29 ↔ Numbers 23:19): shared lexemes H5162 nâcham (in 100 vv), H120 ʼâdâm (in 526 vv), H1931 hûwʼ, H3808 lôʼ — a genuine shared formula, but nâcham at 100 verses is not rare enough for a verbal-quotation tier and the two verses use different verbs for 'lie' (kâzab vs H8266 shâqar); Cambridge and K&D both cite the parallel

The sworn word that does not relent — Psalm 110:4 structural / thematic — confirmed

The Nifal יִנָּחֵם that Samuel denies of God in v. 29 reappears, in the same stem and the same negated form, in Psalm 110:4: “YHWH has sworn and will not relent — you are a priest for ever.” ⚙ The theological shape is identical and the direction is opposite. In 1 Samuel 15 the unrelenting word takes a crown away; in Psalm 110 it establishes an unending priesthood by oath. Hebrews later builds its argument for the permanence of Christ's priesthood on precisely that oath and its irrevocability — though that is a New Testament reading of the psalm, not of this chapter.

Psalm 110:4

basis: Verifier (pair check, 1 Samuel 15:29 ↔ Psalm 110:4): shared lexemes H5162 nâcham (in 100 vv) and H3808 lôʼ — the same verb in the same negated Nifal, but at 100 verses the lexeme is not rare, so the link is tiered structural rather than verbal

Worldly grief and godly grief — a cross-Testament reading of Saul's two confessions structural / thematic — confirmed

Barnes puts the question the unit raises but does not answer: why were Saul's repeated confessions unavailing when David's was not? His answer is that “Saul only shrank from the punishment of his sin. David shrank in abhorrence from the sin itself.” ⚙ Paul draws the same distinction in 2 Corinthians 7:10 between the grief that works repentance and the grief of the world that works death, and Hebrews 12:17 describes Esau seeking the blessing with tears and finding no place for a change of mind. Both are offered here as a frame for reading Saul, not as claims that either passage has 1 Samuel 15 in view.

2 Corinthians 7:10 · Hebrews 12:17

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek ↔ Hebrew): no shared Strong's lexeme is possible between these texts, so no verbal tier can be claimed. The basis is a shared motif — remorse over consequence distinguished from repentance over sin — explicitly drawn at this verse by Barnes (citing David, Psalm 51:4) and by Cambridge (2 Samuel 12:13; Psalm 51:4). Neither commentator cites 2 Corinthians 7:10 or Hebrews 12:17; both New Testament references are ⚙ our own, offered as a frame for reading Saul and not as a claim that either passage has this chapter in view

“To thy neighbour, better than thou” — the unnamed recipient ancient/widely-held

The oracle leaves the successor deliberately blank: לְרֵעֲךָ הַטּוֹב מִמֶּךָּ, “to thy associate, the good one, more than thou.” K&D is careful that “Samuel did not yet know to whom Jehovah would give it,” and Gill agrees, noting that the summons to Jesse's house comes only afterward. Geneva's margin names David; Poole reasons to the tribe of Judah from geography. ⚙ And the line does not stop at David. Pulpit draws it out explicitly: Saul “laid the foundation for the throne of David, who in so many points was the ideal of the theocratic king; and Israel in like manner prepared the way for the coming of the true Messianic King.” The kingdom taken from the man who feared the people is given to a man after God's own heart, and through him by covenant oath to the Son of David — an oath guaranteed, as Psalm 89:33 says using this chapter's own rare verb, by the God who does not deal falsely. This reading of the Davidic promise as reaching to Christ is the ancient and near-universal one, held in this apparatus by Pulpit and implied by Gill and Geneva.

1 Samuel 16:1 · Psalm 89:33 · Matthew 1:1 · Luke 1:32-33

The prophet who carried out the ban the king refused novel

Barnes sees the point of the Agag scene most clearly: Samuel “executed the חרם chērem 1 Samuel 15:3 which Saul had violated, and so both saved the nation from the guilt of a broken oath, and gave a final example to Saul… of uncompromising obedience to the commandments of God. There is something awful in the majesty of the prophet rising above and eclipsing that of the king.” ⚙ The structure is the one the whole Old Testament keeps repeating: the anointed king fails to do the whole will of God, and someone else must complete it or the nation stands under a broken oath. Henry's closing question at these verses is the same one from the other side — “Do we desire to do the whole will of God?” The office that finally unites the failed king and the obedient prophet in one person, and so leaves nothing for another to complete, is the reason the New Testament speaks of one who came saying “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.” ⚙ We mark this as our own synthesis: the typological joining of Samuel's completed ban to Christ's completed obedience is a reading, not a citation, and no voice in this apparatus makes it in these terms.

Hebrews 10:7 · John 4:34 · Philippians 2:8

Samuel mourning a living king ancient/widely-held

Samuel הִתְאַבֵּל over Saul — the Hitpael of ʼâbal, the verb of mourning for the dead, performed over a man still reigning. Henry sets it beside the Gospels without elaboration and the sentence lands: “Saul seems unconcerned at the token of God's displeasure which he lay under, yet Samuel mourns day and night for him. Jerusalem was carnally secure while Christ wept over it.” Ellicott fills in the human cost — Samuel had known Saul “from the days of his splendid youthful promise,” had loved him, “regarded him as his own adopted child,” and had built on him “all his hopes for the future of the Israel he loved so well.” ⚙ The pattern Henry names — a prophet weeping over the secure and unconcerned — is the same one that reaches its end on the descent of Olivet. This comparison is Henry's own, recorded verbatim in the apparatus, and belongs to the long tradition of reading Israel's mourning prophets as foreshadowing the weeping of Christ.

Luke 19:41-42 · Matthew 23:37