A Silent Principle
Tuesday (January 6)
A Silent Principle
1 Samuel 10:14-16
Saul’s uncle said to him and his servant, “Where did you go?” And he said, “To seek the donkeys. And when we saw they were not to be found, we went to Samuel.” And Saul’s uncle said, “Please tell me what Samuel said to you.” And Saul said to his uncle, “He told us plainly that the donkeys had been found.” But about the matter of the kingdom, or which Samuel had spoken, he did not tell him anything.
We’ve only just met Saul in the narrative and know so little about his personality, his talents, his reputation, his occupation, and his family background, so it’s difficult to interpret what his silence implies. Is he a natural-born leader with cold feet, like his forefather, Gideon? Is he a supremely talented man like Moses but reticent to do the really difficult thing? Is he a crafty, winsome man like Jacob, with a devious streak about him? Is he calloused like Samson, treating Samuel’s coronation as a game or a joke? Or is he just confused and a little stunned by the whole ordeal? We don’t know. We don’t know if Saul’s silence here is a calculated silence, a silence born out of prudence, or a spur of the moment silence born out of faithlessness, but I suggest we give him the benefit of the doubt.
Put yourself in Saul’s shoes, friend. Imagine if, today, the LORD shocked you by anointing you as the next President of the United States, or you got the call that some oil tycoon in Saudi Arabia is your great, great, great uncle and you’ve just inherited a billion dollars, or you get the call from the Nobel Peace Prize committee that your little monthly contributions to the soup kitchen have caused them to nominate you? What would you do first? Would you run to social media and broadcast the success to the whole world? Or would you send a text message to all your friends and family members, partly to share the big news and partly to ask for prayer? Or would you mull it over in the quiet of your heart, not knowing what to make of such an enormous calling, and definitely not ready to tell anyone else?
Whether there’s virtue or vanity in Saul’s silence, we don’t know—but there’s humanity in it. And it’s a good reminder for us that biblical persons are people, not proverbs; and not everything can be reduced into a simple fable.