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Many of the personalities of the Bible are as vividly alive and meaningful today as they were several thousand years ago. One wonders what there is about these biblical figures that has enabled them to retain their hold upon the imagination of men for so many centuries. Perhaps it is because their psychological struggles and achievements contain elements that find responsive chords in many people. More specifically, it seems that the biblical tradition offers an approach and an attempted solution to universal human problems in the conflict between instinctual and moral forces. This may be the factor which helps to give the great characters revealed in this literature a lasting significance.
We shall consider here the personality of Samuel, judge and seer, priest and prophet, who is believed to have lived from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the eleventh centuries, B.C. (1) The character of Samuel offers opportunity for a study in the psychology of leadership. His figure stands out with a kind of solitary impressiveness during this period of ancient Israel which served as a transition from the days of the “Judges” to the time of the Monarchy. The word judge in those days was synonymous with leader and described a person who achieved this position largely through his own abilities. Some of the judges were chiefly military leaders but in all of them the motivating force was always the religious one.
Samuel was a transition figure psychologically in a rather striking sense, being regarded historically as the last of the judges and also as ushering in the period of the prophets. Serving a people who lived a simple agricultural life, Samuel faced problems and tasks different from the later prophets of a more urban culture.