16 To morrow about this time I will send thee a man out of the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel, that he may save my people out of the hand of the Philistines: for I have looked upon my people, because their cry is come unto me.

I (Yahweh) will send thee a man.

The emphasis is to be laid on the intimation that God would send a man for Samuel to anoint. Here we strike a vein of providence illustrated. Narrowly construed, and without the narrative of how God did it, we should conclude that God meant to send word to a certain man to go to Samuel to be anointed king. God's ways are much more interesting than this. Saul was sent, yet Saul knew nothing about it.

When we turn back from this point (v. 3 The asses were lost), and contemplate the incidents that led Saul into the presence of Samuel, remembering that God said, "I will send thee a man," it is impossible to fail to be struck with the reflection that God may be at work in connection with the most unlikely circumstances.

Here are animals straying: what more common and trifling incident could there be? Yet it was the divine drawing of Saul into the neighbourhood of Yahweh's servant. Can we doubt, therefore, the animals in this case were acted on up to a certain point? They were taken sufficiently far out of the district to cause Saul's father to suggest a search expedition.

When Saul and his servants started, they went the wrong way to find the missing animals. They chose the way that their feelings suggested, but their feelings were angelically biased without their knowing it.

They were inclined the way that led to Samuel, but of this they were ignorant. Desire to discover the straying animals was their ruling impulse, but this was used to draw them on and on till Saul, still enquiring after the asses, stood before Samuel, on the very day and hour spoken of to Samuel (1 Samuel 9:16). God sent Saul and he did not know.

Ordinary incidents producing natural effects, were so intertwined with the divine guidance as to turn a bootless expedition into a divine mission. Yet the two things were distinct and separable. The divine guidance withdrawn, there would have remained nothing but a common occurrence without significance or result—straying animals, two men seeking them, and not finding them.

Ways of Providence