He Gave Them Their Request

Welcome to Vespers, where we take up the last hour of your day.

Tonight: asking, and getting. The king Israel demanded, the meat Israel wept for, and the oldest warning in the life of prayer — that God sometimes grants a request as a judgment. The readings run from the law of Moses to the door of the monarchy, and then into the psalms that remember it all.

A reminder: this is a survey of great ideas, not necessarily an endorsement of any one contribution.

Long before Israel ever asked for a king, provision had been made for one. From the book of Deuteronomy:

When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother.

The passage goes on:

But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.

And it concludes:

And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

So a king was permitted. He is defined almost entirely by what he refuses to gather — not horses, not wives, not silver and gold — and by the book he is required to keep at his elbow. That is the provision. Now the demand.

From the first book of Samuel:

And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: they were judges in Beer-sheba. And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.

And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.

The old scholars noticed that the elders' words are nearly a quotation. From Keil and Delitzsch:

This request resembles so completely the law of the king in Deuteronomy, that the distinct allusion to it is unmistakeable. The elders simply desired what Jehovah had foretold through His servant Moses, as a thing that would take place in the future and for which He had even made provision.

They asked for the thing that had been provided for. And it was still wrong. That is the puzzle the whole evening turns on.

Samuel does as he is told. He describes the king they are asking for. The reading continues:

And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

He goes on:

And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

The law of Moses said of the king: he shall not multiply, he shall not multiply, he shall not multiply. Samuel says of the king they want: he will take, he will take, he will take. Matthew Poole pauses over that closing threat — ye shall cry out in that day. He writes:

Ye shall bitterly mourn for the sad effects of this inordinate desire of a king. The Lord will not hear you in that day, because you will not hear him, nor obey his counsel, in this day.

And the people's answer:

Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles. And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king. And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye every man unto his city.

The old commentators on this chapter. From Matthew Henry:

Samuel was displeased; he could patiently bear what reflected on himself, and his own family; but it displeased him when they said, Give us a king to judge us, because that reflected upon God. It drove him to his knees. When any thing disturbs us, it is our interest, as well as our duty, to show our trouble before God. Samuel is to tell them that they shall have a king. Not that God was pleased with their request, but as sometimes he opposes us from loving-kindness, so at other times he gratifies us in wrath; he did so here.

Mark that sentence. As sometimes he opposes us from loving-kindness, so at other times he gratifies us in wrath. It will be the refrain of the night.

From Matthew Poole, on the elders:

Their conclusion outruns their premises, and their desires exceed their reasons or arguments, which extended no further than to the removal of Samuel's sons from their places. Nor was the grant of their desire a remedy for their disease, but rather an aggravation of it; for the sons of their king might be as corrupt as Samuel's sons; and if they were, would not be so easily removed as these were.

From John Gill, on what they were really asking for:

What they were desirous of was to have a king appearing in pomp and splendour, wearing a crown of gold, clothed in royal apparel, with a sceptre in his hand, dwelling in a stately palace, keeping a splendid court, and attended with a grand retinue, as the rest of the nations about them had had for a long time. Israel had God for their King in a peculiar manner other nations had not, and stood in no need of any other; and happy it would have been for them if they had been content therewith, and not sought after another.

And Henry once more, on the warning that closes Samuel's speech:

When we bring ourselves into distress by our own wrong desires and projects, we justly forfeit the comfort of prayer, and the benefit of Divine aid. Sudden resolves and hasty desires make work for long and leisurely repentance. It is a hopeful symptom when our desires of worldly objects can brook delay; and when we can refer the time and manner of their being granted to God's providence.

This was not the first time Israel asked with that mouth. A generation earlier, in the wilderness, the same grammar of demand had been tried, and answered. From the book of Numbers:

And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: but now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.

They can itemize the produce of the house of slavery. Fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic — the menu of Egypt remembered course by course, and the bread of heaven called nothing at all. The answer comes:

And say thou unto the people, Sanctify yourselves against to morrow, and ye shall eat flesh: for ye have wept in the ears of the LORD, saying, Who shall give us flesh to eat? for it was well with us in Egypt: therefore the LORD will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; but even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you: because that ye have despised the LORD which is among you, and have wept before him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?

And the granting:

And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp. And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah: because there they buried the people that lusted.

The graves of craving. The place got its name from the appetite that was satisfied there.

The psalms would not let Israel forget it. From the seventy-eighth psalm:

He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven: and by his power he brought in the south wind. He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea: and he let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations. So they did eat, and were well filled: for he gave them their own desire; they were not estranged from their lust. But while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel.

And from the hundred and sixth psalm, the verse the whole evening has been walking toward:

Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea. Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known. He rebuked the Red sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them through the depths, as through the wilderness. And he saved them from the hand of him that hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. And the waters covered their enemies: there was not one of them left. Then believed they his words; they sang his praise.

