On the surface of it, these four proverbs don’t seem to have a common thread. All of them land squarely in the category of the blindingly obvious: of course it’s unfair to punish the innocent! Probably they weren’t really intended to be read as a unit, as this section of Proverbs is really a list of Solomon’s wisdom aphorisms. So why does he remind us of things we already know?

Justice is, most often, inconvenient.

All through their history the Israelites had a yo-yo relationship with God. At times they worshipped and served God, at other times they turned away from him and worshipped idols. Samuel told them if they got rid of the idols and turned back to God, wholeheartedly, God would rescue them from their enemy, the Philistines. So the Israelites turned back to God.

When the Philistines marched towards them, the Israelites were scared, but they didn’t run.

Judges had been God’s representatives to the Israelites for about 350 years. Samuel, the current judge took it personally when the nation’s leaders told him they now wanted a king, like the other nations. The Lord knew that the leaders weren’t rejecting Samuel as judge, they were rejecting God as their King.

There were going to be consequences to having a king, but they didn’t want to listen to Samuel as he laid it out for them.

In Exodus 3, God calls Moses to be his spokesperson. What is Moses’ reaction? Is he honoured and humbled? Is he excited and overwhelmed? No. Moses says, “Who am I to go to the king and lead your people out of Egypt?” Saul reminds me of Moses when Samuel tells him not to worry about the donkeys, that everything valuable in Israel now belongs to Saul and his family. I can just see Saul looking incredulous, “Why are you telling me this? We’re nobody!”

It was obvious that God had chosen Saul to be Israel’s first king. Everything Samuel told Saul happened just as he said and right on that same day. All the Israelites gathered so that the Lord could choose a king. Saul was chosen just as God said. It was time for Saul to step forward and be declared king. There was only one problem, they couldn’t find him! The man chosen to be the first king of the Israelites was hiding.

Interviewers love to ask leaders, “How did this happen? How did you get started?”

For Saul, the answer has two parts. First, he was publicly anointed as king by the prophet Samuel as described in chapters 8-10. But then like everyone else he returned to his home. Not only was Saul a humble and perhaps even a timid man; the idea of having a king or being a king was so new that nobody knew exactly what to do.

Abandoned. Alone. Nothing left to live for. Hardly sounds like words one might expect from the mouth of a king. And yet, David pours out his wretchedness before God. The darkness is a real and living thing, threatening to overtake David’s very existence, to cause him to “fall into the sleep of death.” The depth of such depression knows no economic boundaries, distinguishing little between prince and pauper.