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summons, and there put away the strange gods that they had hitherto worshipped, and worshipped the Lord alone; after which the Lord hearkened to Samuel's prayer, and gave them a complete victory over the Philistines (1Sa 7:2-11). After this victory, which was gained not very long after the death of Samson, Samuel undertook the supreme government of Israel as judge, and eventually at their own desire, and with the consent of God, gave them a king in the person of Saul the Benjaminite. This was not till Samuel himself was old, and had appointed as his successors in the office of judge his own sons, who did not walk in their father's ways (1 Sam. 8-10). Even under Saul, however Samuel continued to the very end of his life to labour as the prophet of the Lord for the well-being of Israel, although he laid down his office of judge as soon as Saul had been elected king. He announced to Saul how he had been rejected by God on account of his disobedience; he anointed David as king; and his death did not occur till after Saul had began to be troubled by the evil spirit, and to plot for David's life (1Sa 25:1), as we may learn from the fact that David fled to Samuel at Ramah when Saul resolved to slay him (1Sa 19:18)
How long Samuel judged Israel between the victory gained at Ebenezer (1 Sam. 7) and the election of Saul as king of Israel, is not stated in the Old Testament, nor even the length of Saul's reign, as the text of 1Sa 13:1 is corrupt. But we shall not be very far from the truth, if we set down about forty years as the time covered by the official life of Samuel as judge after that event and the reign of Saul, and reckon from seventeen to nineteen years as the duration of Samuel's judgeship, and from twenty to twenty-two as the length of Saul's reign. For it is evident from the accounts that we possess of the lives and labours of Samuel and Saul, that Saul did not reign forty years (the time given by Paul in Act 13:21 according to the traditional opinion current in the Jewish schools), but at the most from twenty to twenty-two; and this is now pretty generally admitted (see at 1Sa 13:1). When David was chosen king of Judah at Hebron after the death of Saul, he was thirty years old (2Sa 5:1-4), and can hardly have been anointed king by Samuel at Bethlehem before the age of twenty. For though his father Jesse was still living, and he himself was the youngest of Jesse's eight sons, and was feeding the flock (1Sa 16:6-12), and even after this is still described as נער   (1Sa 17:42, 1Sa 17:55), Jesse was זקן (an old man) at the time (1Sa 17:12), at any rate sixty years old or more, to that his