1 Samuel 8:18

1Sa 8:18 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.

Ver. 18. And ye shall cry out.] As the Romans once did of Marius and Sulla, that the remedy was worse than the disease.

And the Lord will not hear you,] viz., To change your monarchy again into an aristocracy, your kings into judges.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

8:18 The people would beg for relief as their ancestors had done in Egypt under another punishing and exacting ruler (see Exod 3:7).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Because ye repent not for your sins, but because ye smart for your afflictions, whereinto ye cast yourselves willingly.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

(18) The Lord will not hear you in that day.—After the separation of the north and the south, when King Solomon was dead, a large proportion of the northern sovereigns—or kings, as they were called, of “Israel,” in distinction to the southern monarchs, the kings of “Judah”—fulfilled in their lives and government of the realm the dark forebodings of the seer. The northern tribes broke with all the hallowed associations connected with the Ark and temple, and set up a rival and semi-idolatrous religion in some of their own popular centres. There no holy influences swayed the councils of their despotic kings. The lives of the Israelites who still loved the law of the Lord, and cherished the glorious memories of their fathers, must have been very bitter and hard when men like Omri and Ahab reigned with all their cruel power in Tirzah and Samaria.

But no prayers then availed; one wicked dynasty succeeded another, until the cup of iniquity was filled, and Israel carried away captive for ever out of their fair land.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18. because of your king] Or, “from your king,” appealing to God to escape from his tyranny.

will not hear you] Rather, will not answer you. The Sept adds “because ye have chosen yourselves a king.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And ye shall cry out in that day, because of your king,.... His power and pride, his oppression and tyranny, his heavy exactions, and intolerable yoke, and yet not be able to free themselves from them; all that they could do would be only to cry out under them as grievously distressed, and not knowing how to help themselves; and which would be the more aggravated, because they brought all this upon themselves, as it follows:

which ye shall have chosen you; for though the choice of a king for them, at a proper time, God had reserved to himself, yet in later times, as is here suggested, they would choose for themselves, and did, see Hos 8:4 besides, to have a king in general was at first their own choice, though the particular person was by the designation of the Lord:

and the Lord will not hear you in that day; will not regard them, have no compassion on them, suffer them to remain under their oppressions, and not deliver them out of them; because they rejected him from being their King, and put themselves out of his protection, into the hands of another, and therefore it was just to leave them to their own choice.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The face, privately; for even groans will not be free. (Menochius) --- The event justified this prediction, as most of the kings of the Hebrews ruled like tyrants, and what was worse, engaged their subjects in idolatry, and drew down the heaviest judgments upon them. (Calmet) --- Hear you, so as to deliver you from oppression, though he is always willing to hear those who truly repent. (Worthington)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Ye shall cry out in that day; 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. Compare Pro 1:24, &c. Zec 7:13.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

18. Ye shall cry out in that day — By this dark picture of regal prerogative Samuel hopes that the people will withdraw their request for a king like those of the nations.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ye shall cry. In despair at this cruel oppression ye shall appeal to Jehovah, but in vain. The king was given them at their own request, persisted in even after warning, and they must abide by their choice. It is worth noting that in the northern kingdom a majority of the kings more or less fulfilled Samuel"s evil forebodings, and there they were much more completely the product of the temper condemned by the prophet than they were in Judah. The ten tribes roughly snapped the tie which bound them to Jehovah; they discarded the ark and all the services of the sanctuary, and were content with so poor an imitation of them that all piously disposed men were compelled to abandon their lands and migrate into Judaea; (2Ch_11:16) and so the majority of their kings, not being held in check by religious influences, were tyrants. At Jerusalem, on the contrary, most of them were content to remain within the limits of the Mosaic law, and were upon the whole a series of men far superior, not merely to the judges and the monarchs in old time, but to any European dynasty.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Cry out - Ye shall bitterly mourn for the sad effects of this inordinate desire of a king. Will not hear - Because you will not hear, nor obey his counsel in this day.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.