1 Samuel 7:17

to Ramah See note on ch. 1 Samuel 1:1. Samuel chose his native place for his usual official residence, and made it a centre of religious worship by building an altar to Jehovah.

Here ends the first division of the book, which records Samuel's life and work as the last of the Judges, in connexion with the old order of things. The next division opens by relating the steps which led to the establishment of a monarchy, and shews us Samuel as the Mediator between the old and the new régime, effecting a political change of the utmost importance in the history of Israel without the shock of revolution.

It has been conjectured (a) from the fact that this portion of the book ends with a summary account of Samuel's whole life: (b) from the apparent (but not altogether inexplicable) contradiction between ch. 1 Samuel 7:13-15 and the subsequent narrative, that the compiler derived the history of Samuel and the history of Saul from different sources: but in the obscurity of the whole question of the compilation of the book, it must remain a hypothesis incapable of verification.