They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel: but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.

He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. One line, and the whole matter is in it.

The commentators have stood over that verse for centuries. From Matthew Henry:

Those that will not wait for God's counsel, shall justly be given up to their own hearts' lusts, to walk in their own counsels. An undue desire, even for lawful things, becomes sinful. Many that fare deliciously every day, and whose bodies are healthful, have leanness in their souls: no love to God, no thankfulness, no appetite for the Bread of life, and then the soul must be lean. Those wretchedly forget themselves, that feast their bodies and starve their souls.

Henry elsewhere compressed it to a single sentence: what is asked in passion, is often given in wrath.

From Albert Barnes:

In the gratification of their desires, in great temporal success and prosperity, individuals, churches, nations, often forget their dependence on God; become self-confident and proud, and forfeit the favor of God. If we pray for temporal prosperity, we should also pray that we may at the same time have grace commensurate with it, that it may be a blessing and not a curse.

He goes on:

Few are the Christian people who can bear continued success in life; few are those who are not injured by it; rare is it that growth in grace keeps pace with uninterrupted worldly prosperity. A man does not know what is best for him when his heart is set on worldly prosperity; and God is more benevolent to people than they are to themselves, in withholding what is so often the object of their intense desire.

From Jamieson, Fausset and Brown:

The punishment was inflicted at the very time their request was granted. This soul got its wish, and with it and in it its own punishment. The place was therefore called the graves of lust, because there they buried the people who had lusted. Animal desires when gratified mostly give only a hungry craving for more.

From Matthew Poole:

Their inordinate desire of pleasing and pampering their bodies was the occasion of destroying them; whilst God denied his blessing, which alone makes food able to nourish us, and inflicted his curse, which made their food as destructive as poison to them.

The old Geneva Bible put its note in the margin: the abundance that God gave them did not profit, but made them pine away, because God cursed it.

From John Gill:

So God sometimes gives to wicked men what they ask for, as much as they can desire, yea, more than heart could wish. It is true in a spiritual sense, that while the bodies of wicked men are fed and pampered, their souls are starved. Worldly professors are very lean ones; such who mind earth and earthly things never thrive in spirituals. Yea, there is sometimes a leanness in the souls of the people of God, when corruptions prevail, and the graces of the spirit are low in exercise.

And the Cambridge commentator, briefly:

They complained, our soul is dried away, our vitality is exhausted; but the satisfaction of their self-willed lust brought sickness and death, not life and vigour, and the graves of lust marked the scene of their sin and its punishment.

The wisdom literature knows this taste. From the Proverbs:

Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.

And the New Testament closes the loop. From the epistle of James:

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

The moralists and the commonplace books have circled this ground for as long as men have wanted things. A run of them now, on desire itself. From Sir Walter Raleigh:

Desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perishes when it is satisfied.

From Doctor Johnson:

Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, while he was chill, was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison.

From Robert South:

Desires are the first issues and sallyings out of the soul to unlawful objects; they are sin, as it were, in its formation.

From Thomas Hobbes:

Our nature is inseparable from desires, and the very word desire — the craving for something not possessed — implies that our present felicity is not complete.

From Washington Irving:

Every desire bears its death in its very gratification. Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants, and novelties cease to excite surprise, until at length we cannot wonder even at a miracle.

From Sir Philip Sidney:

Unlawful desires are punished after the effect of enjoying; but impossible desires are punished in the desire itself.

From Lord Bacon:

A wise man will desire no more than he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.

And on covetousness, the same voices darken. From Bacon again:

The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that wealth may be said to possess him.

From Luther:

Covetousness is never to be satisfied; the more it has, the more it wants.

From Alexander Chalmers:

A covetous person wants what he has, as well as what he has not; because he is never satisfied with it.

From Thomas Adams:

The covetous man pines in plenty, like Tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty.

From Thomas Fuller:

Worldly riches, like nuts, tear many clothes in getting them, but fill no belly with eating them. He that at first thought ten thousand pounds too much for any one man, will afterward think ten millions too little for himself.

And on ambition — which is what Israel's request for a king finally was, an ambition to be like all the nations. From the Puritan Thomas Brooks:

Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases. High seats are never but uneasy, and crowns are always stuffed with thorns.

From Henry Burton:

Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.

From Colton:

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth; she begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

From Euripides:

Why dost thou court ambition, the most baneful of deities? Do it not, she is an unjust goddess; for often hath she entered into houses and flourishing cities, and issued forth again, bringing destruction on those who welcomed her.

From Bulwer:

Say what we will, we may be sure that ambition is an error; its wear and tear of heart are never recompensed; it steals away the freshness of life; it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments; it shuts our souls to our own youth; and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years.

