1 Kings 15:17
And Samuel said: When thou wast a little one in thy own eyes, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel? And the Lord anointed thee to be king over Israel.
Open 1 Kings 15:17 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et ait Samuel : Nonne cum parvulus esses in oculis tuis, caput in tribubus Israël factus es ? unxitque te Dominus in regem super Israël,
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν Σαμουὴλ πρὸς Σαούλ Οὐχὶ μικρὸς σὺ εἶ ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ, ἡγούμενος σκήπτρου φυλῆς Ἰσραήλ; καὶ ἔχρισέν σε Κύριος εἰς βασιλέα ἐπὶ Ἰσραήλ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר שְׁמוּאֵ֔ל הֲל֗וֹא אִם קָטֹ֤ן אַתָּה֙ בְּעֵינֶ֔יךָ רֹ֛אשׁ שִׁבְטֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל אָ֑תָּה וַיִּמְשָׁחֲךָ֧ יְהוָ֛ה לְמֶ֖לֶךְ עַל יִשְׂרָאֵֽל
Haydock's commentary
Eyes. God rejects the proud, and gives his grace to the humble. See Luke i. 52. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Sabinianus
1. Of old, when it had repented the Lord that he had anointed Saul to be king over Israel, we are told that Samuel mourned for him; and again, when Paul heard that there was fornication among the Corinthians and such fornication as was not so much as named among the gentiles, he besought them to repent with these tearful words: “lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed.” If an apostle or a prophet, themselves immaculate, could speak thus with a clemency embracing all, how much more earnestly should a sinner like me plead with a sinner like you. …
St Gregory the Great The Book of Pastoral Rule, That the ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, but, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evildoers
But commonly a ruler, from the very fact of his being pre-eminent over others, is puffed up with elation of thought; and, while all things serve his need, while his commands are quickly executed after his desire, while all his subjects extol with praises what he has done well, but have no authority to speak against what he has done amiss, and while they commonly praise even what they ought to have reproved, his mind, seduced by what is offered in abundance from below, is lifted up above itself; and, while outwardly surrounded by unbounded favour, he loses his inward sense of truth; and, forgetful of himself, he scatters himself on the voices of other men, and believes himself to be such as outwardly he hears himself called rather than such as he ought inwardly to have judged himself to be. …