Fathers

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What the Fathers say

1 Samuel 15:17

Western Saints

Gregory the Dialogist

17. By these words, the disobedience of the proud king is subtly examined: because he first sets before him the gifts that were bestowed, then strikes at the audacity of his transgression through a careful investigation of that same fault. For it is a subtle examination when a crafty sinner is so scrutinized that no excuse for his guilt is left to him, so that God's sentence holds him bound, as it were, to the death of his crime, since no refuge from sin remains for him. …

Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 6, Chapter 2 ↗

Bede

And Samuel said: Were you not small in your own eyes? etc. And this rebuke of blessed Samuel is fitting for any Christian transgressing the faith with which he was imbued; someone saying to him, one of the spiritual teachers, whose likeness Samuel presents: Were you not humbled in your mind for the past life, which was without God, when you came to the Church, having already received the grace of faith and baptism, made a principal in exercising the fruits of the Spirit? Through which you should reach the vision of divine clarity. …

Commentary on Samuel ↗