One more stone, from the collections, on the mercy hiding inside a refusal. The old anthologies print these lines under the name of Hannah More:

So weak is man, so ignorant and blind, that did not God sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask, we should be ruined at our own request.

Israel was not ruined at their own request by God's withholding. They were chastened at their own request by God's granting. Both are the same lesson, read from opposite sides: the answer to a prayer is not the same thing as the blessing of God.

The Puritan Thomas Watson preached long on why we cannot be trusted with our own wish lists. From his Body of Divinity, in a lightly modernized text:

Learn quietly to submit to divine providence. Do not murmur at things that are ordered by divine wisdom. We may no more find fault with the works of providence than we may with the works of creation. It is a sin as much to quarrel with God's providence, as to deny his providence. If other people do not act as we would have them act, they shall act as God would have them act. His providence is his master-wheel, which turns these lesser wheels, and God will bring his glory out of all at last.

He goes on:

It may be, we think sometimes we could order things better, if we had the government of the world in our hands; but alas, should we be left to our own choice, we should choose those things that are hurtful for us. David earnestly desired the life of his child, which was the fruit of his sin — but had the child lived, it would have been a perpetual monument of his shame. Let us be content that God should rule the world; learn to acquiesce in his will, and submit to his providence. Does any affliction befall you? Remember God sees it is that which is fit for you, or it would not come. Your clothes cannot be so fit for you as your crosses.

Watson also kept, in his notes on the Beatitudes, the confession of a man who had gotten everything he ever asked for. He writes: God has put not only an emptiness, but bitterness into the creature, and it is good for us that there is no perfection here, that we may raise our thoughts higher. Could we distill and draw out the quintessence of the creature, we would say as once the emperor Severus said, who grew from a low estate to be head of the greatest empire in the world: I have run through all conditions, yet could never find full contentment.

And from his sermon on meekness, on the man who stood where Samuel would later stand:

How many injuries did Moses put up with? When the people of Israel murmured against him, instead of falling into a rage, he falls to prayer for them. The text says, they murmured at the waters of Marah. Sure the waters were not so bitter as the spirits of the people — but they could not provoke him to anger, but to petition.

Samuel learned the same posture. The elders demanded, and the thing displeased Samuel — and Samuel prayed unto the LORD. The grumbler talks about God. The intercessor talks to him.

If leanness of soul is the wage of the demanding heart, contentment is the estate of the quiet one. The commonplace books again, now on the other side of the ledger. From Thomas Fuller:

Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire; not in multiplying of wealth, but in subtracting men's desires.

From Francis Quarles:

If thou hast but little, make it not less by murmuring; if thou hast enough, make it not too much by unthankfulness. He that is not thankfully contented with the least favor he hath received, hath made himself incapable of the least favor he can receive.

From Erskine Mason:

Bless God for what you have, and trust God for what you want; if we cannot bring our condition to our mind, we must bring our mind to our condition; if a man is not content in the state he is in, he will not be content in the state he would be.

From Doctor Johnson:

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.

From Colton:

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

From Jeremy Taylor:

No chance is evil to him who is content, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it is unreasonable.

And from Brooks once more, in a single breath:

Nature is content with little, grace with less, sin with nothing.

The apostle Paul, who had learned what Israel in the wilderness had not, from the letter to the Philippians:

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

And to Timothy:

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

There is one more turn in the story, and it should not be lost. Israel asked for a king, and God gave them Saul — their type, on their timing, head and shoulders above the people, a king who looked like a king from the nations. That was the request granted. But the promise was not Saul. In his own time God gave David, a man after his own heart, and to David a covenant, and out of that covenant, in the fullness of time, a King whom nobody had thought to ask for — one who said of himself that he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. The demand of the elders was granted in wrath; the desire of the nations was granted in grace. God's answers to our worst prayers are not his last word.

So the evening ends where the honest praying man always ends — asking God to reform the asker, not just to fill the order. John Newton knew both sides of this verse, and wrote it into a hymn for his village congregation. From the Olney Hymns, seventeen seventy-nine, the hymn he titled Prayer Answered by Crosses. This is John Newton:

I asked the LORD that I might grow In faith, and love, and every grace; Might more of his salvation know, And seek, more earnestly, his face.

'Twas he who taught me thus to pray, And he, I trust, has answered prayer! But it has been in such a way, As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour, At once he'd answer my request; And by his love's constraining pow'r, Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, he made me feel The hidden evils of my heart; And let the angry pow'rs of hell Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with his own hand he seemed Intent to aggravate my woe; Crossed all the fair designs I schemed, Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

LORD, why is this, I trembling cried, Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death? 'Tis in this way, the LORD replied, I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ, From self, and pride, to set thee free; And break thy schemes of earthly joy, That thou may'st find thy all in me.

Good night.