The master of wisdom Ben Sira spoke in his book of a very important period in the history of the people of Israel, the passage from the aristocracy to the monarchy as systems of government. And during this time, a very important person, the prophet Samuel, who was also a judge, had a very prominent action. Samuel was a person blessed by God and from his mother's womb he was a person consecrated to the service of the Lord.
This is how Ben Sira told us about Samuel:
"Beloved of his people, dear to his Maker,
pledged in a vow from his mother's womb.
As one consecrated to the LORD in the prophetic office,
was SAMUEL, the judge who offered sacrifice" Ben Sira 46:13.
And this prophet lived in times when in Israel there was not a single government, and everything depended on the action of the tribal chiefs. The judges constituted a form of aristocracy that had been instituted by Moses, and many of these judges worked great prodigies such as Judge Samson, a man of incredible physical strength, who died fighting the Philistines. But due to the constant wars of Israel with its neighbors such as the Philistines and the Ammonites, the Bible tells us that the elders of Israel asked Samuel, a renowned prophet, for the anointing of a king.
And thus Ben Sira described Samuel's task, for this prophet anointed both Samuel and David as kings of Israel, each in his own time:
"At God's word he established the kingdom
and anointed princes to rule the people" Ben Sira 46:13.
And this spiritual task of the prophet Samuel was very important because with this the Bible teaches us that for a king to be just that, a king, he needs the blessing of the highest, of the most perfect, because otherwise, he is no longer a king but a tyrant. And these first kings of Israel, assisted by God and the prophets, will later become with the Davidic pact the most immediate antecedent of the Kingdom of God, the dominion of God's perfections, announced by Jesus. Samuel's life has a very important meaning for all Christians, because with the life of Samuel both the temporal and the eternal became present in history.
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