Context No. 2676 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

1 Samuel 12:6-11: in context

6Samuel said to the people, “It is the LORD who appointed Moses and Aaron, and that brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. 7Now therefore stand still, that I may plead with you before the LORD concerning all the righteous acts of the LORD, which he did to you and to your fathers. 8“When Jacob had come into Egypt, and your fathers cried to the LORD, then the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt, and made them to dwell in this place. 9But they forgot the LORD their God; and he sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the army of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab; and they fought against them. 10They cried to the LORD, and said, ‘We have sinned, because we have forsaken the LORD and have served the Baals and the Ashtaroth; but now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve you.’ 11The LORD sent Jerubbaal, Bedan, Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side; and you lived in safety.

Samuel stands before Israel and walks them through their own history, and it follows a pattern that repeats like a wheel. God brought your fathers out of Egypt, he says; then they forgot the LORD, and he let them fall into enemy hands; then they cried out, We have sinned, and God sent them deliverers, Gideon, Jephthah, Samuel, and rescued them. Deliverance, forgetting, trouble, crying out, rescue, and around again.

The cycle is sobering because it is so familiar. The people did not forget God in their affliction; they forgot him in their safety, once the last rescue had done its work. Comfort dulled the memory, and forgetting led back into trouble, which drove them to cry out again. And the mercy in it is that God kept answering, kept raising up deliverers for a people who kept forgetting him. Samuel rehearses the history precisely so they will remember and break the cycle. The antidote to the forgetting is deliberate remembering, calling to mind God's past rescues so that the good times do not lull us back into the old pattern.

Am I caught in the cycle of forgetting God once the trouble passes, and will I deliberately remember his past rescues so comfort does not dull me back into forgetting?

Sources

1 Samuel 12:9: But they forgot the LORD their God; and he sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the army of Hazor.
1 Samuel 12:11: The LORD sent Jerubbaal, Bedan, Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side.
1 Samuel 12:7: stand still, that I may plead with you before the LORD concerning all the righteous acts of the LORD.