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Verse 17
1Sa 10:17 העם is the nation in its heads and representatives. Samuel selected Mizpeh for this purpose, because it was there that he had once before obtained for the people, by prayer, a great victory over the Philistines (1Sa 7:5.).

Verses 18-19
1Sa 10:18-19 “But before proceeding to the election itself, Samuel once more charged the people with their sin in rejecting God, who had brought them out of Egypt, and delivered them out of the hand of all their oppressors, by their demand for a king, that he might show them how dangerous was the way which they were taking now, and how bitterly they would perhaps repent of what they had now desired” (O. v. Gerlach; see the commentary on 1 Samuel 8). The masculine הלּחצים is construed ad sensum with המּמלכות. In לו ותּאמרוּ the early translators have taken לו for לא, which is the actual reading in some of the Codices. But although this reading is decidedly favoured by the parallel passages, 1Sa 8:19; 1Sa 12:12, it is not necessary; since כּי is used to introduce a direct statement, even in a declaration of the opposite, in the sense of our “no but” (e.g., in Rth 1:10, where להּ precedes). There is, therefore, no reason for exchanging לו for לא.

Verses 20-21
After this warning, Samuel directed the assembled Israelites to come before Jehovah (i.e., before the altar of Jehovah which stood at Mizpeh, according to 1Sa 7:9) according to their tribes and families (alaphim: see at Num 1:16); “and there was taken (by lot) the tribe of Benjamin.” הלּכד,