Christ in All the Scriptures by A.M. Hodgkin

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Christ in the Pentateuch
• Christ in the Historical Books
  • Joshua
  • Judges
  • Ruth
  • The Six Books of Kings
  • 1 Samuel
  • 2 Samuel
  • 1 Kings
  • 2 Kings
  • 1 Chronicles
  • 2 Chronicles
  • Ezra
  • Nehemiah
  • Esther
• Christ in the Poetical Books
• Christ in the Prophets
• Christ in His Life on Earth
• Christ in Resurrection Power
• Christ in Future Glory

type of the one perfect King. Solomon likewise was a type of Him. But after Solomon God’s power departed from the kings and became vested in the prophets. Elijah sent word to Ahab, “Behold, Elijah is here! And Ahab went to meet Elijah.” As Moody said, “Who was king now?” Moses was a prophet. Samuel was a prophet, as well as being the last of the Judges, and also priest. But the great line of prophets began with Elijah, and they represented God to His people through all the years of the decline and fall of the monarchy.

I Samuel

The lawless state of God’s people, described in the Book of Judges, is continued in the early part of I Samuel, and seems to reach its height when the Ark of the Lord was in the hands of the Philistines, and the priests were given over to wickedness. We have a solemn lesson of the result of failure in parental discipline, even on the part of good parents. Of the sons of Eli we read: “The sin of the young men was very great before the Lord,” and “Eli restrained them not.” In the same way the sons of even the righteous Samuel “walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment,” until the people of Israel made their behavior the excuse to demand a king. David also seems to have shown an inability to rule his own house, as is evident in the rebellion of both Absalom and Adonijah. Of Adonijah we read: “And his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so?” David, evidently, had not acted the father’s part in chastening his son.

Samuel, Saul, and David stand out as the three central figures of I and II Samuel.

Samuel himself was a picture of our Savior. The meaning of his name was one of the perplexities of Hebrew scholarship till the year 1899, when the Twelfth Congress of Orientalists held its meeting at Rome, and Professor Jastrow, of Philadelphia, showed that, in the Assyrian, which is closely allied to the Hebrew tongue, the word sumu means son, and he translated Samuel as “son (or offspring) of God.” Hannah, in the depth and sincerity of her surrender, gave up her first-born son to God utterly.

He was “God’s son” from the moment of his birth. “Therefore I have given him to the Lord” (not “lent” as in