Gregory the Dialogist : Therefore, he adds and says: "But when you saw that Nahash was coming up and would fight against you, you said: 'By no means,' but rather, 'A king shall reign over us' — even though the Lord was reigning over you." 6. As if he were saying: For this purpose you have chosen a man for yourselves, for which you used to have God. If we wish to examine this passage spiritually, the following is gathered from it: that those who desire a carnal ruler to be set over them drive away divine grace from themselves. For while they live by the example of humble teachers, they are, as it were, freed from Egypt, because they flee the darkness of worldly love with all their desire. Because they also escape the tyranny of all vices through the teaching of those men, they are freed, as it were, from the hand of Sisera, the Philistines, and the king of Moab, by leaders sent to them. In these God alone, the Almighty, now reigns, because while they outwardly imitate humble pastors, they gratefully receive the love of the divinity reigning among them. Let the prophet therefore say: "You said to me: 'By no means, but a king shall be over us,' when the Lord was reigning over you" — to show that those who subject themselves by imitating carnal men lose the dignity of divine grace. It should also be noted that the prophet Samuel, through the virtue of humility, everywhere presented himself to the elect as a model of uprightness. For when he was recounting the liberation of the Israelite people, he did not say, "The Lord sent Jephthah and me," but "Jephthah and Samuel, and He delivered you from the hand of your enemies." He named himself as though speaking of another, so that the power of liberation would not be ascribed to the person sent, but to the grace of God who sent him. "The Lord sent Samuel," he says, "and delivered you." As if to say: He sent whom He willed, and through whom He willed, He acted. And perhaps he speaks of himself as of another because it is not he himself who speaks through himself, but the Holy Spirit. And because, by God's permission, with a king now established, the man of God was saying these things, he was saying them for this purpose: to direct the king and the people toward the worship of God, not to abolish the royal dignity itself. — Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 5, Chapter 2