God's Hand Hidden in the Wandering of Lost Asses

Samuel had received the divine communication: Yahweh would uncover the ear of the prophet—that vivid Hebrew phrase meaning revelation both authoritative in origin and secret in transmission. The narrative refuses naturalistic explanation; it is supernatural or nothing. Consider the chain of ordinary events that brought Saul to that anonymous city in the land of Zuph: a servant's lost asses, a weary search abandoned in familiar territory, the accident of proximity, a servant's suggestion to consult the seer. Each link appears random, purposeless. Yet behind and through them all worked the will and hand of God, thrusting this man unconscious along a path he knew not.

This is Maclaren's penetrating insight: our own purposes we may know, but God's purposes remain hidden. There is something awful—in the older, reverent sense—in contemplating the issues that spring from the smallest affairs. We shall be bewildered and paralyzed if we glimpse the complicated web being woven in time's loom, unless by faith we see the Weaver. Then we rest.

Samuel himself is merely God's obedient instrument. His personal opinions—dead against the monarchy—count for nothing. The people's desire and Yahweh's answer proceed independent of the old judge's will. He is not a mediating statesman but a servant who obeys the authoritative command: I will send him. This demolishes every attempt to reduce the narrative to political evolution. Call nothing trivial. Seek consciousness of His guiding hand working through the lost asses, the tired feet, the chance meeting—the invisible Weaver at the loom.